Movie Theaters
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 1,750 movie theater firms in the US provide entertainment venues that exhibit motion pictures or videos. They operate about 41,000 movie screens at over 5,800 cinema sites. Major sources of revenue include ticket sales, concessions, and merchandise resale. Some theaters specialize in a particular genre, such as foreign, art house, and documentary films.
Dependence on Movie Production Industry
Movie theaters depend on the production houses and distributors to develop appealing motion pictures and support releases with marketing and advertising.
Conversion to Digital
The film industry’s conversion from celluloid to digital projection technology involved considerable costs, and created significant financial obstacles for small, independent theaters.
Industry size & Structure
The average movie theater employs 30 people and generates $3.4 million dollars.
- There are over 4,100 cinema sites in the US that employ 122,000 workers.
- There are about 41,000 movie screens in the US - about 1.3% of these are outdoor screens.
- The industry is concentrated; the top 50 firms account for about 80% of industry sales.
- Large companies include Regal Entertainment, AMC Entertainment, and Cinemark Holdings.
Industry Forecast
Movie Theaters Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Jul 16, 2024 - Employment Remains Below Pre-COVID Levels
- Movie theater industry employment remained significantly below pre-pandemic levels during the first five months of 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Personal consumption expenditures, an indicator of expenditures on entertainment, increased slightly during the first quarter of 2024, according to the US Bureau of Bureau of Economic Analysis. Movie theaters sales are forecast to increase at a 7.12% compounded annual rate from 2024 to 2028, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.
- Movie production studio Sony Pictures has acquired the movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse. The deal marks the first time that a major Hollywood movie studio has been in the movie theater business in more than 75 years, with certain exceptions, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The US Department of Justice prohibited film distributors from owning an exhibition company from 1948 until 2020 under what was known as the Paramount Consent Decrees, which arose from a 1948 US Supreme Court ruling. The decrees essentially dismantled the old Hollywood studio system by forcing the majors to divest their theater holdings. Sony is the first major Hollywood studio to make a theater chain acquisition since the Paramount Decrees were rescinded in 2020. The rules had been relaxed for some in the 1980s and studios including Sony and Universal bought various stakes in certain chains.
- 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.
- Content made for television has increasingly made its way to movie theaters in recent years, according to Slash Film. The industry news site notes the success of the faith-based TV show "The Chosen." The crowd-funded series about the life of Jesus Christ has seen its entire fourth season brought to movie theaters multiple times in several-episode chunks. The show's fourth season has earned around $27 million and counting in theaters this year as of early March.
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