Movie theaters are becoming less and less attractive to adults. When they pay for tens of streaming subscriptions, why would a $15 movie ticket convince them to drive to the big screen rather than slumping on the couch with microwave popcorn?
The sensationalization of movies on the internet keeps the movie theater experience exciting for kids. Viral internet moments like the chicken jockey trend from “A Minecraft Movie,” sing-alongs of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” and the business formal gentleminions of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” make you want to participate in the movie-going experience. Kids’ excitement for the big screen is supporting the dying movie theater business in other ways, too.
“Every one (kid’s) ticket will turn into four tickets because it’ll be from one person to a whole family… the amount of kids that can come into the theater really increases the amount of people overall that can come in,” said Barrett Scheetz, a freshman film production major who seasonally works at an AMC in Springfield, Tennessee.
According to Varenna Morris, a freshman communications major who worked as a food runner at Cinéepolis, a luxury movie theater in San Diego, kids don’t just support ticket sales; they also drive concessions.
“Kids are what make us a lot of money in concessions… because kids, they just want things. And parents don’t like to say no,” Morris told The Panther.
Kids tend to become loyal customers to movie theaters, too.
“I often hear kids walking out of the theater (and) they’ll see a poster for an upcoming movie and be like, ‘I want to see that next.’ And the parents are like, ‘Okay, I guess we have to bring them back,’” Morris said.
At a time when adults are choosing to consume movies on a TV screen rather than in a theater, kids seem to recognize the power in watching a movie on the big screen. They’re captivated by it, unlike adults who, according to data from Statista, tend to prefer streaming.
“My four-and-a-half-year-old cousin gets so excited to go to the movies… It becomes his whole life — that’s the week’s theme, he just won’t stop talking about it. If he saw ‘Minecraft,’ then we’d have to play Minecraft for a week,” freshman creative producing major Paige Dix said. “It’s cool that it’s a big experience for him, and it’s not just seeing the movie, but it’s a whole life situation happening.”
Internet trends boost kids’ presence at movie theaters. According to Scheetz, there is a correlation between movies trending on the internet and a higher proportion of people under the age of 18 showing up to them, compared to a movie without a viral internet moment.
“(When) there’s a big internet trend surrounding (a movie), there tends to be a bigger turnout with people under 18,” Scheetz said.
“A Minecraft Movie’s” worldwide gross, which is over $910 million, makes it one of the biggest movies of the year in the box office. But kids movies have performed well consistently, notably during the weekend before Thanksgiving in 2024 when “Wicked” and “Moana 2” opened. “Gladiator II” also opened that weekend, but its mere $31 million opening weekend gross doesn’t compare to the upwards of $250 million that its kid-friendly counterparts grossed combined domestically opening weekend.
“(Thanksgiving 2024) was the biggest weekend that we ever had in the 10 years that our theater has been operational,” Scheetz told The Panther.
Movie theaters are depending on the under-18 demographic to stay afloat.
In 2022, 42% of adults preferred to watch a new movie online, 40% of adults preferred watching a new release in a movie theater and 18% of adults had no preference.
From Dix’s observations, movies that aren’t appropriate for kids don’t perform as well in theaters.
“I feel like in the past few years, I’ll go to the theaters to see movies that are made more for adults, and they’re a lot more empty… A lot of (recent releases), I’d say you can’t really bring your kids to,” Dix told The Panther. “Especially with the (movies) that have more adult content, parents or people who are trying to go out need to leave their kids at home and find a babysitter. So it just makes it harder.”
This logistical issue makes streaming movies for adult audiences more convenient.
Dix also saw “A Minecraft Movie” in theaters and experienced a theater packed with people of various ages dressed in costumes and bursting with excitement. She noted the relationship between movies kids attend and a more lively theater space.
“Movies that parents can bring their kids to, like the ones that are marketed for all age groups, have been a very fun experience to go to,” she said. “Like ‘Barbie’ and ‘Minecraft,’ I think that those are the kinds of movies that are keeping the theaters alive right now.”
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