it seems like nobody wants to go to the movies these days

Let’s engage our critical thinking skills, shall we?

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I went to see The Hit of the Year™ this past weekend, which was the movie one cannot escape if they in any way shape or form interact with the interwebs: Wicked: For Good. I enjoyed it! Not a faultless movie, but a successful one by box office standards. This is no surprise considering that Jonathan Bailey is the Sexiest Man Alive, the internet is speculating whether or not Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are “anna sisters,” and foreigners Bailey and Erivo have stolen jobs meant for the Bostonian-Americans of Hollywood. In other words, the marketing budget was endless.

Every year there is one movie that goes so all out in marketing, so balls to the wall in omnipresence, that it captures both the prestige cinephile and the I-only-see-one-movie-a-year crowds, creating a box office success like no other. In 2023 it was Barbie (more chipper than its release date companion, Oppenheimer), in 2024 it was Wicked. This year it’s Wicked: For Good, and next year, believe you me, it will be The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.

A couple other films slated for the end of this year are on the same path as Wicked: For Good in terms of potential success, such as Hamnet, which opens today (Happy Thanksgiving!), and in terms of marketing finesse, such as Marty Supreme, which opens on Christmas day. My evidence? Marty Supreme is a movie about a table tennis player that I have no reason to care about, except for the fact that the press is going so far out of its way to generate a buzz, that I am inclined to wonder what all of the fuss is about.

screenshot of what happens when you Google Timothée Chalamet and hit the orange blimp button at the bottom. this is called marketing!

Outside of The Hit of the Year™, there are a slew of other films, good or not, that fly completely under the radar and perform terribly by Hollywood standards. Barely clearing $1.5 million in the box office and/or not making back the money it took to produce, regardless of star-studded casts and intriguing stories. It feels bleak, and according to Brooks Barnes at The New York Times, the finger is being pointed in every direction:

“It’s the audience’s fault. Americans love to complain about a deluge of superhero sequels and big-budget fantasies. And what do they do when a bunch of dramas arrive? They ignore them.

It’s the news media’s fault for reporting on opening-weekend box office grosses; films are declared dead before they have a chance to find their footing.

Theaters are at fault for raising prices and bombarding audiences with ads and trailers before films start.”

Let’s point some more fingers. Let’s look at what else could be at fault.

Where Is The Marketing?

People won’t go see a movie they’ve never heard about. This seems pretty basic, yet doesn’t seem to be understood by the marketing departments tasked with one job: promoting the movies. I hadn’t heard of Christy, a film about Christy Martin, a queer female boxer who escapes her abusive husband and becomes a triumph in her sport, until I was already sitting in a movie theater. If people aren’t going to the movies, you can’t bank on only advertising your movie via a trailer shown in theaters. You have to meet the people where they are.

If the film is an adaptation, you have a base of fans and an idea of where to reach them. Wicked is an adaptation of a musical which was an adaptation of a book. This creates a pretty solid base of fans of all ages. Now all you have to do is tap in. And tap in they did, from incorporating the original cast members, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, to creating a whole event around Wicked with live performances and audience interaction, in addition to all of the press I mentioned above.

Marketing is expensive, yes, of course, but so is making the movie. The only shot you have of getting a return on your investment is to get people to see the movie. And if there’s not already an audience base built into the subject matter, you have to work harder. It’s not impossible, but it is expensive. Do you want people to see the movie or not?

Do Audiences Even Like These People?

Christy suffered on two accounts: poor marketing and star power working in the opposite direction. Sydney Sweeney stars as the titular Christy. I doubt I’m the first person to tell you that Sweeney has done a terrible job at endearing people to her. Regardless of the more ridiculous, trivial complaints people have lodged her way, she had a hard time declaring that she’s not a white supremacist after being given an opportunity to clarify the intention of her American Eagle ad. So, it’s safe to say, most audiences do not like her. And the only audiences that do are the white conservative men who find her hot. And last time I checked, white conservative men are not the target demographic for a movie about a queer female boxer. You can’t be the face of a feminist movie and expect it to do well if you’ve alienated all the feminists. I feel like someone in casting should’ve seen that coming.

Sweeney is an extreme example, but she speaks to a larger, emerging phenomenon of the impossibility of separating the art from the artist. When stars are so easily accessible, flooding our screens even unintentionally whilst scrolling, it’s impossible to see them on screen as something completely separate from who they are in real life. It becomes concerning seeing Ariana Grande’s sternum protrude from her skin while watching Wicked; it becomes unbearable to watch Sweeney try to profit off the very ideals she seems to reject; and it becomes bothersome to remember Timothée Chalamet referring to people who don’t want children as “bleak” when trying to enjoy one of his movies.

Likability is a huge factor when deciding whether or not to see a movie. I definitely consider questions like “who do I want to spend my money on?” and “whose box office numbers do I find it important to contribute to?” when deciding whether or not to wait for a streaming release. Movies can be dead in the water based solely on casting decisions. It’s not always the right choice to cast the buzziest actor if that actor is in the public eye for all the wrong reasons.

It’s the Cost of Living, Stupid

This is such an obvious answer, and it is also likely the most determinative one. People can barely afford to put food on the table, and we’re surprised that people don’t go to the movies anymore? A matinee is, with tax, about $16. An evening showing is close to $20. Not including transportation and snacks. It’s not cost effective to go and see movies regularly, especially when most of those movies will be released on one of the thousand streaming platforms shoved in our faces within a few weeks. Most people just wait and watch from the comfort of their own home. Can you blame them?

Especially when the movie doesn’t feel like an event, the incentive to make it an event by going to the theater is diminished greatly. One thing about Wicked? It feels like an event. There’s already an inherent association with the event of going to the theater and watching the story unfold on stage. But even in film form, I’d rather hear Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande sing in surround sound than through my earphones at home. It makes sense to go see this type of movie in theaters. If the film’s world calls for total immersion, then I’m more convinced of the theater’s necessity.

Whereas a film like After the Hunt, which only generated $3.3 million at the box office in one month, can easily be translated to my computer screen from the comfort of my couch. Same with Die My Love. It doesn’t matter who is in it, for the most part. Would I like to watch all of my movies in theaters? Of course! But, has that ever been a realistic option?

Additionally, with some films being released directly on to streaming platforms, it makes the association of big movies with streaming more palatable overall. If movies still only came out in theaters, perhaps there’d be more cognitive dissonance when deciding to wait for a movie to pop up on streaming instead. But now that I know some movies are released directly on Netflix or some other streaming platform, it makes waiting to stream all movies feel less blasphemous.

So much goes into why people do or don’t go to the movies. It’s an amalgamation of different factors from the stories being told, to the size of the marketing budget, to the success of the marketing campaign, to whether its new IP or a remake or adaptation, to the time of year, to the unemployment rate, and more. It’s ridiculous to attempt to put all the blame on one entity. If that method worked, there would be an exact formula, and Hollywood would be producing box office hit after box office hit. But the correct answer is always a perfect storm, and therefore cannot be replicated.

Would all the successful movies of the past do well if they were released today? Probably not. Or at least not in the same way. These things are cultural artifacts and have to be molded to the moment they are in. But at the end of the day, the story is the most important. Will the story connect, is this the right time to tell it, and how do I find the people who will connect with it? It’s not a perfect science, nor is it a standard business. Which is why treating it as such by relying on bankable stars or previous IP doesn’t always work. It’s because it’s art, stupid.

Let me know what convinces you to see a movie in theaters. What makes the cut?