Is Casual Moviegoing on the Decline?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Nowadays, people don’t attend movie theaters as frequently or casually as they used to, which poses a tricky problem for the entertainment industry.
Theater attendance has plummeted ever since the pandemic, and movies no longer run for as long as they used to. Pre-pandemic, films would remain in the theaters for around 80 days. Today, that number sits somewhere around 30 days.
In addition to this, before 2020, the box office would hit $10 billion in sales each year. Today, ticket sales are about $8.5 billion a year.
“It’s fair to say there is a missing billion dollars that, if we had the right movies, people would be going to see them, and we would make up that gap,” said Bruce Nash, founder of the Numbers.
READ MORE: WHAT THIS RISING METRIC MEANS FOR A STRUGGLING BOX OFFICE
“There is a recognition that you need to give a film time to reach an audience… You’re not discovering as easily and as frequently movies that aren’t necessarily as heavily marketed… [they] may not be in wide release, but they’re out there,” he explained.
All the streaming platforms and options available may also affect movie theater attendance.
“At the end of the day, streamers act as direct competitors with theaters and utilize their deep pockets and expansive catalogs to entice moviegoers away from multiplexes,” Movieweb reported. “It’s not that indie and international films don’t succeed at the box office; it’s mostly that streamers outbid studios for popular titles, which further limits the amount of non-Hollywood movies being screened nationwide.”
However, things are looking up for the movie business after a big month of hit releases.
MOANA 2, WICKED and GLADIATOR II have seemingly brought things back to pre-pandemic levels over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
The Guardian reported, “Those three films drove the overall box office to a record $420m in overall Thanksgiving weekend ticket sales, according to Comscore — over $100m ahead of the previous best, $315m in 2018. For an industry that has been battered in recent years by the pandemic, work stoppages and the upheaval caused by streaming, it was a triumphant weekend that showed the still-potent power of Hollywood’s blockbuster machine. Before WICKED, MOANA 2 and GLADIATOR II, ticket sales were running about 25% behind pre-pandemic levels.”
READ MORE: ARE THEATERS RECOVERING FROM LAST YEAR’S STRIKES?
- Content: +2Share:
- Content: +4