I’d love to have a price of $7.25. For a regular movie - no 3D, no IMAX - the price here is $14.75. For matinee showings (meaning they start before 11:55am) the price is $8.25. The price used to be $6 about 5 years ago.
When I saw “The Hobbit” in IMAX last year, one single ticket cost me $21.
I still contend that movies are one of the best entertainment values out there. Have you seen the outrageous prices for plays/musicals? Concerts? Sporting events? Disney/SeasameStreet on Ice?
If I have to pay $10 for the privilege to see a film version of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings that cost hundreds of millions to produce so be it.
Where is “here”? You might search for Equipoise’s various posts on the subject. If she consistently finds low movie prices in Chicago, I suspect there are cheap prices to be found in your location.
The OP mentions there are only three movie theaters in her town. Maybe she doesn’t have the options for anything cheaper. Maybe she doesn’t want to travel farther for cheaper tickets. Depends on her market, I suppose. If none of the theaters try to gouge each other and don’t go below a certain price, or if she just went on a day none of them have better specials.
I feel like I got lucky. There’s a theater in walking distance to me, it’s an old one with smaller screens than the stadium-style humongous fresh-built places, but it has first runs on opening weekends and daytime tix are $6. Plus a full bar. Perfect!
I love seeing movies in little theaters, but I do like the spacious seats in the new theaters where you can shift the arm rest between seats.
Australian ticket prices: $20. Time of day irrelevant. US exchange rate effectively 0.95, so around US$19.
Though there is a slightly cheaper day - Tuesdays.
Except for ‘discount’ theaters, the ones that show movies that are already out on PPV and DVD, theaters have absolutely no say in the price of tickets. And they also only get a very tiny percentage of the box office, like a couple percentage points. This increases from the date the movie premieres and depending on how the film does the studios may increase it faster to make up to the theater owners for under-performing movies.
But ultimately movie theaters really are nothing more than popcorn, soda & candy concession stands with a really great location & captive customers. That’s where they make **all **their money.
The more interesting issue is why movie theaters charge the same price for hits as for bombs. No other industry does this, and in fact based on standard supply and demand theory one would expect the price for a ticket to an unpopular movie to be much less than one for a hit. The podcast Acsenray mentioned discusses this and, as he said, it turns out to be quite complex.
Noted corporate idiot Edgar Bronfman proposed that. Well, to be exact, he proposed charging more for films they had spent too much money making. It floated like a lead balloon.
I remember when you could pay less than $10 for a ticket, tub of popcorn and a drink to see a new movie in the theater. That was back in the 80s or maybe 90s. The prices have risen drastically especially for the snacks.
Sorry. I am in Manhattan, so probably the most expensive locale in the US to see movies. Bow Tie Cinemas & City Cinemas are each $14, Regal is $15. The chain I always go to is AMC because they do have that matinee price. The AMC 84th Street is $17.50(!!) for a regular non-3D movie because they have reserved seating. I wonder if that is the highest in the country.
Movie theaters won’t change pricing unless the studio reduces what they are charging for showing the movie. Easier and more expedient to just show it for a week or two, then replace it with whatever multi-screen mega-blockbuster is next on the list. Additionally, if people start to figure out that theaters will discount ‘bombs’, then bombs will get even less of a first week box office because many will wait for the discount. Start going down this rabbit hole, and soon you’ll have airline/hotel pricing at the movie theaters.
Or sporting events or live shows. Entertainment venues are big on variable pricing. It’s movie theaters that are the outlier.
Is it really such an outlier when you compare it to other “produced” entertainment, like books or DVDs or recorded music?
It’s just not how the industry works. First-run movie seats are a fixed commodity. The variability comes in with the audience levels; in general, you won’t get twice as many viewers for a $7.50 movie as you would for a $15 one. Only the very hottest, most-hyped tentpoles could command premium prices, and then not for as long as they do at the “regular” price.
It’s possible that other sales models would work, but this one has sorted itself out over nearly a century, and has resisted two or three very powerful waves of change. I’d expect first-run movies in 2040 to be about the adjusted equivalent of $10 a seat.
(ETA: And the wetweb to be full of annoyed discussions just like this one.)
You don’t recall ever seeing a higher price for a popular new record or hardback?
Perhaps Amazon has eliminated all that?
In any case those are goods rather than tickets to a service like live performances, sporting events, airline tickets, etc. Even pay-per-view cable TV has variable pricing. Music albums on ITunes aren’t all the same price.
In the context of that service model, movie theaters do seem unique.
Then spend $55 on a CostCo membership and buy their AMC Gold passes - two for $15.99, good any time. There’s one on 118th and FDR.
Theaters used to slash ticket prices for matinees. They don’t cut matinee prices that much anymore.
We still have a discount theater that shows movies a few months old. The Cinemark Tandy 10. Tickets are less than $5. price varies by time and what movie. Godzilla would cost me $3 at the 4:25pm matinee.
http://www.fandango.com/cinemarktandy10_aaimo/theaterpage
What I’m getting from others who have responded to this thread is that, from the point of view of the theaters themselves, obtaining the movies they show from the studios/distributors, it is more like purchasing goods than tickets to a service—and that that’s the point at which the prices are determined.
That is part of the answer to the question, but I’m talking about defining the question. From the point of view if the consumer, buying a ticket to a broadway show doesn’t look different from buying a ticket to a movie.
From that point of view, movie theaters are outliers. It’s only when you define that as your question and look into it do you see the complex relationships that underlie the issue.
And it’s even more interesting when you take into consideration that this was not always the case—“B” movies were given that label because they were cheaper—as much as 50 percent cheaper—than “A” movies.
So the movie business did have some variable pricing in the past.