Movie Theaters Celebrate Record Post-Covid Revenues, The Reality Is Different

Movie studios are talking a happy game, but the viewing figures tell a grimmer story — just wait til you get to our graphs.

When CNBC, a channel that obsessively focuses on financials, is running this headline, you know the movie studio CFOs should be happy:

The 2025 box office is headed for its best post-Covid haul as winter releases heat up

And that joy seems validated when CNBC follows with a quote like

The box office year-to-date domestically is running about 4% ahead of last year and, if we can expand on that lead, we could be looking at the biggest post-pandemic year for movies,’ said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

But let’s look more closely at Dergarabedian’s conditional “could.” Is a $9.5 billion box office possible? And, even if so, is that such an exciting benchmark?

It’s true that through September, the box office is marginally up: $6.5 billion in domestic ticket sales compared to $6.3 billion in 2024. And $0.2 billion is, as they say, not nothing.

And it is fair to anticipate solid showings from Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash before the year is out. So, 2025 could be a good year, solidly into the $9 billion+ realm.

But there are a two major caveats to dampen this whole notion of post-Covid box office success: demographics and box office economics.

In the six years since 2019, the U.S. population has grown by approximately 19 million people.

That’s an increase of 5.8%.

Which means there are roughly 6% more potential movie-goers now than there were then.

So if we were in an alternative universe that is become so popular in movies of late and had a box office in 2019 with a 5.8% bump, that would bring that year’s take from $11.23 billion to $11.98 billion—a long way from the potential $9.5 billion box office in the real world of 2025.

In 2019 there were approximately 1.2 billion tickets sold in the U.S.

So, even if the box office for 2025 continues its gentle uptick, it is likely that there will be 795-860 million tickets sold. That is as many as 405 million fewer tickets than in 2019.

The number of people in seats is likely to be down 35-40% compared to that year. So how does a shortfall of 0.4 billion tickets (not nothing) end up in growth? Inflation.

The average price of a movie ticket today is $11.31. The average price of a movie ticket in 2019 was $9.16. That’s a difference of 23.5%. (Even makes the price of avocados look good.)

So, rising box office is not because more people are going to the movies but because the fewer people going are paying more to watch them. Indeed, to compare apples to apples, if tickets in 2019 had cost an average $11.31, the box office would have been $13.6 billion.

It’s not that people don’t want to watch movies. There is just a decreasing number that wants to go to a theater to see them.

The culprit?

Streaming.

According to research by Deloitte (another organization that CNBC viewers approve of), the average U.S. household is now paying $69 per month on streaming for, on average, four services.

This gets a bit tricky, but bear with me. There are 129 million households in the U.S. 85%, of 110 million, subscribe to streaming. Of that number, about 50% pay the $69.

So 55 million households are paying $69. That’s an equivalent of six movie tickets per month.

Consider: movies had a release window of as long as 90 days in 2019. Now that’s cut in half (or more), with the features appearing on streaming services.

Realize that $69 x 55 million = $3.795 billion. A month. The box office will never see a number like that, which explains, in part, why there are things like Disney+ and Paramount+: it’s where the money is.

But things are going to be getting tougher for streamers and the studios.

The Deloitte study found 56% of Gen Zs and 43% of millennials think “social media content is more relevant to them than traditional content like TV shows and movies.”

This is not a trend that is going to help a film industry that is still trying to make up ground from six years ago — to say nothing of an audience that claims to prefer things like TikTok. So, while David Ellison buys a studio, his dad buys a social media platform and will probably make out better in the long run.

Table Data:

• The Numbers – Domestic Movie Market Summary
  • Provides annual ticket sales, box office totals, and average ticket prices.
  • 2019: ~1.23 billion tickets sold, $11.23B gross → ~$9.16 average ticket price.
  • 2025: Estimated ~781 million tickets, $8.83B gross → ~$11.31 average ticket price.

• U.S. Census Bureau and Worldometer estimates for population in 2019 and 2025.

• Total box office divided by population gives per capita spending.

• Nasdaq / GOBankingRates
  • 2024: ~$42.38/month → ~$508/year per household.
  • 2025: Estimated ~$60/month → ~$720/year.
• Deloitte Digital Media Trends 2025
  • Tracks subscription behavior, bundling, and platform usage trends.
• Market.us Scoop – Streaming Services Statistics
  • Offers platform-level data and growth projections.