Danny Boyle has called for more competitive pricing over cinema trips, to help encourage the next generation to go to the movies.

Boyle was speaking at the launch of National Schools Film Week, which will see almost 2,500 free film screenings for schoolchildren in more than 560 locations across the UK.

Boyle, who joined actor Bill Nighy at the Odeon cinema in London's Leicester Square to launch the event in front of hundreds of excited children, said: "There has always been this feeling of a special occasion when you go to the movies."

But he added that people were wary about trips costing "too much", paying for parking and food in cinemas.

He said that perhaps there should be "more aggressive marketing techniques to do with price". Boyle said that one of the ways to combat internet piracy was to get youngsters into the habit of going to the movies.

He said getting them into such a routine "will help as much as measures to combat piracy".

The Slumdog Millionaire director said the industry seemed to think the way to get people in was to make films an "event" such as using 3D.

But he said: "The smaller movies are going to struggle to get into the cinemas. I think there's something wonderful about sitting in the dark, it's very deeply built into the DNA of the cinema.

"I try to make every film like an action movie. I don't mean guns or explosives, necessarily, but it's dynamic, it's movement."

National Schools Film Week takes place from October 19 to 23 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and from November 2 to 6 in Scotland.