JASIN BOLAND/Warner Bros.
- Hollywood had a miserable Memorial Day weekend — one of the worst it has had in decades.
- But this shouldn't be a surprise: Moviegoing has been in decline since the early 2000s.
- Guess what started taking off in the early 2000s? Yup. The internet.
This weekend my family went to the movies, twice. We saw "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" (pretty good!) and "The Garfield Movie" (what you think it would be).
But many, many Americans did not go to any movie at all. This past holiday weekend was the worst Memorial Day showing Hollywood has seen in decades, with ticket sales down a staggering 40% from last year.
One thing Hollywood is very good at is generating explanations for a flop — or in this case, multiple flops. Last year's actor and writer strikes cut into movie production; marketing movies is hard in 2024; maybe the movies weren't any good; streaming has taught people to stay home, etc.
But the most obvious explanation is the one Hollywood and the people who love Hollywood are the least likely to say out loud: People aren't going to the movies like they used to. Period.
The statistics are quite clear about this: In 2002, Americans went to the movies 5.2 times a year; by 2019, that number had shrunk to 3.5 times a year.
The pandemic, of course, devastated the box office. But post-COVID, things are still lousy. The analyst and investor Matthew Ball says the average moviegoer went 2.3 times in 2023 — the same year the industry was crowing about the revival of the box office, led by "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."
Hollywood has been responding to the decline by raising ticket prices — they're estimated to have shot up by 20% between 2019 and 2022 — and pushing moviegoers who do want to go out to much more expensive theaters, like Imax screens. (I paid $44.76 for the two "Furiosa" tickets I bought over the weekend at my local Alamo Drafthouse. No complaints, though — I love that chain.)
They should be going the other way and cutting prices, says the Sony movie boss Tom Rothman. "It's fundamental consumer economics: just lower the prices and you'll sell more," he said in a recent interview that's generating lots of buzz in the industry:
There's a value proposition in pricing for two constituencies that are important to us. Kids are trying to make rent, they don't have a lot of disposable income. And the second very significant pricing-sensitive segment is the family audience. It's too dang expensive to take your whole family to the movies right now, even if the kids get in half price or whatever.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. And people obviously are still willing to go to the movies on special occasions — see, again, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."
But there's no way around the internet and the competition it provides for everything, including moviegoing.
In 2002, about 7% of Americans had broadband internet at home. Now 80% do. Then factor in the phone — which you're likely reading this story on — and all the things you can watch on that, for free. Fighting that is like fighting gravity.
I don't think movies or movie theaters are going away. (And don't blame me! I think I've been to at least six this year.) But it's time to stop being surprised when moviegoers, year after year, say they'd rather do something else.