Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

The only business model that ever made theaters affordable for regular people went bankrupt twice. MoviePass was a disaster as a company, obviously, but notice what it proved: when you remove the per-ticket price barrier, people flood back into cinemas. The demand for movies on big screens exists. The demand at twenty dollars a ticket doesn't. Theaters are trapped. They can't cut prices because their margins depend on concessions and volume they no longer have, and they can't raise prices without accelerating the exodus. That's a structural trap.