After years of closures and predictions of terminal decline, cinemas have flipped the script. AMC shares are up more than two-thirds this year, and European operator Vue is even considering tapping the public markets at a mooted £1.5bn valuation. A series of blockbusters such as The Odyssey help.

But the business has changed too, as cinemas have expanded into plush seats, elaborate cocktails and premium screens. Film-goers these days attend less often but spend more. Attendance is still a fifth below where it was a decade ago, according to Euromonitor.

Yet AMC’s revenue this year is expected to be almost double what it was back then. The new bougie experience does, though, take cinemas into direct competition with other kinds of £50 nights out, such as restaurants, bars and live concerts, at a time when consumers are not flush with cash. In investment terms, that suggests a premium should accrue to those parts of the cinematic experience that can’t be replicated at home.

Anyone can rustle up a serving of cocktail sausages, but supersized screens can charge durably high prices. Shares in high-resolution movie-screen maker Imax, for example, are up about 60 per cent over the past year. Imax’s fans are already relatively price-insensitive, paying up to two-fifths more than ordinary cinema-goers, Macquarie estimates.

Its 1,800 screens are roughly 1 per cent of the global total, but took almost 6 per cent of box office revenue this summer. Imax’s revenue is expected to grow almost three times as fast as AMC’s over the next three years, according to analysts polled by Visible Alpha. The business is also much more profitable.

Imax licenses, sells and installs its giant screens and sound equipment to theatres and gets a cut of the ticket revenue, rather than paying the rent, utilities and staffing bills shouldered by cinemas. That at least leaves Imax better shielded for when the film slate is weak, and helps it earn an operating margin that is 2.5 times that of Cinemark and Vue, and 3.5 times that of AMC. Luxury operator Everyman kept less than 1 per cent of its sales in operating profit last year.

Imax’s thrills are reflected in its premium valuation, almost twice as high as that of Vue, on Lex estimates, and Cinemark. But, in an age of AI-generated entertainment, the appeal of an “Imax movie” — sometimes shot partly or wholly on film — will only grow. A gigantic screen and thunderous sound are the better way to play the premium cinema experience.