The obituaries are premature only in the sense that the patient is on life support rather than dead. Domestic box office was $11.4 billion in 2019. By 2024 it was about $8.8 billion, and that gap is the new shape of the business (yearly totals). The studios have voted with their calendars: Paramount sends films to streaming after 45 days, Universal after as little as 17 for smaller titles, and Disney keeps shrinking its windows whenever a film underperforms. The average ticket now sits near $10.78 according to exhibitor data (NATO), and concessions keep climbing, which means the per-visit cost of a family of four rivals a month of every streaming service combined. Theaters lost to arithmetic.
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