Popcorn, recliners, a blockbuster on screen — but who’s running the actual show? NEXIS students stepped behind the screen to find out how a cinema really works as a business.
To most people, a cinema is three hours of entertainment. To a business student, it’s a full-blown operation that runs every single day.
So the students of NEXIS School of Business did what they do best — they stepped behind the scenes. “We are not here to watch a film,” as one student put it. “We came here to see how it actually works.”
What keeps a cinema running
Behind the popcorn and projectors sits a surprisingly complex business. Students traced the decisions that most moviegoers never think about: which film plays in which screen, how shows are scheduled across the day, and how experience and operations come together to keep everything moving. Turns out cinemas aren’t just about snacks and screens — they’re a live case study in scheduling, capacity and customer experience.
“At NEXIS, business classes don’t stay in classrooms. They can happen in real theatres. And that’s how we become industry-ready, day by day.”
— NEXIS student
▶ Watch the full story on the NEXIS YouTube channel.
Why cinema industry visit beat textbooks
You can read about operations management, or you can watch it happen. NEXIS chooses the latter. Industry visits — from cinemas to factories to hotels — turn abstract concepts into something students can see, question and remember. That’s the point of the NEXIS curriculum: knowledge you can apply, not just recite. And it’s exactly how a generation that learns by doing becomes genuinely industry-ready.
- NEXIS students study real businesses on-site — a cinema being one of them.
- A movie theatre is a live lesson in scheduling, operations and customer experience.
- Industry visits turn textbook concepts into things students can see and remember.
- Business classes at NEXIS don’t stay in the classroom.
Learning that happens in the real world
Explore a programme where the whole city is a classroom.
Frequently asked questions
What are industry visits at NEXIS?
Industry visits take students on-site to real businesses — cinemas, factories, hotels — to learn how they actually operate, turning classroom theory into first-hand understanding.
Why does NEXIS use experiential learning?
Because applying knowledge to the real world makes students industry-ready. Seeing how a business runs teaches operations, scheduling and customer experience better than a textbook alone.
Based on a NEXIS student industry visit to a cinema in Siliguri.
