Movie theater closures came in an overwhelming wave in the years following 2020. Now, theaters are crawling back towards pre-pandemic levels of sales by re-establishing themselves as hubs for the community.
Nearly 3,000 movie screens were closed following the earliest COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, according to a 2022 state of the industry report released by the Cinema Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to strengthening audience engagement in the film industry. While it’s indefinite whether all of these closures were a direct result of the pandemic, the average national ticket price has increased and box office revenues have yet to return to their previous peaks.
Box Office Mojo reported an 81.4% decrease in total box office sales from 2019 to 2020, when the highest-selling movie of the year, “Bad Boys For Life,” brought in a revenue of $2.1 billion domestically compared to the previous year’s “Avenger’s: Endgame,” which saw a gross total of $11.3 billion.
Elia Choi, the Cinema Director for SEE Entertainment, says creating incentive for screening attendance at University of Maryland’s Hoff theater is still a challenge in post-pandemic years. SEE, or Student Entertainment Events, is the university’s student board responsible for producing on-campus entertainment events such as their seasonal cinema series.
“A lot of times people don’t want to come in and watch [movies] in a theater,” Choi said. “It’s mostly…just for people who do enjoy the theater experience.”
In addition , theaters face a strong competitor in streaming platforms. To combat the rising popularity of viewing new films through these services, more theaters have introduced premium or “luxury” viewing experiences through different ticketing options.
“Streaming services have a lot of the movies,” Choi said of the films SEE receives from their distributor. “People enjoy the experience, but I don’t think it’ll ever get back to the way it used to be.”
The average cost of a movie ticket nationally is now $10.78, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, an 18% increase from the average price of $9.16 in 2019. At AMC theaters, the average movie ticket last year cost $11.90. As of 2023, Maryland currently has one of the highest average ticket prices in the U.S. at $15.24. Despite the increase in prices nationally, NATO reports that box office revenue is still struggling to match its peak from five years ago.
While the successes of summer blockbusters in previous years such as “Barbie” in 2023 and “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022 were expected to aid the process of filling theater seats once more, the downward trend of box office performance still hasn’t turned. Choi says SEE relies partly on their research director to determine what might bring crowds back to their movies.
“He does a lot of research on…what the projection is going to be, if [the movie]’s going to be popular and what the reviews are like.” Choi said.
The movie with the largest box office performance in 2024 so far, the animated “Inside Out 2,” received a box office total of over $63 million on its release day, and has grossed a total over $6.5 billion, according to Box Office Mojo.
As theaters slowly reopened in 2020 and 2021 and streaming platforms challenged box offices’ release day successes, AMC decided to take a new approach to draw crowds back to theaters. Enter the Nicole Kidman ad.
Nicole Kidman, the Australian actress and filmmaker most recently known for her work in “Babygirl” and “The Perfect Couple,” appeared in an 60-second AMC advertisement that mesmerized audiences, and ultimately the internet, after it premiered in September of 2020. Known for its key phrases like “heartbreak feels good in a place like this,” written by American screenwriter Billy Ray, Kidman’s ad redefined the feeling of a movie theater atmosphere for many, according to a profile on Ray by the New York Times.
The advertisement was so successful, audiences mourned its retirement on March 1. In response to the unforeseen fanfare, AMC released three new Kidman-led ads later that month.
An unlikely heroine, the drive-in movie theater, came to the rescue in April of 2020 as closures surged through the nation by accounting for 93.7% of box office revenue, according to Comscore. Bengie’s, the Maryland drive-in with the country’s largest remaining movie screen, remained open as an option for socially distant film viewing even into the winter of 2020, renting out space heaters to moviegoers. Even as some major theaters began to reopen for the fall, this percentage stayed at 87%.
Box Office Mojo estimates that this year will close with a worse box office performance than 2023, as the time spent on film production and promotion was cut down significantly due to the SAG-AFTRA strike from July-November of last year. However, some movies that were scheduled for an earlier release but pushed to later this year have still performed well, including Dune 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.