This week marks five years since the beginning of the COVID-19 shutdowns, an event that many theatre owners are still struggling to recover from. As NPR’s entertainment journalist Bob Mondello notes in this retrospective, the first weekend in March produced a total gross of more than $100 million, powered by a collection of crowd-pleasing hits that included Pixar’s ONWARD, Paramount’s SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, Universal’s THE INVISIBLE MAN and Sony’s BAD BOYS: FOR LIFE. Two weekends later, the total weekend box office had flatlined at less than $5,000.
While theatres have returned to their pre-pandemic operating status, grosses have yet to recover fully. The first nine weeks of 2025 have produced $1.09 billion in domestic ticket sales, compared with $1.67 billion in that same period in 2020.
This dramatic fall off has put pressure on exhibitors to operate more cost efficiently, with leading chains such as AMC, Regal and Cinemark cutting back on their overall number of locations and some independent theatre having closed their doors completely. In fact, an estimated 5,000 screens in North America have closed in the last five years, down roughly 12% from pre-pandemic levels. At the depth of the pandemic, some high-profile media columnists declared the inevitable death of cinema.
Despite these challenges, there were also several bright spots in recent years. A string of major movie successes broke through to become cultural events, including SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME at Christmas 2021, TOP GUN: MAVERICK in the summer of 2022, AVATAR 2: WAY OF WATER at the end of 2022, and of course the BARBENHEIMER dual openings in the summer 2023. These movies proved the potential for the right title to reach pre-pandemic levels of success.
In this local article from Philadelphia, a number of independently-owned theatres in the area have recovered fully, including the Philadelphia Film Society, Bryn Mawr Film Institute and Colonial Theatre. The heads of all three exhibitors were interviewed by The Philly Voice, describing their journey back from COVID shutdowns, and explaining why they are optimistic about the future of moviegoing.
