Laura Hamilton

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

My kids are nine and eleven and they have zero concept of appointment viewing. They grew up on YouTube and TikTok, where everything is on demand, pausable, and skippable. The idea of sitting still for two and a half hours at a scheduled time, in a specific building, surrounded by strangers, is as foreign to them as a rotary phone. Marketing can't fix a generational rewiring of how attention works. Theaters need each new generation to adopt the ritual, and this generation simply isn't adopting it. Give it fifteen years and the customer base ages out.

paid $22 to watch dune 2 behind a guy live-texting through the whole thing. theaters are dead to me personally, RIP

Entertainment · Oct 6, 2026 · Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

Streaming didn't kill theaters, it killed the middle. Everything now is either a nine-figure spectacle or a five-episode limited series. The mid-budget drama is what's actually extinct.

Entertainment · Oct 6, 2026 · Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

Or the added hassle is why people pay for Alamo instead of the AMC down the street. Friction that protects the product is not the same as friction for its own sake.

Entertainment · Sep 23, 2026 · Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

But the proposal allows exceptions; the case literally keeps the on-call phone in the kitchen. A default with exceptions is not a prison.

Lifestyle · Sep 23, 2026 · Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?