“They’re not getting complaints at the box office about pricing, it’s just not happening,” said Mr. Katzenberg, who spoke by telephone on Thursday. Mr. Katzenberg said his own company’s recent experience with “Kung Fu Panda 2,” which took in about 45 percent of $161 million in domestic ticket sales from the higher priced 3-D tickets, showed that a substantial number of consumers would still pay a premium for good films.

“Whatever Peter and Steven are talking to, maybe they’re following their instincts,” Mr. Katzenberg said of the Spielberg-Jackson pricing critique. “But there’s actually no factual data.”

Asked whether 3-D pricing had been too aggressive, David Passman, the chief executive of Carmike Cinemas, said by e-mail: “Perhaps in some markets, but generally, no.”

Historically, the big theater chains like Regal, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark Theatres and Carmike or their predecessors have been reluctant to raise ticket prices because their profit margins were higher on the sale of popcorn and other concessions than from tickets. Thus, they had an interest in raising the number of attendees, rather than maximizing film revenue that would be shared with studios. (The studios and exhibitors typically split the proceeds from each ticket sale, although the exhibitors alone set the price to consumers.) Patrick Corcoran, the director of media and research for the National Association of Theatre Owners, points out that a ticket purchased for the average price of $1.65 in 1971 would cost $9.20 today — higher than the actual industry average, if adjusted according to the general inflation rate.

More recently, though, theater chains turned to price increases, and especially to premium prices for 3-D and big-screen formats like Imax, for added cash that sometimes has been used to pay large dividends to shareholders or to pay down debt.

Cinemark Holdings, though generally more restrained than some of its peers when it comes to pricing, raised its quarterly dividend 17 percent, to 21 cents a share from 18 cents, an amount that nearly equaled its earnings in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Carmike, which operates many small-town theaters with relatively low ticket prices, has paid down a substantial $100 million in debt in just over three years.