In 2018 the price of a UK cinema ticket fell for the first time in 17 years, to an average of £7.22. But, as Phil Clapp of trade body the UK Cinema Association points out, some Londoners would probably be shocked to learn there are people paying as little as that, while in other parts of the country there are film fans who would be “outraged” at the idea of paying that much.

Regional variation in pricing has always existed but, let’s face it, a cinema charging £4 in Aberdeen is not much use if you live in Brighton.

However, the news now is that tickets are getting cheaper … and also more expensive. If that sounds like a contradiction, it is because, as Clapp says, the market is becoming more fragmented.

£40 tickets and waiter service

We are seeing a boom in so-called boutique cinemas. Within the space of just 12 months, the Everyman chain opened venues in five new locations. Everyman and others like it claim to offer a more luxurious experience, with sofas and armchairs, beautifully designed interiors, a cocktail menu and, in some cases, waiter service to your seat – with ticket prices to match.

Even the multiplexes are tapping into this high-end market: the Odeon has spacious reclining seats in its Luxe cinemas. If you want to see X-Men: Dark Phoenix at London’s Odeon Leicester Square on Saturday night, the priciest reclining seat will set you back an eye-watering £40.75, which is more than some people will be paying for their seat on a low-cost flight to Europe this summer (though it’s fair to say that a spot in one of the back rows will “only” set you back £10.75).

Prices slashed

In such a buoyant market, the traditional multiplexes are having to do more to attract customers. Both Cineworld and Odeon now offer unlimited monthly memberships where you can watch as many films as you like. But it is the Vue cinema chain that has arguably had the most dramatic price change. In 2018 Vue slashed its ticket prices by more than 50% in some places. There are currently about 40 Vue cinemas that charge an “every film every day” price of £4.99. This typically applies to a 2D film in a standard seat and excludes booking fees. And in Cardiff, Vue charges just £4 (in fact, Wales is one of the cheapest places to go to the cinema in the UK). Other Vue cinemas charge more than double that, and several times more in central London.

Such strategic pricing upset some customers when it was introduced, prompting complaints that it was unfair to be charged more than neighbouring cities and towns.

Cinemas make money through a mix of ticket sales, food and drink, advertising and, in some cases, public funds. By pitching its prices so low, Vue no doubt hopes to get more bums on seats – or, as Patrick von Sychowski, editor of Celluloid Junkie, puts it, “bums on seats with popcorn and Coke”.

Making cinema affordable

For cinemas such as the Cube in Bristol, however, pricing is not so much a business as an ethical decision. This single-screen arthouse cinema – set up in 1998 by a group of artists and film-makers – is run entirely by volunteers.

Chiz Williams, who has been volunteering there since 1999, says that when deciding what to charge, they ask, “What would we pay?” and land on a price that “emotionally feels right”. The cinema currently charges £5 full price and £4 concessions for most screenings. They also have “cheap” nights where you pay less. Even a cup of tea is an impressively reasonable 50p.

When I asked Williams if people needed to provide proof for the concession rate, he says no, and that “generally it’s done on trust”. Although there are the occasional chancers: “I turned away someone who said he wanted to come in cheaper because he was an actor. He looked at me and smiled and then paid full price.”

What’s perhaps surprising is that it is not just non-profits or the multiplexes – with their economies of scale – that can afford to be cheap. The for-profit Picturedrome, a small independent chain predominantly in the south of England and Wales, has some of the lowest ticket prices in the country: at the majority of its cinemas, tickets cost between £3.50 and £4.50.

The chain’s managing director, Adam Cunard, took over the then-struggling Bognor Regis Picturedrome in 2007. “It was very sad. There were five people in some days,” he recalls. After bringing the Grade II-listed building back to life, Cunard expanded to other rural and seaside towns such as Westgate-on-Sea in Kent and Clacton in Essex – in some cases reviving cinemas that had been closed for decades.

Attracting people who had previously written off going to the cinema as unaffordable is just one part of his strategy. By offering cheaper tickets, Cunard and others aim to turn cinema-going into a regular habit rather than an occasional treat. After all, people are more likely to take a punt on a film if it only costs them a few pounds. And it is a strategy that seems to be working. “We have people coming to the cinema week in, week out,” says Cunard.

£1 tickets and free screenings

Many of the independents seem to have a genuine desire to make cinema accessible to all – particularly for those who would find even £3.50 unaffordable.

For example, the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne offers £1 daytime tickets to the unemployed, refugees and asylum seekers. And at both the Cube and Hebden Bridge Picture House in West Yorkshire, asylum seekers and refugees get in for free. However, with many people housed in nearby Halifax rather than Hebden Bridge itself, the Friends of the Picture House also secured charitable funding so they could run monthly group cinema trips with transport, and sometimes lunch, provided. As an aside, Hebden Bridge Picture House also runs its young person’s concession rate up to the age of 25, in recognition of the fact that many people are still finding their feet financially in their early 20s.

The desire to widen access was partly what motivated Neil Johns when he co-founded the Peckham and Nunhead Free Film Festival in 2010 (this year’s takes place between 5 and 15 September). “We wanted to make everything free so that there were no barriers to people coming along,” he says.

Since then, there have been free film festivals in other London boroughs and locations including Glasgow, Weston-super-Mare and Guildford. Run solely by local volunteers, the festivals put on free screenings, often in atypical venues such as cemeteries, parks and abandoned buildings.

Shared experiences

I went to a screening of acclaimed Australian horror film The Babadook at Canopy Beer, a craft brewery and tap room in Herne Hill, south London. About 30 people sat on wooden benches and there was a distinctly beery smell. If you had gone there for comfort and luxury, you would be sorely disappointed, but that would also be to miss the point. It was the kind of environment where you could easily strike up a conversation with your neighbour.

As Johns says: “It’s about that shared experience of people coming together and meeting people they might not have seen otherwise.” And besides, the occasional rumble of an overhead train was a fitting addition to a film described by the Observer’s Mark Kermode as a “nightmarish fairytale”.

I can’t help thinking that such group experiences are more vital than ever. As Williams says: “We’ve turned into a bunch of isolated people watching our phones for a couple of hours at night.” Alternatively, we could “go to another space to enjoy something together, talk about it, look at each other and hear each other laugh”.

In April, Helen Mirren grabbed the headlines when she memorably declared: “I love Netflix, but fuck Netflix,” adding: “There is nothing like sitting in the cinema.”

With cinema attendance at its highest level for 48 years, there are clearly many people who feel the same way.