Now streaming

Wakanda may be forever, but the future of movie theaters is less certain. With theaters shuttered in 2020, box office revenues naturally plummeted. In 2021, global theatrical revenues jumped 70%. Super heroes like Spiderman drew audiences back to the big screen. In 2022 the recovery continued, rising 27% year on year as studios released further installments of big franchises like Avatar, Top Gun, and Jurassic World. Nevertheless, the global box office in 2022 was still 39% beneath the market in 2019. In the US total attendance in 2022, as measured by the number of tickets sold, was 34% lower than in 2019. The decline in movie theater attendance began well before the pandemic as flat-screen technology improved, streaming services gained ground, and as content producers shifted focus from tentpole releases toward similarly produced television series like Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. Those developments also drove continued declines in cable television, with US subscribers falling from 100 million in 2012 to 70 million in 2022. Big hits are now streaming on a television near you.