Growing up, the cinema was a magical place. A place where characters on the big screen would escape the restraints of their lives and venture into the wilderness to find themselves—where the boundaries of material life were forgotten—where nothing mattered but the action unfolding before your eyes. So how come the cinema attendance rate has fallen so much? How come it is no longer feasible for teenagers to hop on to the movies after school on a whim? How come what was once such an integral part of our media consumption, now considered a luxury?
The rise of the film industry in the early 20th century and the “Golden Age” of Hollywood marked a huge cultural shift in media consumption, and the shaping of our beliefs and understandings of the world around us. The popularity of movies such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Casablanca (1942), and Gone with the Wind (1939), along with huge advances in filming and movie production, undoubtedly overturned how we consume information. However, it is no coincidence that as ticket prices rise, cinema attendance rates fall. Cinema attendance has gone from 1.6 billion annually in 1946, to 327 million in 1965, to 123 million in 2023 in the UK (according to Statista and the UoL Press), and the average price of a cinema ticket has increased exponentially from £0.08 in 1950 to £7.69 in 2022 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). Even when considering inflation, this has greatly decreased the accessibility to cinema.
Along with the economic inaccessibility of cinema, there is also a question about the integrity of movie release programmes in the modern day. Perhaps due to declining cinema attendance, many theatres have had to limit what they can afford to show. In fact, many films only spend a couple of weeks at the box office if they don’t immediately go to streaming. For example, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy will be heading straight to Peacock on February 13th 2025. This is despite the franchise’s past success—the first instalment grossed 207 million USD at the international box office with a $25 million budget, a pattern that continued in both sequels. However, despite the empirical, commercial success of all three existing instalments, the upcoming fourth movie will premiere on Peacock on February 13th alongside the movie’s theatrical release. Another movie that has been confirmed for both theatrical and Netflix release, is Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. Though the theatrical window for the Academy Award winner’s upcoming project is yet to be confirmed, the dominance of streaming services in the film industry is unsurprising in a climate of rising cinema prices, and the accessibility of the internet.
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that piracy is on the rise. Research from Muso revealed 215 billion visits to piracy websites worldwide in 2022, an 18% increase from the year before, with the US being number one in the world for piracy site visits. The rising cost of living crisis is partly to blame for this; how are people supposed to spend their non-existent disposable income on cinema tickets or streaming services when they’re already choosing between staying warm or fed over the winter? This certainly doesn’t get better for us students living in NatWest’s most expensive city in the UK for students to live.
However, there are ways to combat the rising price of cinema—a key one being cinema memberships. My personal recommendations for my fellow cinephiles are: Odeon Limitless or the Picturehouse Student Membership. Both offer discounts on snacks and give access to special screenings (early viewings at the Odeon and classic film screenings at the Picturehouse on Sundays). My preference changes based on which chain has a branch near me. While unlimited movies for £14.99 a month is certainly appealing, nothing quite beats the Picturehouse’s carefully curated programs and classic designs, which hold a special place in my heart.
Whether you’re an avid cinema goer or a diehard streamer, we can all agree that more needs to be done to make cinema accessible for all, especially young people and students. Not only as a cultural experience, but as a source of knowledge production. Cinema has always been a necessary reflection of our values, ideas, and knowledge, but it also has been a powerful form of resistance and community. So, I can only hope that, in such a politically uncertain time, we can find ways of creating solidarity and kinship through the art we produce and consume.
Photo by Jack Niles on Unsplash