Nope. Gen Z (ages 14-29) goes to the movies the most.
And, in my experience, the youngest generation at any time will always be a sure sale for kids movies. Which means kid tickets + parent tickets. Parents and caregivers are always looking for something to do with kids. All my friends with kids saw almost every kid movie that came out at the time.
Huh? You can pick whatever seat you want. Of course you can choose to have a space between you and someone else.
Every time I have bought a ticket in person, if it’s assigned seating they have a computer screen with the seating chart. I usually only do that at independent theaters because I have Mubi Go and that can only be used in person to buy tickets. (That does not partner with the large chains.)
Nope. It has to be two or more empty seats. At least the ones around here.
Never seen that. It definitely does not work that way at AMC. I can pick whatever seat I want.
I just remember exactly which chain my most recent experience was, but I’ve gotten the error message that I can’t leave one seat empty. I also know I’ve gotten that for one of our local concert venues too, so must be some pretty common setting.
Looking online apparently it’s a Regal thing. I don’t go there so wouldn’t know.
Speaking of buying tickets in person, last month when the newest batch of 70mm IMAX Odyssey tickets went on sale, the demand was so high it completely crashed AMCs servers so the only way to purchase was in person, and there were hundreds of people in the lobby waiting on lines. Same thing again last week when Dune 3 went on sale. There was literally a line around an entire city block to buy tickets in person at the kiosks because they were unavailable online.
I attend live sports events more often than big concerts or movies. They pretty much all have the same “Can’t leave adjacent single seats” feature turned on.
Which gets to be a problem for a single person trying to buy a decent seat in a fairly full venue. Lotta seat pairs left; none of which I can have. Have to find a group of 3+ open seats then snag one of the end seats of that group.
During the pandemic people got used to not going to theaters right as streaming services broadened, but it’s possibly a one-time contraction. Tickets sold in the US and Canada:
| Year | U.S. & Canada Tickets Sold (Admissions) |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 1.42 billion |
| 2010 | 1.34 billion |
| 2019 | 1.23 billion |
| 2020 | 231.6 million |
| 2021 | 444.0 million |
| 2022 | 714 million |
| 2023 | 830 million |
| 2024 | 820 million |
| 2025 | 780 million |
| 2026 (YTD) | ~547.1 million (through mid-August) |
Also, we’re having a good post-pandemic box office year; receipts for each year through Aug 29:
| Year | Box Office |
|---|---|
| 2021 | $2,026,565,818 |
| 2022 | $5,255,417,142 |
| 2023 | $6,552,000,945 |
| 2024 | $5,568,798,335 |
| 2025 | $5,826,431,893 |
| 2026 | $7,048,501,880 |
Before the pandemic the theater owner’s take was on a sliding scale; that 80% above is just the first week; typically for a year of pictures the theater kept around 50%. I have no idea how it’s worked in recent years with shortened release windows, and have certainly been looking to find out.
To an extent, theater operators have figured out what was always obvious to some people, which is that the theater model can survive if it offers something the home experience cannot. Of course, no one (except a few thousand people who have spent the money on actually installing a cinema-style auditorium in their house) actually has anything comparable to even an average-sized theater screen and sound system in their home even if they delude themselves into thinking otherwise, but the IMAX and 70mm trends are making the difference undeniable.
In deals between film distributors and exhibitors, everything is negotiable, so the terms will vary slightly for every film and for every variety of theater (from the Regal/Cinemark/AMC negotiating thousands of screens at a time to the single-screen in a small town in North Dakota) but it’s generally true that the first two weeks pay out as high as 90% of the profits from tickets to the distributor and the theater owners get a higher cut the longer the film is out. Spider-Man and The Odyssey still putting up big numbers into weeks 3-6 is very good for them.