How the cost of movie tickets has changed

The following information is provided by Graphiq and MooseRoots.

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Along with baseball, going to the movies is a treasured national pastime. The silver screen has been a place for innovation, comfort and escape. And as popular date spots, movie theaters have provided the settings for many budding relationships. Film has proven to be a cornerstone of American culture.

Like the country itself, the film industry has changed with the times. In 1940, a movie ticket cost a quarter. Now, some theaters charge upwards of $10 for admission. With this in mind, MooseRoots, a genealogy data site by Graphiq, crunched the numbers see how the average cost of a movie ticket has changed since 1940. The data comes from the MPAA, and the MooseRoots team noted both the nominal (absolute) price and the 2016 inflation-adjusted price of a movie ticket.

Note: The MPAA is missing data for average movie ticket prices for 1946, 1947, 1950, 1952, 1955, 1957, 1958 and 1960. For these years, MooseRoots used the values of the years around them and the BLS inflation calculator to estimate what these omitted prices might have been.

Research More CPI Data on MooseRoots

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