Box Office Study Produces a Rosier Picture : Entertainment: A survey of theater owners shows that ticket sales are higher and admission prices lower than reported for past five years.

More movie tickets have been sold over the last five years than was previously thought--and the average price paid for a ticket has been lower, according to a new study by the National Assn. of Theater Owners and the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

The survey--based on a poll of theater owners representing more than half the screens in the United States--found that the average ticket price last year was $4.14, a dollar less than the average previously reported in federal census samplings.

Recalculating the numbers on that basis shows that 1.24 billion movie tickets were sold last year, the most since 1989, the report said. (Admissions are counted by dividing total box office receipts by the average ticket price.)

The box office gross for 1993 was a record-breaking $5.2 billion, thanks in significant measure to Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” which grossed $344 million in the United States.

The cost of making movies is also rising, and producers and distributors are finding it harder to make a profit, MPAA President Jack Valenti said at the annual ShoWest convention here.

The new study is significant in two ways, according to Valenti and William Kartozian, president of the theater owners group.

On one hand, it counters the public perception that the price of a movie ticket has been spiraling, they said. On the other, it can serve to reassure Wall Street skeptics that movie theaters are drawing bigger crowds than previously believed.

After some members of the theater owners group challenged the census figures on average ticket prices, the two organizations hired Ernst & Young to analyze five years of price data from the operators of about 57% of the 25,214 movie screens nationwide.

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The findings: Admission prices were lower than previously believed. For 1993, the average ticket price was $4.14 (down from $5.15); for 1989, the average was $3.99 (down from $4.45). With that information, the MPAA concluded that more tickets had been sold each year from 1989 through 1993 than previously reported.

“This shows movies are a better value than a lot of people realize,” said Paul Rogers, who heads a 31-screen theater circuit in Wisconsin.

Rogers said he was not surprised that the average ticket price turned out to be lower than believed, because many of his customers take advantage of bargain matinees and discount nights.

Valenti, in his annual state-of-the-industry speech, told about 6,500 ShoWest delegates that the average cost of making a movie in 1993 jumped 3.7% for MPAA-member companies, to $29.9 million. Add the average $14-million cost of advertising, promotion, distribution and prints, and a studio would have to recoup about $44 million from a picture just to break even, he said.

In other bad news, the MPAA reported that only 28 of the 156 movies produced and released by its members last year collected $20 million or more in film rentals--that is, what the producer garners from box office revenues.

That was the smallest number of films to break the $20-million threshold since 1988. In 1992, 36 films logged rentals of $20 million or more.

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On a brighter note, Valenti said foreign attendance is on the rise. Attendance at British theaters has doubled in the last decade to 112 million admissions, from 50 million in 1993, he said. Admissions were up 7% in France, 16% in Germany, 25% in Denmark, 12% in Finland, 3% in Sweden and 14% in Norway.

More and More Silver on Screen

The average cost of producing and marketing a major motion picture--one made by a Hollywood studio--has risen faster than the rate of inflation, hitting $44 million in 1993. Percent changes in average production and marketing costs compared to the consumer price index:

Cost of Consumer Motion Pictures Price Index 1989 +22.9% +4.8% 1990 +18.7 +5.4 1991 -1.6 +4.2 1992 +11.0 +3.0 1993 +3.8 +3.0

Source: Motion Picture Assn. of America; Labor Department

Researched by ADAM S. BAUMAN / Los Angeles Times