It was on a spontaneous trip to the movie theater that James Young took a chance on “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” Same with 2004’s “Garden State.” And the quirky “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
They weren’t movies he had on his radar, but he enjoyed them — and “Eternal Sunshine” is now one of his favorite films . These days, however, the 47-year-old computer engineer hasn’t felt the same drive to go to the theaters and discover something new. Films are now in theaters for shorter amounts of time, meaning Young doesn’t happen upon as many movies as he used to.
“They’re out of theaters by the time I would have turned around and gone to look for it or showed up at the theater,” said Young, a Morrisville, N.C., resident. “That’s what I miss. Being surprised by movies.”
He isn’t alone. Casual moviegoing — when people show up to the theater on a whim and watch whatever is available — has been decreasing, particularly since the pandemic. Not only are there not enough movies bringing people in, but they’re often not in theaters long enough for people to discover them. That all cuts into the potential profit margins for theaters, which are still struggling to bring in crowds.
“They are the largest potential pool of audience,” said Patrick Corcoran, founding partner at the Fithian Group theater consulting firm. “You need that flow of movies coming through the system, reaching people’s awareness.”
Casual moviegoers are an important part of the market. Frequent moviegoers — those who regularly and reliably show up to watch all kinds of movies — make up about 12% to 15% of the box office, Corcoran said. That leaves a lot of room for those casually stopping by.
And the box office still has not recovered from the effects of the pandemic. Before COVID-19, the domestic box office regularly generated more than $10 billion in yearly ticket sales. This year, it’s expected to do about $8.5 billion.
“It’s fair to say there is a missing billion dollars that, if we had the right movies, people would be going to see them, and we would make up that gap,” said Bruce Nash, founder of the Numbers, a movie business information site.
Having a variety of genres at the box office can pull in a wider audience. Midtier movies — those bringing in box-office totals of $50 million to $100 million — have been scarcer these days. Genre-wise, dramas and romantic comedies are now harder to catch on the big screen, though Sony’s “Anyone but You” proved that the classic rom-com can still dominate at the theater.
Shorter theatrical windows also play a role. Before the pandemic, films were typically in theaters for about 80 days before they became available for home viewing. As the pandemic waned, that number shrank to 30 days on average , though this year it has flattened out to an average of 32 days, Nash said. Studios adopted shorter windows in hopes that they could capture more home video revenue while the movies were still in the cultural ether.
Having an affordable and competing way to watch movies at home has changed some moviegoers’ habits.
“There is a recognition that you need to give a film time to reach an audience,” Nash said.
As theatrical windows narrowed, the overlap between seeing a film in the cineplex and being able to watch it at home increased. Although data have shown that the standard audience dropoff rate has remained the same whether a film was in theaters or on streaming, the numbers don’t account for how many people didn’t go see the movie in the first place, Corcoran said.
“You’re not discovering as easily and as frequently movies that aren’t necessarily as heavily marketed, he said. They “may not be in wide release, but they’re out there.”
All of that, however, is largely out of theater owners’ control. How do you entice people — especially those who now have more options to stay home — to come back to theaters when they have free time?
Dine-in movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse has long leaned into the idea of making movies must-attend events. For example, the Austin, Texas-based exhibition company is putting on interactive movie parties for Universal Pictures’ “Wicked” that will provide attendees with green glasses, a customized Oz-ian menu and an Emerald City Soiree to celebrate the Broadway adaptation.
“Audiences have choices on where they see a movie,” said Chaya Rosenthal, chief marketing officer at Alamo Drafthouse. “We really concentrate on the experience and making it as memorable and special as possible.”
Another option could be loyalty programs, which incentivize moviegoers to go to theaters more often, and perhaps also to take chances on films they may have otherwise skipped. An extreme catalyst for more casual moviegoing was MoviePass, which collapsed because of its unsustainable business model of subsidizing cheap tickets. (The company is trying to make a comeback, announcing in June that it had secured a new investor.)
Cameron Daxon, 35, has seen about 50 movies so far this year, thanks to his AMC A-List membership. In January alone, he saw Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “The Boy and the Heron,” British romantic fantasy “All of Us Strangers,” the Jason Statham-led thriller “The Beekeeper,” sci-fi indie production “I.S.S.” and French legal drama “Anatomy of a Fall.”
“I’ll see anything, truly,” said Daxon, a freelance writer who lives in South Pasadena. “The bar is lower for me. I used to be like, ‘I really want to see this in theaters.’ Now it’s like, ‘I kind of heard that movie’s pretty good. Why not?‘”
For Young, the former casual moviegoer in North Carolina, his theater attendance is now more sporadic and also more planned. The last film he saw casually was Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” when he had a day off from work, and he and his wife caught a Thursday matinee.
Next up on his list was “Wicked” with his 7 -year-old daughter. He was concerned about whether she could make it through the two-hour-and-40-minute run-time, but worst-case scenario, “ They’ll get two tickets out of me.”