Is Gen Z driving a return to the cinema?

Is Gen Z driving a cinema comeback

Since the pandemic, cinemas have been closing across the US and the UK

which was partially fueled by most streaming giants and their preference for online releases

But cinema going may be doing a little better than we think. Lately, people have been going to movie theaters a lot more

Last year, US theaters saw an 8% increase in habitual moviegoers and a 10% increase in Gen Z audiences compared to 2022

There have been reports that Netflix is now creating so-called low attention span films and TV series

Plots are simplified and actions and motivations are often spelled out loud, even said out loud

so that viewers at home, who presumably are watching TV while also being on their phones

can still keep track of what's going on. I'm not going to go into debates about what is art and what makes good cinema

But is this really a helpful way to address the issue? Or aren't we risking alienating audiences in that way

and also lowering industry standards in the long run? How effective this is in actually retaining audiences' attention

is also up for debate. Instead, Cinema United's report suggests that the experiential features of cinema theaters

is what brought Gen Z audiences in. Extra large format cinema screens that offer complete immersion

or in other words, the exact opposite of multi-screen distraction, was the number one feature that Gen Z audiences seem to value But there also something else Movie marketing has expanded online But there are some celebrities who do more for popularizing cinema than promoting their own work A

like Ayla Debery have official accounts on Letterboxd. Charlie XCX often posts about films

she has seen and logged on Letterboxd, and her eclectic taste for cinema seems to be appealing

to her TikTok audiences. Recent box office hits were also films that took over the internet

discourse. Most recently, there was Wuthering Heights. Before that, Wicked. Before that

we had the Barbie Oppenheimer summer. All these films generated online buzz. And upon release

going out to see them actually became an event. People dressed up thematically

arranged group cinema dates, posted about it, and participated in the discourse

And as Mashable has reported before, we're seeing a huge increase in the trend towards

offline events, even if they're promoted online. It is difficult to quantify how much of online

film culture has actually contributed to Gen Z's increased interest in cinema going. I'm personally

not entirely convinced how helpful this generational divide is when it comes to cinema going

It's also important to note that 2025 was an exceptionally good year for cinema

and despite the low attention span accusations, quality actually matters. So we'll see if these trends persist

But in the meantime, I'm curious, what makes you go to the cinema? And how do you decide whether to watch a film at home or in the theater

Let us know in the comments