It was a Wednesday night, around 6pm at the Jam Factory, and The Revenant was playing. There was only four people in the session. “The cinema was nearly empty and it drove me nuts,” says Shane Thatcher, an economist and the CEO of a new app called Choovie. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to Thatcher and his partner Sonya Stephen. “We decided to sneak around to the other cinemas to see how many were in them, before the bouncer told us off,” Thatcher says. They counted 35 people across 13 cinemas.

The idea for Choovie was born then and there. The app launched earlier this week and helps potential movie-goers find cheap tickets that would otherwise go unsold, which also help cinemas to drive up attendance and maximise profits. “We think there is a big and sustainable place for cinema in our society we just have to make sure it fits into people’s lives better,” Thatcher says.