Let’s say I need to take myself to see Magic Mike’s Final Dance on Friday on the AMC thirty fourth Road theater in Manhattan. Might occur! And if it does, I’ve two choices: I should buy an everyday ticket for $26.88. Or I can choose a seat in the midst of the theater and pay … $1 extra.

If this was a Knicks sport or a Broadway present, this is able to be no massive deal: Customers are very accustomed to the concept of paying extra, or much less, for seats based mostly on desirability and demand: Entrance-row tickets for Taylor Swift value hundreds of {dollars}; nosebleeds to see Foreigner in Las Vegas are extra reasonably priced.

However for the beleaguered film enterprise, this can be a new concept. AMC Theatres, the world’s largest movie show chain, introduced their “Sightline” plan earlier this week: Most tickets promote for the common worth, however a restricted variety of seats within the middle of the theater will value $1 or $2 extra per ticket. It’s debuting the plan this weekend at a few of its places in New York, Chicago, and Kansas Metropolis.

It additionally rubs lots of people the improper method. Which is presumably why AMC CEO Adam Aron, whose firm introduced this system on February 6, took to Twitter two days later to defend it, chalking the transfer as much as “inflationary occasions.”

Aron additionally famous that AMC will promote the least-desirable tickets at a reduction (extra on that in a minute) and — in contrast to his firm’s earlier press launch, which introduced the transfer as an inevitable one that will roll out to all of AMC’s theaters by the tip of the yr — he couched it as a “check” the corporate would “rigorously monitor.”

That’s uncharacteristic defensiveness from a CEO who has spent the previous few years working at Musk-level bluster (for background on Aron and his latest conversion to meme inventory ringleader, see this glorious Businessweek profile). And it exhibits you simply how ingrained the concept of one-size-fits-all ticketing is at American film theaters. In addition to the issues inherent with any introduced worth hike, notably at a time when People have been seeing worth hikes on every thing from vitality to eggs.

So perhaps pay-by-seat film tickets received’t be right here to remain, however they in all probability ought to be. They make sense, and the theater enterprise has deep, systemic issues — some created by its personal missteps and the remainder by massive adjustments in the best way we eat leisure. In case you nonetheless like seeing films in a room with different folks as an alternative of in your sofa or in your cellphone, you’re going to should roll with some adjustments.

“They need to have accomplished this years in the past,” says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. “I’m amazed that nobody has accomplished it but.”

Pachter, like Aron, factors out that variable pricing exists in nearly each different leisure venue, together with loads of different transactions that all of us intuitively perceive: Whenever you’re on an airplane, you’re effectively conscious that the individual sitting subsequent to you would have paid way more, or much less, relying on once they purchased their ticket.

We’re additionally used to paying completely different quantities for films based mostly on the time and place we view them: You’ll be able to shell out the US common of $11 a ticket for a film when it comes out, or wait months and pay much less to hire it at house. Or wait even longer, and pay nothing (probably not nothing, however it is going to really feel that method) when it exhibits up as a part of your Netflix or Disney+ or HBO Max subscription.

The film enterprise has additionally periodically floated makes an attempt to do variable pricing based mostly on the type of film theaters present. Within the late Nineties, then-Common Studios proprietor Edgar Bronfman Jr. recommended that films that value extra to make ought to have dearer tickets, and was roundly panned. However AMC performed with the concept in 2019 with out a lot fanfare, and received little or no grief for it; by the point final yr’s The Batman debuted, AMC hiked costs for that film (as did different exhibitors) and bragged about it; it expects to do the identical for different would-be blockbusters.

And as Aron has stated, variable pricing may also imply viewers pay much less to see a film, although studios usually received’t permit theaters to decrease costs past a sure stage. Nonetheless, in concept, AMC’s new seating plan means I might see Magic Mike at a reduction, since AMC is chopping the value of “worth tickets” — on this case, those within the neck-creaking first row — by $2. However so as to get that low cost I’d want to affix AMC’s fan membership, and there was nothing on the Fandango ticketing app telling me that possibility existed. So let’s be clear: That is an try to generate extra money per ticket, not much less.

It’s additionally an try to generate extra income for a deeply troubled enterprise. Even earlier than the pandemic, movie-going had change into one thing folks do much less and fewer every year, for a litany of causes: They don’t just like the expertise, or the films they used to look at are streaming as an alternative. Or they’re simply blissful to scroll TikTok and YouTube.

In 2002, People went to the flicks a mean of 5.2 occasions per yr; by 2019, per the Movement Image Affiliation, that quantity had declined to three.5 occasions per yr. The development doesn’t appear to be it’s going to enhance post-pandemic: Final yr, when the business celebrated field workplace hits like Prime Gun: Maverick, the per capita common was nonetheless an anemic 1.9, in response to estimates from media investor Matthew Ball.

This results in a vicious cycle: Smaller audiences in theaters have pushed extra studios to maneuver extra films to streaming — good luck discovering a rom-com in a theater as of late — which implies audiences get educated to not go to the flicks, which pushes extra films to streaming. All of which results in empty theaters.

That’s why AMC is continuously talked about as a chapter candidate. And why the house owners of Regal, the second-biggest theater chain within the US, filed for chapter final month and can shutter 39 places. The business continues to be making an attempt to determine novel concepts to get folks again into theaters: As analyst Wealthy Greenfield notes, this month Paramount and theater chains appeared to efficiently lure older audiences to see 80 for Brady, a film about … older individuals who like Tom Brady … by charging decrease costs. However any clear-eyed business observer will inform you that there are just too many film screens and that extra of them will go away sooner or later.

Within the meantime, theaters are determining tips on how to scale back prices, by way of smaller staffs and on-line ticketing, and lift costs in much less apparent methods, like pushing dearer meals. (Although that also didn’t save Alamo Drafthouse, a extremely glorious chain of boutique theaters, from submitting Chapter 11 a few years in the past, both).

Ultimately, they’re going to need to increase costs on tickets, a method or one other: “They’ve accomplished an excellent job of jacking up concessions,” says Pachter. “The subsequent factor is to cost us extra.”

That’s in all probability not what you need to hear. However when you nonetheless like going to the flicks, you’re going to should get used to it.