But that mark appears to be such a psychological barrier that one cinema has backed away from it already.

The Palace chain has dropped the top price at its Norton Street cinema in Sydney's Leichhardt to $19.

While cheaper tickets are available through the chain's Movie Club and concessions, $20 has proven too rich at a time when movie attendance is under threat from alternative forms of entertainment and piracy.

In the past five years, admissions – the cinema industry's measure for attendance – have fallen from 92 million to about 78.5 million.

That stark 15 per cent drop is one of the reasons mainstream cinema chains have expanded the number of premium sessions: 3D movies on giant screens and gold class-style auditoriums.

These more upmarket options mean they can charge $30 or more for a ticket.

It is now standard that food and drink are either bought from the same staff member who is selling the ticket or from a candy bar you have to walk past on the way into the movie.

As the costs of running a cinema have increased –  wages, rent and maintenance and energy costs – the profits from selling popcorn, Coke, bottled water and often an alcoholic drink have become more important to a cinema's viability.

"If you took away screen advertising, we wouldn't have a cinema that survived," Palace Cinemas chief executive Benjamin Zeccola said in April last year. "If you took away the bars, we wouldn't have a cinema that survived."

And soon there will be further pressure on cinemas with a wave of new television services arriving in Australia, such as Stan, Presto and Netflix.

With Stan, co-owned by Fairfax Media, offering endless hours of movies and television programs for $10 a month, buying a cinema ticket has become a different kind of decision.

Yes, there are all the positives of seeing a new movie in a comfortable cinema with great picture and sound quality and enjoying the experience of going out and mingling with a buzzing crowd.

But two tickets at even a discounted $14.50 each, plus food, drink, parking and sometimes a babysitter, can feel like a luxury when you have a dozen recent and classic movies you can watch free on a new television service at home. And then there are all the "catch-up" options for free and pay television channels.

But even in a challenging market, not every cinema has found resistance to increased ticket prices.

Across the bridge, the Cremorne Orpheum management have had no reason to reconsider their top ticket price of $20.

With admissions "way up" on last year, general manager Paul Dravet said the cinema was supplementing new release movies with more than 50 special events this year, including retro and so-bad-they're-good movies, sing-along sessions, tribute screenings and musical events.

At cinemas everywhere, special events and Q&A sessions with filmmakers and actors are part of the landscape; a way to attract movie-goers by delivering extra value for that ticket price.