Secret Cinema defends price hike for The Empire Strikes Back

Secret Cinema has hit back over the cost of tickets for this summer’s immersive screening of Star Wars: The Emperor Strikes Back.

Tickets for the sci-fi blockbuster, which will be screened in a secret London location for two months from 4 June, cost £75, compared with £53.50 to see last year’s screening of Back to the Future.

One Star Wars fan taking to Twitter called the price hike “daylight robbery”, though Secret Cinema’s founder and creative director Fabien Riggall points out that the extra cost is due to the grander-than-ever scale of the project.

“This is a film that’s loved by millions of people and the scale of what we have to create to fuel that love is of such magnitude that the production costs have gone up and everything’s gone up,” he said.   

“These things really do cost a lot of money to put on. And also to secure the buildings and the space and the environments that fit the film.

“What’s been frustrating is that the whole idea of it is that we want to keep it a secret. I find it heartbreaking that I have to explain all of this because it takes a bit of the mystery out, but at the same time I want to be transparent.”

Secret Cinema has also fended off allegations about the payment of its ensemble cast members, following the discovery of an advert, apparently from 2010, which suggested they were only paid expenses.

“We have paid our ensemble cast ever since Secret Cinema has started,” said Riggall. “It’s completely inaccurate, and I’ve been trying to locate how that [advert] came about. What we do is highly complicated so for people to say that we don’t pay our staff or pay our actors is … I find it amazing that they would think that.”

Tickets for Secret Cinema Presents: The Empire Strikes Back are currently on sale, with some of the dates already sold out.