Everyone complains that a night out at the pictures costs a packet these days, but do you have any idea why it is that cinema ticket prices have risen so astronomically since you were a kid? And how much of your fiver ends up in the filmmaker's pockets? With this in mind, Making Movies ponders the question, where does all the money go?
Why have ticket prices escalated?
Go to the cinema these days and you can easily spend £5 per ticket, or £10 if you are in London's West End. Has it always been this costly? According to Screen Digest, the global media research publication, average ticket prices in the UK were 61p in 1975. Taking inflation into account, this works out at about £2.20 in today's money. So why have tickets at least doubled in price?
The first reason is simple; a Hollywood film now costs, on average, $75 million dollars to make, and at least half that amount again to promote. If films cost more to make, the customer is going to pay more to see them.
There are other more mundane reasons. The escalation in rent and rates, and the cost of staffing to keep pace with modern fire regulations, for example. Today, the average multiplex is swept clean between performances; thirty years ago proper cleaning might not have occurred until doors closed.
Also, cinemas have been forced to keep pace with technological advancements, particularly in sound. In the last thirty years, cinemas have had their sound systems overhauled three times, from the magnetic sound of the early 70s, through to the advent of optical sound, to the Dolby Stereo sound of the early 80s to today's Dolby Digital 5.1, with its speakers placed all over the theatre. The studios may be developing the technology to make their films sound better, but it's the cinemas that have to pay to deliver it.
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