Will movie theaters fully recover?
Ezekiel Chilton, Contributing Writer
When the pandemic arose, movie theaters went dark and the doors were locked. Many people wondered if movie theaters would survive the pandemic. As the plague calmed down and quarantine ended, people began to return to the movie theaters little by little. But what was once a thriving business was hardly anything more than a dreaded post-apocalyptic settlement.
According to Deadline, before the pandemic, the United States annual cinema admissions were 1.3 billion. In 2025, after movie theaters reopened for the public for a couple years, cinema admissions were still down, reaching up to only 780 million in the United States.
Randall King, a professor in the communication department at North Greenville University, says that movie theaters feel almost like ghost towns on Friday evenings, which is typically when movie theaters are the busiest.
According to James Potter in his book “Media Literacy 10th Edition,” movie theater attendance had been in decline long before the pandemic began. With the introduction of television in the mid 1940s, film had been in a declining stage. In the 1970s, it was constantly in an adaptation stage to sustain its attendance and compete with new forms of media.
Theater attendance numbers suffered another attack during pandemic. Studies from S&P Global showed that in 2019, 39% of individuals in the United States said that they attended movie theaters frequently. In 2025, after a few years of recovery, the percentage was down to 17%, which is less than half of what the audience was six years ago.
As the pandemic occurred, a new form of media changed how the movie industry operated: streaming. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ were already a concept that was being used, but they received more popularity during the pandemic. Streaming services focused on the one factor that was a major weakness for movie theaters: convenience.
Movies distributed in theaters are played at a fixed time in a fixed set of weeks. People have other things to focus on, such as work, family and fellowship. Attending the theaters requires preplanning and setting time aside for everything else.
For many individuals, it is a financial issue. William Harper, a film student at North Greenville University, said that one of the reasons why he thinks theaters are struggling is ticket pricing. Studies from Civic Science show 27% of individuals say that the reason they do not go to the movies is because of the ticket prices.
Streaming services fix these issues by allowing the audience to watch whatever film they want with a subscription service. King mentioned how he enjoyed being able to pause a film if he had to do something else, like using the restroom, and can continue the film whenever he wanted to. Streaming services allow the audience to watch what they want without having to drive to a theater and pay to watch the film in one sitting. However, streaming services deal with another issue that also has an impact on movie theater attendance: content quality.
Civic Science shares that the leading reason for people not attending movie theaters is the lack of interest in movies shown, with it being 30%. King believes that content matters more than film distribution because people need to have a reason to go to the movie theaters. For a film to be a big hit at the box office, it needs to be a film that people can hardly wait for.
An example of a movie like this is the 2025 Superman film that served as a fresh start to a staggering franchise. Fans were eager to partake in the fresh reboot of a classic franchise, causing hundreds of millions to flood the movie theaters.
The space between films released in theaters and streaming services can be as short as a month apart. If the film is not interesting, viewers would rather wait for it to be out on streaming because it is more convenient for them. King argues that the content of current films is less intriguing, which is a reason why theater attendance has been reduced to almost half of what it was before the pandemic.
The movie theater industry is an industry that continues to adapt to the advancements of modern media. With theater attendance reduced due to the pandemic and rise of streaming services, the future of movie theater attendance is uncertain. Harper believes that movie theater attendance will be restored to its former numbers if the correct regulations are placed on movie theaters and streaming services.
These regulations include a guaranteed and lengthened period in movie distribution in the theaters, since recent regulations have shortened the theater life of films. King believes that the numbers will never be restored to what they were in 2019 because our habits have changed, and we only want what is convenient for us.
