Lifestyle Change

Movie Theaters Return?

July is the month of the Summer movie blockbuster and we’re off to our third movie premiere weekend in the last month. I went to the F1 Movie in June on opening weekend, saw Superman two weeks ago, and are now going to the Fantastic Four.

Still, like most Americans, we are no where near the number of movie theater visits we were making before the pandemic lockdowns. I think I am only up to 6 in-theater movies this year. That’s double my 2024 total (3 movies), but still WAY down from over 25 theater stops pre-CV19.

It looks like I’m not the only one …

The forecast is that the theater industry will once again break the $10B mark in 2025, but that’s being helped by inflation in the US dollar over time. More & more people are waiting for movies to get to streaming and watch at home.

The funny thing about our movie habits is that we’re NOT watching many movies at home. We saw Heads of State on Amazon last week, but I can’t recall another movie we’ve seen on streaming in months. (We haven’t been watching many TV series either).

How much movie watching are you doing (in-theater & streaming) compared with 5 years ago?

Image: Pixabay

5 thoughts on “Movie Theaters Return?”

  1. We went to about a dozen movies one to two years ago. My wife and I normally don’t go to movies that are considered blockbusters such as “Arthur the King” and “My Friend the Penguin”. I think the last film we saw was “Bonhoeffer”. So far this year, we have been doing more at home streaming. Recently the main movie theater we went to closed down to make way for redevelopment. It was close by, had great parking and mostly not packed. I guess the reasons we liked going to it was the reason behind its demise.

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    1. One of the movie theaters near us also closed. I read that there are about 10% less now / about 4K less than there were before the pandemic.

      My wife and I have “The Bear Called Winnie” that you suggested on our list right now. I found it on Amazon Prime. The only thing we’ve been streaming right now is the HBO series “Gilded Age” which is done by Julian Fellows from Downton Abbey.

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      1. Streaming sure beats cable packages with commercial filled programming. Right now we are watching Dexter Resurrection on Paramount+ and Hudson and Rex on Up Faith and Family. Amazon Prime had the Bosch Series and just finished Ballard for the season.

        Enjoy The Bear Called Winnie!

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  2. The last in theater movie we saw was Oppenheimer and I think that was one year ago. We have two theaters of six screens each ten minutes’ walk from us and another Regal 25-minute walk.

    There just isn’t much that we are interested in.

    We do watch streaming and saw Heads of State.

    When I walk by the theater I note that movies are focused on Children or loud and fast paced which are not our style.

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    1. Agree – movies are generally targeted at a younger demographic. I like to think of myself as a “Kidult” and enjoy a good superhero movie, though.

      The fall & winter movies are typically targeted more toward older adults. Especially the ones trying to win awards.

      We thought “Heads of State” was fun. It’s no Oppenheimer, but great special effects for a TV movie.

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