Movie Theaters NAICS 512131

May 7, 2025 - Revenue Slump Continues

• Box office revenue decreased 7% year over year during the first quarter of 2025, according to Screen Daily. The quarterly result marks a sharp decrease from the 21% year-over-year increase in February 2025. Industry leaders remain optimistic, however, as studio executives and cinema operators are hoping for a $9 billion-plus annual gross for 2025 after $8.6 billion in 2024, according to Screen Daily. The $8.6 billion in box office sales for 2024 was down more than 3.3% from 2023 and 23.5% from 2019 (when revenues reached $11.3 billion), according to Comscore. Admissions, expected to hit approximately 800 million in 2024, also decreased from pre-COVID heights of roughly 1.3 billion. It was the first post-pandemic year that overall revenue didn’t increase year over year. Industry analysts attribute the downturn to the lighter release schedule that resulted from 2023’s actors and writers strikes, according to entertainment industry publication Variety.
• Just 13% of people surveyed by Octane Seating go to the movies a few times per month and 4% go weekly. Respondents said that they want movie costs to be lower: About 72% said they’d go to movie theaters more often if it wasn’t so expensive. Some 59% of respondents said movie theaters need to be cleaner and 57% of moviegoers are sneaking in their own snacks because of frustrations with concession stand prices.

• The unique architecture of movie theaters may help them avoid closure during lean times, according to The Wall Street Journal. Movie theaters are built with a sloped concrete floor for stadium seating to provide a clear view of the movie for all viewers. They also have no windows, which makes it difficult to convert them to another purpose. Retail landlords may not be able to use movie theaters for anything else unless they demolish them, so they often agree to rent reductions rather than leaving the spaces vacant when theater chains go into bankruptcy or leases are up for renewal.
• Movie theater industry employment remained significantly below pre-pandemic levels in early 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Personal consumption expenditures, an indicator of expenditures on entertainment, increased 2.7% year over year in February 2025, according to the US Bureau of Bureau of Economic Analysis. Movie theaters sales are forecast to increase at a 5.79% compounded annual rate from 2025 to 2029, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.