Ever since Avatar won the all-time box office record, it came with an asterisk. While the average price of a movie ticket in America currently stands at $7.95, many audiences were paying as much as $15 per ticket to see the James Cameron film in IMAX 3D, rationalizing the exorbitant cost by telling themselves IMAX 3D was the only proper way to see the film. We'll see if those rationalizations hold up when the cost of a single IMAX 3D ticket hits $20.
The Wall Street Journal reports that four AMC Loews theaters in Manhattan will be charging that much for IMAX 3D tickets to Shrek Forever After this weekend. This price hike comes only two months after an increase in late March which saw ticket prices go up 26% in some places. Thanks in large part to these increases, box office numbers are up 6% from the same point last year.
What the article fails to mention is that three of the theaters, AMC Loews 34, AMC Empire 25 and the AMC Kips Bay, aren't even legitimate IMAX theaters, but rather Digital IMAX (known to many as LIEMAX), making the price change burn just a little more. So how are audiences going to feel about this change? Unfortunately, the final weekend numbers probably won't tell the story as to how well the film performed in New York City alone, so speak out in the comments section: would you ever purchase a movie ticket that requires you to pull President Jackson out of your wallet?
