Precisely what caused the rift between Sumner Redstone and his daughter, Shari, may never be known, despite vague suggestions of disagreements over “corporate governance.” But one major source of friction between the 84-year-old chairman of National Amusements, the company that controls Viacom and CBS, and his 53-year-old daughter is clear: She’s sanguine about the movie-theater business, while he thinks it’s on its last reel.

Amid the glamour of assets like Paramount and MTV, it’s easy to forget that privately held National Amusements, started back in 1936 by Sumner’s father, remains an important player in the theater business, with about 1,500 screens around the world. Shari, who owns 20 percent of the company (her father controls the remaining 80 percent), has run the theater unit since 1999 and is relentlessly upbeat about it, even as insiders speculate that Sumner would rather sell the whole thing off. Does Shari know something about the popcorn economy that her father doesn’t?

By most measures, the long view looks dreary. Except for the occasional bump after a season of blockbusters (receipts are up 7 percent so far this year, for example), annual sales have stalled at around 1.4 billion tickets a year since the late 1990s. The major theater companies have scratched out profits over the years by raising ticket prices and selling onscreen ads. In pursuit of more eyeballs to satisfy those advertisers, they also added several hundred thousand seats, which resulted in about half the major chains filing for Chapter 11 by 2001. (National Amusements was not one of them.)

Meanwhile, the industry has allowed the theater experience to deteriorate. Nowhere is the clash of generations more evident these days than at the multiplex, where teenagers yak on their phones as middle-aged couples fork over $8 for Twizzlers and a Coke and snarl at the endless advertising. “Theater owners definitely shoot themselves in the foot by putting 40 minutes of commercials in there,” says Bob Shaye, co-chairman of New Line Cinema, the studio behind the Lord of the Rings and Rush Hour franchises. “If it’s no longer a pleasant environment and you add that on, at some point audiences revolt.”

But for the most part, the leading theater chains aren’t worried—at least not enough to change things. Headquartered in places such as Plano, Texas (Cinemark), Kansas City, Missouri (AMC), and Knoxville, Tennessee (Regal, half owned by Philip Anschutz), they push for blockbuster “event” movies and lobby to maintain the traditional window between theatrical and home-video release dates. Studios, which split box-office receipts evenly with the theaters, have advocated collapsing that window, as they’d rather sell higher-margin DVDs or downloads. Some studio heads have even fantasized about charging a premium above theater prices for a movie piped directly to the home on the same day it opens at the multiplex. The theater chains, which earn about 75 percent of their profits from concession sales, see this as Armageddon. When Disney C.E.O. Robert Iger came out in favor of collapsing the window two years ago, the president of the National Association of Theater Owners called it a “death threat to our industry.”

Shari Redstone was among those who protested loudest. Then again, she has also been the most experimental major operator. Since 2001, she has opened dozens of Cinema de Lux megaplexes in places like Los Angeles and Westchester County, New York, that offer amenities such as guest lounges, reserved seating, and a casual restaurant called Chatters. Today, half of National Amusements’ theaters are branded as Cinema de Lux, up from 10 percent only seven years ago, and the company says that 95 percent of its recent expansion has been in the upscale category. Such theaters have thinner margins than pure popcorn venues, but despite the fact that tickets cost a dollar or two more than the local average, they appear to foster loyalty. Cinema de Lux patrons make as many as eight visits a year, the company says, versus the industry average of five, and spend more on concessions when they’re there.

Redstone has also bet heavily on developing markets, especially in Russia, where she and local partners have opened high-end multiplexes in Moscow and St. Petersburg suburbs. In 2000, there were only 105 modern movie screens in the whole country; last year, the number hit 1,100. At Redstone’s upscale Russian venues, martini-sipping patrons don the kind of finery that most American moviegoers haven’t favored since the 1940s.

Back in the U.S., the smaller chains are doing most of the innovating. Muvico, for example, has 259 screens at 14 locations in Florida, Maryland, and Tennessee. Most of its venues are themed (Egyptian, ’50s drive-in, Xanadu), and many are subdivided into areas designed to appeal to different age groups. “Premier” adult levels offer a full restaurant and bar, and babysitting is available at all locations. (Parents are given a vibrating pager at no extra charge.) The company declined to disclose revenue or profitability figures but claims per-customer spending on food concessions at its theaters is 25 percent higher than the national average of about $3.50. At Alamo Drafthouse, an 11-year-old Austin-based chain with seven locations, every other row of seats has been replaced with café tables, and customers can write orders for pizza and microbrews on slips that are silently picked up by black-clad waiters. The company is in negotiations to open theaters in large markets like New York and Los Angeles by late next year, with the goal of having 200 screens by 2012. C.E.O. John Martin says the average concession tab is nearly $14.

But don’t expect your multiplex to get the religion anytime soon. Offering a more layered experience may sound obvious, considering the writing on the screen about competing technologies, but the low-maintenance, popcorn-and-candy ethos will continue to reign, at least for now. With box-office receipts strong (for the moment), studios are under less pressure to collapse the distribution window, which prolongs the status quo for theater owners. “Our members say that what most people want is candy, popcorn, and soda,” says Patrick Corcoran of N.A.T.O. “Banana-nut muffins sound nice, but they don’t move.” A bag of popcorn nets a 95 percent profit, he points out, which would be tough for any other snack to match.

“It’s hard for the big chains to change their mind-set,” says Chuck DeWitt, Muvico’s vice president of operations, who spent 20 years at AMC. “They don’t think about how to create a new generation of moviegoers, how to make the theaters somewhere the whole family can have an evening. They think only about cutting costs. National Amusements is really the only major one who is willing to go for it.”

So even if it means forever losing the loyalty of her own King Lear, Shari Redstone is hanging tough. Maybe, like many of us, she just wants to see how the picture turns out.