Is Hollywood listening?

The film industry adopted a new motto last year: “Survive until ’25.”

Hollywood never got back on its feet after it lost a year’s worth of revenue to pandemic lockdowns. Then in 2023, both the Writers Guild of America and the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA went on strike, bringing work to a halt for almost seven months. Numerous projects were delayed, putting 2024’s slate of movies in jeopardy.

As expected, domestic box-office revenue from the first quarter of 2024 was down 6.6% from 2023. But industry leaders had hope for 2025. The thinking went that once studios refilled their pipelines, audiences would return to theaters. But that didn’t happen. With the arrival of 2025, cinema owners realized their survival looked more dubious than ever.

In an interview in March, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos noted that most forms of entertainment have bounced back since COVID—Broadway, sporting events, concerts … everything except moviegoing. According to Sarandos, “You’ve gotta look at that and say, ‘What is the consumer trying to tell you?’”

For the first three months of 2025, the domestic box office continued to drop. Instead of seeing a revival of American cinema, revenue tanked—an astonishing 12% lower than the same period in 2024 and down 39% compared to 2019. So what are consumers trying to tell the movie industry?

Sarandos believes Americans aren’t interested in going to cinemas because they can more comfortably watch a movie at home for much less money. People often complain about the price of movie tickets. For example, a family of four might spend more than $50 to see a show. But the average ticket price in America actually hasn’t risen much faster than inflation. Relatively speaking, cinema tickets cost more in the early 1970s than they do now. But in the early 1970s, entertainment options were much more limited, and households couldn’t stream as many movies as they wanted for one monthly subscription fee.

Netflix has become a boogeyman to theater owners because the streaming giant siphons away erstwhile moviegoers, and it’s notoriously averse to giving its films theatrical releases. But the cinema chains place some of the blame with the studios.

Clockwise from top left: Inside Out 2, Wicked, Despicable Me 4, Moana 2. Inside Out 2: Disney/Pixar; Wicked: Universal Pictures; Despicable Me 4: Illumination Entertainment and Universal Studios; and Moana 2: Disney Enterprises

In a panel at this year’s CinemaCon, Regal Cineworld CEO Eduardo Acuna complained that studios have trained would-be moviegoers to wait for films to arrive on streaming. Citing an industry survey, he said 1 in 3 people “believe that a movie is free at home in less than 30 days.” That perception isn’t usually accurate, but the speed with which films move from the theater to streaming has accelerated in the last five years.

Before the pandemic, the typical theatrical window for a feature film was 90 days. After 90 days, a film might have found its way to a premium cable channel before the studio made it available for rental, and for big movies it usually took more than a year to make it to Netflix. But COVID lockdowns gave studios the leverage to collapse those 90-day windows, and most of the major studios launched their own streaming services, rushing new films onto their platforms right away to boost subscriber numbers. Exclusive theatrical windows are now typically 45 days, and sometimes as short as 2½ weeks.

At the same panel, Peter Levinsohn, chairman of global distribution for NBCUniversal, defended the new model because it has made his studio more profitable, even though the increased profits come at the expense of theater owners.

While overall box-office receipts have tanked, certain kinds of movies are thriving.

Despite its rocky start, 2024 didn’t end as badly as analysts feared, finishing with box-office revenues down only 3.8% from the previous year, but the thing that saved theater owners from disaster came as a bit of a surprise. Inside Out 2 was the biggest film of the year, raking in almost $653 million. Pixar’s hit wasn’t the only family movie to shake things up. Three other PG-rated films also landed in the year’s Top 5 highest grossing: Wicked, Moana 2, and Despicable Me 4. Theaters used to appeal to couples on a date night, but increasingly families with kids—looking for something they can enjoy together—have become the most loyal moviegoers.

But family movies aren’t just relatively clean, they also tend to have less of Hollywood’s political slant. “People have moved marginally right and recognize how preachy most of cinema has become,” notes Eric George, co-host of the Popcorn Theology podcast. He believes people want good writing that doesn’t push an agenda. The trends in 2025 seem to bear out his assessment. Movies with PG-13 or R ratings are still struggling to draw crowds this year, and the politically toxic Disney’s Snow White looks on track to become one of the ­biggest box-office bombs of all time. On the other hand, the zany PG-romp A Minecraft Movie is on track to become one of 2025’s biggest films.

Consumers really do seem to be telling the movie industry what they want. Is anyone in Hollywood listening?