Imagine sinking into a soft reclining chair after a long day, the smell of buttery popcorn wafting around you. Suddenly the lights dim, and a 50-foot-wide silver screen illuminates you with a life-altering narrative, one image at a time.
Hundreds of strangers surround you, laughing and crying in unison, reassuring your emotions and creating a shared experience. Just like that, the real world disappears, and your struggles lie far away from your focused mind. As you walk out of the theater, you’re not dwelling on your boss who yelled at you or your teacher who gave you a bad grade. Instead, you temporarily escape from the monotony of the real world and experience a life that you had never seen before.
Yes, this is how powerful a visit to the movie theater can be, but it’s an experience that, unfortunately, has dwindled in popularity over the past few years.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic box office took nearly a $10 billion hit, and has yet to climb back to the 2019 numbers. The United States lost around 2,000 theaters as a result of the pandemic, tanking industry jobs and increasing ticket prices.
Conveniently, streaming numbers skyrocketed, surpassing 1 billion subscriptions worldwide, as people could only experience movies in the comfort of the homes they were confined to.
The recent bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros. Discovery raised a lot of uncertainty over the future of film exhibition.
Paramount, headed by billionaire David Ellison, carries a more traditional studio model, producing big-budget movies that first release in theaters for a long window, before appearing on the streaming platform.
Netflix, on the other hand, has become the largest global streaming service in its nearly 20 years of operation, boasting 325 million subscribers. Given its influence, Netflix oftentimes neglects theatrical releases, and exhibits new productions directly through the streaming service.
Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos was subject to serious scrutiny over his comments about the outdated theatrical model and the prioritization of convenient viewership. When asked in a 2025 interview at the TIME00 Summit about the theatergoing experience, Sarandos said, “I believe it is an outmoded idea, for most people — not for everybody.”
This rhetoric greatly upset theatergoers and filmmakers, with box office mogul James Cameron vocalizing his concerns in a fervent letter to Sen. Mike Lee, chair of the Senate subcommittee on antitrust, competitive policy and consumer rights. Cameron argued that Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. would threaten jobs, theaters and frequent releases.
Warner Bros. is the highest-grossing film studio in box office history, owning the rights to classics like “The Wizard of Oz” and having produced contemporary masterpieces like “The Dark Knight.” Just this year, Warner Bros. distributed the Oscars “Best Picture” winner, “One Battle After Another,” a film I went to see on the big screen. To deprive audiences of experiencing these films as they were intended would be a travesty to the medium.
“Anora” director Sean Baker asserted this in his “Best Director” acceptance speech at the 2025 Oscars, saying, “Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater.”
“Keep making films for the big screen,” Baker continued. “I know I will.”
While the theater experience is important, there is a lot of reason in Sarandos’ approach to film exhibition. Streaming is an amazing way to raise awareness about films, particularly by sharing the classics to new audiences. I love that seminal movies from the 20th century are accessible to all with the click of a button.
At the same time, it’s important that the wishes of directors are honored, and their movies play in theaters for an adequate period of time before being made available on streaming services. This way, the box office can be revived, and studios will have more money to keep producing high-quality pictures.
It can be a hassle to leave the house, buy an expensive ticket and watch something in the theater instead of waiting to stream it. However, if audiences choose to take a monthly trip to the theaters, one movie at a time, slowly the novelty will come back. The barriers to entry will reduce, jobs will increase and prices will go down.
Who remembers July 2023, when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were released on the same day. For the first time since before the pandemic, I sat in a sold out theater on back-to-back nights, surrounded by patrons just as excited as I was for what became a cultural phenomenon.
The high-profile stars and the successful marketing of “Barbenheimer” prompted the films to open at a combined $235.5 million, the fourth-largest opening weekend in box office history. Moments like these give me hope for the future of movie theaters.
Realistically speaking, our world is very divided. It’s hard to find common ground on major issues and outlooks. On top of that, day-to-day life can feel quite dull.
But it’s the excitement and the unity of going to the theater, experiencing something new and embracing your community, that remedies these issues. What better way to cap off your day than with a bag of popcorn, a sweet Coca-Cola and two hours of a gratifying film experience?