I was stunned to discover this week that Cineworld have broken through the psychological 10 euro mark for cinema tickets…
Obviously this is not news to most people as this is something that happened some time ago but I haven’t been to Cineworld at night for a very long time; I think the last movie I actually saw there was Mesrine: Killer Instinct in a cheap morning show; so it’s a fresh shock to my system. Not least because the cinemas which make up my usual venues – Savoy (9.00), the Screen (9.00), the IFI (9.20), Movies at Dundrum (9.90), the Ormonde (9.00), and the Lighthouse (9.00) – are all still selling their tickets under the 10 euro mark. I’m not sure exactly why Cineworld (10.50) have chosen to bust through it with such brio when all the other cinemas that I regularly venture out to from my suburban southside lair seem to regard it as a threshold to be passed over with great reluctance.
I think the reason why it’s such a psychological barrier is not purely to do with inflation or our newly re-found grasp of the concept of value for money; I can vividly remember when you could go to the Savoy on Saturday night and still have change for a nice junk-food meal in Supermacs from a 10 pound note. I think that the cinemas are just terrified at hitting the dreaded ‘two for the price of one’ figure. If you have to pay more than 10 euro for a film ticket you will start questioning more keenly not just the quality of the film in question but more generally whether it’s actually worth going out at all when you could pop into Chartbusters and pick up two new releases for 6 euro. Admittedly Chartbusters’ well publicised financial problems are the reason they’re so cheap at the moment but even Xtravision’s new releases get perilously close to 2 for 1 compared to a 10 euro plus film ticket.
The more paranoid interpretation is that cinemas are holding prices under the mark to make people less outraged than they should be over the premium charged for 3-D tickets. This premium has allowed Hollywood to make more money this year, with bad films in 3-D, than last year, where films were better attended but only in 2-D. Roger Ebert has cynically predicted that the premium on 3-D tickets, justified as necessary to pay the charges associated with conversion of cinemas to digital projectors, will in fact become embedded forever in the pricing structure long after every cinema is converted and all possible costs have been paid. In which case we could expect that the ‘two for the price of one’ figure would come into play in a new and interesting way as punters would weigh up with every trip to the cinema whether two 2-D films are worth the price of one 3-D film. If the answer to that question isn’t to Hollywood’s liking it may mean the end of gimmickry and a belated return to quality scripts as the answer to the problem of how to get people in theatres.
Meantime, I’ll be interested to see which of my regular haunts joins Cineworld in the brave new world of handing over a twenty-euro note to get change for one primetime film ticket…
Talking Movies 