On September 23, cinemas celebrated India’s first-ever National Cinema Day in multiple states, with many theatres lowering their ticket prices to Rs. 75. With houseful boards back at several cinemas and people even watching movies back-to-back through the day, it was evident that lower prices can bring the audience back to theatres. As a result, cinemas are now discussing the need to reassess the current ticket pricing model. Several also offered movie tickets for a special festive price of Rs. 100 last Monday till Thursday, and many are planning to experiment with an affordable price model in the long run to sustain this momentum.

However, based on their learnings over the past two weeks, stakeholders say that while there will be “no uniform lower ticket price”, they are planning to offer discounts and promotional prices on a per-movie basis. Here’s more:

According to Rajender Singh Jyala, Chief Programming Officer, INOX Leisure Ltd, “Even though we are still in the experimental phase, we have observed that last week’s footfall was higher than normal pricing days, but it wasn’t the same as National Cinema Day. The reason is that National Cinema Day was just one day, and so people didn’t want to miss it. When the promotional offer was spread out over five days, they must have thought, ‘if not today, then we can watch the film some other day’.”

Kunal Sawhney, COO, Moviemax also said during a recent discussion in Mumbai that keeping uniform lower prices is definitely not the way ahead, based on their observations from south India, where film ticket prices fall in the Rs. 100-200 slab on all days. He said, “A film’s ticket price can be fixed depending on the experience that film is providing. The right product has to be given at the right price.”

Regular, popular, blockbuster and mega blockbuster – prices are often decided on the basis of which category a movie falls in. Recently, for example, while Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan: I’s ticket prices fell in the regular category, Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan-starrer Vikram Vedha’s ticket prices were revised from the blockbuster to regular category.

For releases like the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Goodbye, some cinemas lowered ticket prices on Friday, while for Ajay Devgn’s Drishyam 2, moviegoers got a 50% discount on advance bookings for a day. Jyala says, “In discussion with the makers, cinemas will keep offering lower rates on specific days for films or will roll out promotional offers.”

Kamal Gianchandani, President, Multiplex Association of India (MAI), told us, “There is a lot of experimentation being done by various cinema operators at this point. Disney, Dharma, and other studios, who have films playing in theatres, have been very supportive in this regard. We are constantly listening to our customers and other stakeholders in the business. We have always taken ticket pricing and other similar decisions keeping the interest of consumers and all stakeholders in mind. We will continue to do so in the future.”