Elijah Cabatic, Staff writer
Movie theaters used to rule the movie industry and you viewed the success of a movie by its theater box office earnings. According to Statista in 1996 there were 7,798 theaters in the US, but by 2020 there were only 5.798 theaters in the US. This also would crater after 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic and the explosion in streaming. So, are movie theaters dead?
It would be an inaccurate statement to say that movie theaters are dying as compared to a decade ago they are actually improving. AMC, which is the largest theater operator in the United States in 2013 had 2.7 trillion dollars in revenue. By 2019 it had doubled to 5.4 trillion dollars. While that would crater during the pandemic by 2023 it had recovered to 4.8 trillion dollars. While this may just seem like a bunch of statistics, it is important to understand the difference between our perceptions and reality. Movie’s gross profits actually peaked in 2001 with an inflation adjusted average gross of $34.4 million dollars. This dwarfs the average 2024 gross of $12 million. While this may seem to prove that the movie theater industry is dying, but if you look at 2013 the average gross was only $16.7 million, and that year had massive hits like Frozen, Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, and Hunger Games: Catching Fire. This was all before streaming became big, as Netflix was the only really mainstream service,. So is streaming really the cause? I talked to Horror Movie Club member Finn Gensel (12) to find out her opinion.
I first wanted to know if she thought that the movie theater was dying. She said, “Yeah, a little bit. I mean, it was really popular, like, back in the 90s, I guess, but yeah, if you go to especially Tanforan now, the that mall is kind of dead. I guess a lot of people don’t go out and see movies anymore, just because we have streaming platforms and those are easy access.”
She also attributes the downfall of movie theaters to the rise in streaming services, but she also brings up the fact that she saw the peak in the 1990s. I think this has to do with the closing of many smaller movie theaters including some in our area like the old Century Plaza 10 near Tanforan and my parents favorite, Serra 6. This reduced the amount of physical theaters, but the ones that replaced them had double, triple, even quadruple the number of screens as the ones they were replacing. I tell these stats to Finn.
In response she said, “I just, in my experience, I don’t see a lot of people going nowadays, like compared to, like back then. So, I’m probably just biased on that, but … it’s probably just my perception of it.”
She makes a point about the main thing we are basing it on is perception, and certainly that is part of it. The biggest contributor is the recent massive box failures from big studios such as Disney and Warner Bros. with their once massively profitable IPs like Marvel, Indiana Jones, and DC. There have also been massive successes like Top Gun: Maverick (1.4 billion), Avatar: The Way of Water (2.3 billion), Inside Out 2 (1.7 billion), and Barbie (1.4 million). For every Moonfall and The Marvels, there is The Super Mario Bros. Movie or Deadpool & Wolverine. It has always been this way, it is just more public than ever due to the internet.
I then asked her if she though streaming could still threaten theaters the way they have become so convoluted with there now being around 9 major streaming services in the US which all split the content you may want to watch behind individual five to 15 dollar a month paywalls. “I actually don’t know. I mean, because I know the movies promote these platforms just to like, let people know, oh, this is where you can watch it. And like, you know, we’re gonna get money from this. So go, watch this platform.” She continues on about her final thoughts on movie theaters which are, “Actually, I think, I think it is declining, like, just, I don’t know, it might just be the area that we’re in, but, yeah, I think it might just decline.”
So with all of this information you can make your own conclusion if movie theaters are dying. On the one hand the stats don’t necessarily back this up, but on the other hand, Finn isn’t the only one who thinks that empty theaters definitely happen. It likely has more to due not with the theaters, but with the movies themselves. I was one of the few people to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in theaters the same week as the Barbenhimer craze hit, and that theater was filled to the brim with people dressed in pink. Certain movies still have the ability to pull in people to theaters like the aforementioned Barbenheimer craze, Top Gun: Maverick, or Inside Out 2. Its just not the movies we used to expect like Marvel or DC. So is the movie theater industry dying, or is it just evolving?
