We just came off a once-in-a-century respiratory pandemic that shuttered cinemas for a long time and made the world wary of crowds. This came at a moment when streaming was already fairly well established as an alternate method of consuming media. The studios were very ready to move on from the cinema model and took steps to do so. It is very hard to imagine a confluence of events more perfectly designed to kill cinemas.
Yet Cinemas survived and are rebounding. It’s rare we get such clear evidence of the resilience of a cultural institution.
People like going to movies. They like watching movies in groups. They like watching movies on the big screen. That’s why cinemas have survived the Paramount decrees, TV, suburbanization, home video, cable, and every other challenge. Just as importantly, theatrical release serves a vital role for the studios, marking films as legitimate in a way that sending them direct to streaming doesn’t, even with a big PR campaign. We’ve known this for decades, but the last few years have vividly reinforced it.