Six years ago today, the UK went into lockdown. It was the first time in a century that the communal experience of moviegoing had been suspended on a global scale. UK cinemas closed previously in September 1939 when war was declared, but they reopened within weeks, weekly attendence was over 20m in 1939 rising to over 30m over the war years.
The industry had three months’ warning. In January 2020, China closed its cinemas days before the Lunar New Year, the most lucrative box office week of the year. Hollywood watched it happen. They had the roadmaps Contagion, Outbreak, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. They did nothing.
Six years later, most of the hospitality and entertainment have returned to 2019 levels. Cinemas have not. And the recovery goalposts keep moving.
It’s time for the industry to look in the mirror.
The Predictions That Failed
In March 2020, as lockdown began, exhibitors made outlandish claims about the rebound.
Tim Richards, founder of Vue International, told the Financial Times: “Families, couples, individuals are being tied up at home for weeks or months now. When it is over, there will be a demand to get out as we have never seen in history. There is no scenario after lockdown [where] people will say ‘I’m not going out; I’m staying in to watch Netflix’.”
In September 2021, with theatres still struggling, Richards doubled down: the world was “about to embark on the second Golden Age of cinema.”
In March 2022, Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, predicted that UK admissions would top 200 million within five to ten years.
Research at the time suggested otherwise. Audiences had formed new habits. The streaming infrastructure had matured. The “rush back” never came.
Now, six years on, the goalposts have moved again. The full recovery has been pushed from 2023 to 2024 to 2025 to 2026. The current forecast is 2027 for box office, not admissions. When you adjust for ticket price inflation, the gap is even wider.
The Warning They Chose to Ignore
To understand why the industry was so unprepared, you have to go back to January 2020.
The year had started with a roar. Bad Boys for Life overperformed. 1917 was building awards momentum. The January box office in the US was the strongest in years. The trade papers ran headlines about a “booming” start to the decade.
Then, days before the Lunar New Year, the most lucrative week on the global box office calendar, China began closing cinemas. By January 23, all major Chinese cities had shut down their theatres.
Hollywood noticed. But they did nothing.
The prevailing wisdom was that this would be “another SARS” an Asian crisis that would burn out before reaching the West. SARS in 2003 had barely touched the North American box office. The assumption was that COVID‑19 would follow the same pattern.
What they ignored was that the world had changed. In the seventeen years since SARS, international flights out of China had more than tripled. Global supply chains, tourism, and business travel had woven the world into a single, interconnected system. A virus that spread silently could not be contained by borders.
But the industry was blinded by its own success. The strong start to 2020 had lulled them into complacency. They watched China close, assumed it was someone else’s problem, and kept counting the receipts.
By the time they realised it wasn’t, it was too late.
The Numbers That Won’t Go Away: UK & US
United Kingdom – February 2026
The latest data from the UK Cinema Association and BFI, published this month, paints a stark picture:
- February 2026 admissions: 9.48 million
- That is -15.1% compared to February 2025, and -22.5% compared to February 2019.
- Year-to-date admissions (Jan–Feb 2026): 20.53 million
- That is -4.8% behind the same period in 2025, and -30.1% behind the same period in 2019.
Even with a slate that included Wuthering Heights, Goat, Scream 7, and holdovers like Zootropolis 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash, the market remains weak. The recovery has plateaued.
United States – Pew Research, 2025
Across the Atlantic, the story is the same:
- Only 53% of Americans saw a film in cinemas last year.
- 7% have never been.
- US admissions in 2025 were 769 million.
- In 2002—the peak of modern theatrical attendance, they were 1.58 billion.
Since 2002, the US population has grown from 287 million to 349 million. That’s 62 million more people. And yet fewer people go to the cinema than they did two decades ago.
The Pub Comparison That Proves the Opposite Point
Some will say: “Pubs have closed in huge numbers since COVID. It’s not just cinemas.”
They’re right about the closures, but wrong about the implication. Between 2008 and 2018, more than 11,000 pubs closed in the UK, reducing the total number by almost a quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics. People were already ditching pubs for bars, restaurants, and drinking at home with cheaper supermarket alcohol.
Cinema is the same story. Admissions peaked in 2002. The slide began long before anyone had heard of COVID. Streaming didn’t kill cinemas, it arrived after cinemas had already lost half their audience.
COVID accelerated the decline, but it didn’t create it. And that’s precisely the point: the industry spent two decades ignoring the underlying trends, then blamed the pandemic when the floor fell out.
The Bar Has Lowered: How “Success” Was Redefined
Since the pandemic, the industry has quietly lowered its expectations for what constitutes a hit. This is true even as costs have risen across the board—film budgets, marketing spends, and ticket prices.
Consider the numbers behind the headlines. PLF screens (IMAX, Dolby, etc.) now account for 50% or more of a tentpole’s opening weekend gross. These formats carry significantly higher ticket prices, inflating the box‑office gross without necessarily reflecting a corresponding increase in admissions. It is the same mirage that 3D offered fifteen years ago, a temporary revenue high that masked underlying audience erosion.
Then there is China. The world’s second‑largest market has long been used to prop up global grosses, often in ways that bear little resemblance to domestic performance. The most glaring recent example: Zootopia 2 took over $650 million in China—more than double the original film’s entire run there. Those numbers are real on a balance sheet, but they tell you nothing about the health of the North American or European markets.
Against this backdrop, the industry’s reaction to Project Hail Mary has been predictable—and revealing. The film is being hailed as a triumph for “original” adult sci‑fi. But Project Hail Mary exists only because The Martian was a success eleven years ago. It is a known property with a bankable star (Ryan Gosling) and a studio (Amazon/MGM) willing to spend aggressively. It is not a sign that mid‑budget originals have returned; it is a sign that the industry is desperate.
As Aaron Sorkin wrote in The American President: “They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”
The industry celebrates these films as strong results, but the numbers tell a different story. Original, mid‑budget films that were once a staple of the top tier now need extended previews, premium‑format surcharges, and artificially inflated headlines to be considered successes. The bar has lowered. And the thirst for leadership has become so acute that, as Sorkin’s character put it, people drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.
The Cannibalisation Problem: When Tentpoles Consume
Films like The Super Mario Bros. Galaxy Movie don’t open in cinemas, they consume. They suck up every screen, every premium format, every marketing dollar. Rival studios won’t risk opening against them, so the marketplace becomes a vacuum.
The result is a massive opening weekend followed by a massive second‑weekend drop, even when the film still has the market to itself. Scream 7 dropped 72% in its second weekend. Mario will do the same.
This cannibalisation is the complete opposite of what exhibitors claim they want. They say they need longer windows to nurture films. But in practice, they clear the decks for a tentpole, let it gorge on three weeks of premium‑priced tickets, and then watch it collapse. The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is exhausted; audiences move on to the next shiny thing.
By doing this, exhibitors are doing the very thing they get angry about with studios: they are shortening the effective theatrical life of a film.
They demand studios commit to six‑ or seven‑week windows, but their own programming decisions ensure that after three weeks, the film is treated as old news. The asymmetry exhibitors can drop a film at will while studios remain contractually bound—is not a bug. It’s the system working as designed.
The Streaming vs. Cinema Loyalty Divergence
While exhibitors were predicting a “second Golden Age of cinema,” consumers were voting with their wallets. The six years since lockdown have seen a fundamental realignment of entertainment spending.
| Service | March 2020 | Current (2025/26) | Change |
| Netflix | ~167 million (Q1 2020) | 325 million | +158 million |
| Disney+ | ~33.5 million (March 2020) | 131.6 million | +98.1 million |
| Global SVOD | ~518 million subscribers | ~700 million subscribers (1.5B subscriptions) | +182 million subscribers |
| AMC Stubs A-List | Launched in 2018, target 1M by 2020 | Not publicly disclosed | Unknown |
What the Table Shows
Netflix has added 158 million paying subscribers since March 2020. Disney+ grew from a service that had only launched four months earlier to over 131 million subscribers. Global SVOD subscribers increased by 182 million in the same period.
And AMC Stubs A-List? The program launched in 2018 with a target of 1 million subscribers by 2020. Today, AMC no longer reports the numbers. The fact that a public company chooses not to disclose a metric is, in itself, a disclosure.
The Divergence
While streaming services were adding hundreds of millions of subscribers, AMC was accumulating $4 billion in debt and $632 million in losses. While Netflix was spending $18 billion on content in 2025 (projected $20 billion in 2026), AMC was closing screens and blaming oil prices.
The customers didn’t just move on. They made a choice. They chose subscriptions that offered variety, convenience, and value over a $30 trip to a cinema that might drop their film after two weeks.
The Excuses That Never End
This week, AMC CEO Adam Aron posted on X to explain his company’s falling stock price. His reasons: war in the Middle East, oil prices above $100, the Dow at a five-month low.
Not a word about the $4 billion in debt. Not a word about the $632 million loss in 2025. Not a word about the structural failures that hollowed out exhibition while the industry spent a decade fighting PVOD instead of building a sustainable model.
Days earlier, Cinema United (formerly NATO) posted that the US box office is up 15% year‑over‑year. They called it “what a healthy slate looks like.” They celebrated Wuthering Heights, Goat, Scream 7.
Which is it? A healthy slate or a global crisis? The contradiction reveals the deeper truth: the industry still can’t admit its own failures.
Cinema United has also begun touting Gen Z as cinema’s saviour, pointing to Scream 7’s opening weekend as evidence. But Scream 7 dropped 72% in its second weekend. Gen Z chases hype, they show up for the opening, then move on to the next shiny thing. That’s not a foundation for recovery.
The Leadership That Never Changed
Six years ago, the industry went into lockdown with a specific group of people at the helm. The studio chairs. The exhibition CEOs. The trade organisation heads who spent the 2010s fighting PVOD instead of negotiating flexible windows.
Today, all of them are still there.
Adam Aron is still CEO of AMC. The same executive who threatened to ban Universal over Trolls World Tour is now blaming oil prices for his falling stock.
Cinema United is still led by the same trade organisation that spent a decade telling anyone who would listen that PVOD was a “distraction” and that the window must never shrink.
The studio heads who watched China close its cinemas in January 2020 and did nothing? Most are still in their chairs.
Failure without consequence is not a learning experience. It’s a cultural problem.
The Lesson That Wasn’t Learned
Six years on, here’s what the industry learned:
- PVOD works (Universal proved it with Trolls World Tour).
- Streaming is essential (Netflix at 325 million subscribers, Disney+ finally profitable).
- Disney is the bear you don’t poke (the 2017 LA Times ban taught that lesson).
And here’s what they didn’t learn:
- How to build flexible windows. A film that drops 70% in its second weekend and loses 2,000 screens in week three is still forced to play out its contractual run. The studio loses twice. The exhibitor retains total flexibility.
- How to coexist with streaming. The streaming habit is permanent. The question isn’t whether theatres can replace it—it’s whether they can live alongside it.
- How to stop blaming outside forces. It’s not the pandemic. It’s not the strikes. It’s not the Middle East. It’s two decades of falling admissions masked by higher prices and premium formats that become unaffordable the moment the economy tightens.
The Customers Moved On
The industry spent twenty years fighting the wrong battles. Fighting PVOD instead of building flexible windows. Fighting streaming instead of coexisting. Fighting for longer exclusivity while audiences found other ways to spend their time and money.
Now they’ve built a business model on $30 premium tickets to mask the fact that fewer people walk through the door. When war hits, when oil prices spike, when households tighten their belts? That $30 ticket is the first cut.
The customers didn’t wait for the industry to figure it out. They moved on.
If Another Pandemic Came Tomorrow
The industry had three months’ warning in 2020. They watched China close its cinemas before the Lunar New Year. They had the roadmaps, Contagion, Outbreak, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And they still weren’t ready.
Would they be ready now?
No. Because readiness requires something the industry has never demonstrated: initiative-taking leadership. It requires building systems before a crisis hits, not after. It requires admitting that the old model is gone and building a new one.
Today, the infrastructure is better. Every studio has a streaming platform. Every studio has PVOD. But the mindset is the same: react, don’t lead. Wait for someone else to move first. Blame the world when things go wrong.
The Unlearned Lesson
Six years ago, cinemas faced their first global shutdown since the Spanish Flu swept the world in 1918. But that wasn’t the only time they had closed.
In September 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, cinemas were ordered to shut. The government feared mass gatherings in blackout conditions would become bombing targets. Within weeks, they reopened, not because the danger had passed, but because the government realised the public needed the escape.
What happened next defies the industry’s current narratives. Weekly cinema attendance in 1939 was over 20 million. During the war years, it rose to over 30 million. People went to the cinema during bombing raids because they felt safe there. They sought out the communal experience precisely when the world outside was terrifying.
Here’s the detail the industry forgets: many of those cinemas were hit by bombs. People died. And still they came back.
That is what “standing the gaff” actually looked like. Not waiting for the government to tell you it was safe. Not blaming outside forces. Not spending a decade fighting PVOD instead of adapting. It was an industry that understood its place in people’s lives and rose to meet the moment.
Today, standing the gaff is not enough, but not for the reasons the industry claims. The problem isn’t that the world is harder. The problem is that the industry has forgotten what it once knew: that people will show up when you give them a reason.
The industry had three months’ warning in 2020 and did nothing. It had twenty years of falling admissions and did nothing. It had a decade to negotiate flexible windows and did nothing.
The recovery goalposts will keep moving. The excuses will keep coming. And the customers, the 62 million more Americans who don’t go to cinemas, the UK audiences still 30% below 2019 levels, will keep finding other ways to spend their time.
Cinemas survived the Spanish Flu. They survived the Blitz. They survived television and home video.
Whether they survive the industry that runs them is a different question.
Six years on from lockdown, the lesson remains unlearned. And the people who led the industry into the crisis are still leading it, still waiting, still blaming, still celebrating 15% bumps while admissions crater.
At what point does a “challenging environment” become a failure of leadership?
Sources: UK Cinema Association, BFI, Pew Research, ONS, Netflix Q4 2025 earnings, Disney Q1 2026 earnings, AMC SEC filings, PwC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook.