‘Anora’ director Sean Baker made an impassioned plea for movie theaters. Americans are unlikely to listen

At last night’s Academy Awards, the standout star proved to be the indie film Anora, which raked in a whopping five awards on a budget of only $6 million. When director Sean Baker took the stage to accept his Oscar for best director, he used the moment to issue a call to action: a plea to the industry to reinvest in movie theaters.

“Watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience,” Baker told the crowd. “We can laugh together, cry together, scream in fright together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together. [. . .] It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home. And right now, the theatergoing experience is under threat.”

Baker went on to cite the pandemic-era closures of “nearly 1,000 screens” as a point of concern for filmmakers. His speech reflected a mounting anxiety about America’s shifting movie-viewing landscape, which, five years out from the start of the pandemic, has been majorly altered by the growing convenience of streaming services and shortening attention spans. And, based on this year’s box office numbers, it’s unclear when—and if—the threat to movie theaters will pass.

Box office earnings stagnate in 2024

When the pandemic shuttered movie theaters across the country, fears about the imminent “death of the movie theater” became ubiquitous.

Since then, theaters have somewhat clawed their way back from pandemic-era lows and the wide-reaching impact of 2023’s SAG-AFTRA strikes, but they have yet to recover their pre-pandemic stability—and it’s seeming increasingly unlikely that they ever will.

In 2023, box office earnings reached around $9 billion, their highest peak since the pandemic, but still roughly $2 billion short of pre-pandemic earnings. And, according to data from the global media analytics company Comscore, revenues dropped 3.3% in 2024, down to $8.7 billion.

That’s in spite of a fairly strong streak of blockbusters this summer, when films like Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Despicable Me 4 helped lure audiences into theaters. In fact, 2024 was the first post-pandemic year when overall revenues didn’t improve upon the last. Meanwhile, across the country, many small theaters continue to close as they struggle to regain former audiences.

Streaming and social media appease shorter attention spans

Now that the dust has mostly settled from the pandemic, there’s a pretty clear common denominator for Americans’ new movie-watching habits: The age of streaming services.

Despite major theater companies’ best efforts to reel customers back in (including with gonzo marketing schemes like elaborate popcorn buckets), plenty of viewers have been won over by the increasing affordability of high-tech home theater systems and access to their most anticipated titles on streaming, all from the comfort of their own couch.

Studios are well aware of these trends, and have adjusted their release strategies accordingly. Big players like Universal and Warner Bros. are in an ongoing process of experimenting with shorter theater-to-digital turnarounds, essentially treating the opening weekend as a kind of IPO to gauge whether a quick pivot to premium streaming could save a property’s lackluster box office numbers. 

Last June, Universal pulled its action flick The Fall Guy from theaters after just 17 days due to below-expected earnings, opting to offer the film on streaming instead. This strategy proved highly successful for the studio’s R-rated film The Northman, which flopped in theaters but became a major success on streaming. More recently, the Amazon Studios Christmas film Red One struggled at the box office but hit the top spot on Prime Video when it came to streaming.

Streaming also allows studios to account for shortening audience attention spans. According to a 2022 study from Morning Consult, younger Americans are showing a preference for shorter forms of entertainment, as platforms like TikTok and Instagram popularize short-form content. In response, streaming services like Hulu and Netflix have started experimenting with recutting old movies into bite-size episodes to capture Gen Z viewers.

At last night’s Academy Awards, host Conan O’Brien succinctly summed up this current state of movie-watching, jokingly referring to the Oscars as the “long-form content awards.”

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