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Theatrical’s Long Covid

Five years after the pandemic shut down movie theaters, so many other out-of-home industries have fully recovered—Broadway, the concert business, live sports, etcetera. But the exhibition industry’s “survive til ’25” mantra has proved naive.

movie theaters covid pandemic china
Theatrical moviegoing was never without conflict or complication, even in the good old days of a decade ago: The advent of affordable at-home streaming and home theater setups helped the commercial bottom fall out for non-event films beginning in the mid-to-late 2010s, with annual moviegoing increasingly consolidating around fewer all-quadrant event films.
Scott Mendelson
March 18, 2025

This was supposed to be the comeback year for movie theaters—survive til ’25, etcetera. But this past weekend, which marked five years since the novel coronavirus upended the globe, saw domestic box office returns topped by an $8.7 million-grossing original, Novocaine. This past Friday-Sunday frame generated just $50.8 million total, or $3 million less than this same grim weekend in 2020 as the world was shutting down. In fact, Novocaine made less, not even accounting for inflation, than the $10.6 million earned by Pixar’s ill-fated Onward in its second weekend. So far this year, the theatrical movie industry has earned $1.22 billion, compared to $1.79 billion up to this point in 2020.