Fade In

Once upon a time, “going to the movies” was an event. You’d meet your friends, smuggle in snacks and debate whether to sit front and center or all the way in the back row. Occasionally there’d be a fight for the aisle seat (my favorite).

Now, the only event is deciding which streaming service hasn’t raised its price this month.

Theaters are hurting. Attendance is down. Popcorn costs more than a car payment. Meanwhile, the audience has evolved into restless, multitasking creatures who can’t watch a movie without checking their phones, Googling the actors, and texting every five minutes.

In case you were wondering if that trailer asking people not to talk, text or post works – spoiler alert - it doesn’t.

The challenge for theaters is why should the audience leave home when their living rooms offer parking, 4K resolution, sweatpants and the pause button?

Netflix, Disney+, Prime, Apple — the new moguls of Hollywood. They don’t release movies anymore. They release content. Mountains of it. Every week brings at least a dozen new titles, and yet somehow you still end up rewatching The Office. Or in my case Breaking Bad.

We spend 40 minutes scrolling, 10 minutes deciding, then fall asleep five minutes in. It’s not movie night anymore. It’s movie roulette.

But here’s the thing: when something really special drops — a Barbie here, an Oppenheimer there — we crawl out of our favorite television-watching chair, put pants on (I mean instead of sweatpants – get your mind out of the gutter), go to the theater and think to ourselves “Cinema is back.”

Theaters aren’t dying quietly. They’re rebranding: reclining chairs, gourmet popcorn, flavored pretzels and cocktails with names like Director’s Cut and Final Edit. Some are becoming mini-cultural centers again — showing indies, hosting filmmaker Q&As, and creating vibes no streaming algorithm can replicate.

When the experience feels like an event again, people show up. Because deep down, in places you don’t want to talk about (name the movie – never mind, I’ll name it: A Few Good Men), we want to sit in the dark with strangers, feel the collective gasp, and hear some guy three rows back say, “Whoa.”

The movie industry isn’t dead. It’s just in another reboot. Streaming and theaters will coexist — like divorced parents who’ve learned to be civil for the kids’ sake. Theaters will handle the big moments. Streaming will handle the everything else, from Oscar bait to background noise while you’re folding laundry.

Hollywood’s been declared dead at least five times — when TV arrived, when VHS hit, when DVDs took over, when streaming began, and when TikTok made people prefer 12-second punchlines to two-hour epics.

And yet the lights always come back on. The projector still hums. Someone still cries in row G.

The reason is simple. Movie always find a sequel.