In the age of digital projection, it doesn't really cost the movie studio any more to distribute their movie to a theater than to a home streamer. Yet I think it's clear why they charge the theater more: one is viewing for themselves and perhaps a handful of friends, the other has the intention of distributing a playback to thousands whom they themselves are making money off of. They aren't charging for the actual cost of distribution, they're charging for the intellectual property and the cost it took to make the product in the first place. If the fonts aren't worth what the creators are charging, then the large companies wouldn't be paying for them.
This analogy doesn't really apply to the situation here, because the difference between a personal and commercial license isn't what's at stake. Comparing watching a movie on your own vs making money off of it in theaters is similar to viewing a licensed font on someone's website for free vs buying a font license to use it in your own projects.
A better analogy would be a studio charging a theater belonging to a large chain vastly more money than a small, independent theater. The cost to provide the physical media, promotional material and IP rights to both of them is the same. So the only consideration in play here is that they can pump more money out of the larger business, so that's what they're going to do.
The analogy is just bad altogether. If a theater doesn't show a movie, then they lose out on however many people with $X for the ticket price plus an additional $Y from concession sales. However, Time is not going to lose readers because they choose a font or not. So, the sheer use of the licensed movie has direct affect on the theater's bottom line, yet Time could choose a different font and have negligible notice on their bottom line.
Font foundries thinking they are entitled to a percentage of the bottom line of a company using their fonts is the top of the list of entitled rent seeking bullshit.
To maximise revenue. If you're a font maker, I suspect most are self-employed, you need money. If your font is being used for Time Magazine it is somewhat fair the fee is higher than a guy using it for an ezine for 100 people. One is a company with lots of money and can afford to pay alot of money and the other can't.
