The/my TLDR: we as the audience probably need to re-frame how we decide which movies we go and see. Instead of just going for the obvious blockbusters … we need to decide on our own hype as we did with barbenheimer. The movie industry might be crumbling, and we, the audience might be as much to blame as the shitty execs.
Small theaters are the future, if theaters have a future.
When the only way to see movies was to drive somewhere - big made sense. You’d drive for twenty minutes instead of ten, pay a little more at an enormous location that’s halfway to a theme park, and see things with a thousand other people on a screen larger than god.
Then Netflix happened. First the DVD-by-mail version, where it was pretty painless to routinely have new movies on hand, and they looked great on your enormous 42" flatscreen. Then they started doing video over the internet, which was novel… because now it was legal. It was VHS quality with RealMedia buffering, but god damn, was it convenient.
Ten years later there was no reason to see anything but big dumb blockbusters. Anything intimate, slow, or merely funny was better enjoyed at home, and who cared if you had to wait six months? The DVDs on your shelves were 1% of your “home video collection.” Instant gratification made an expensive three-hour trip - somehow still plastered with waiting through advertisements! - completely ridiculous. You’d only put up with that shit for events. Here’s a dollar, go see a Star War.
Those overpriced movie palaces are boned. Have been for ages. But your home setup can still be blown away by any projection screen and surround-sound setup. (Okay, you might have 5.1, but even a table-sized 80" TV would be tiny compared to a five-seat-wide theater.) Being small means more places can fit one. They can be closer to where you are. “Walking distance” is probably a pipe dream, in the US, but at least they can be a short drive instead of a trek.
Convenience means people will use it more often. Like flipping through channels instead of picking one of a zillion movies to stream, having a very small selection of choices makes those choices easy, and “easy” is a fantastic quality for entertainment. It can become routine, like olden times. You might see every new movie because you could see every new movie.
But I wouldn’t bet on it. Between zoning laws and the somehow-still-ongoing plague, this is a what-if, not a prediction. The industry’s kinda fucked. Films will be made - but streamed. We might see a theater revival in fifteen years or so, when people fondly remember all the cool parts, distilled from several non-overlapping eras. Until then… 80" is a lot.
All good points.