Gen Z Is Making Movie Theaters Cool Again

For the last several years, moviegoing has been treated like a slow-motion obituary. Ticket sales were already sliding. Then Covid hit. Then the strikes. Then streaming trained all of us to think watching a movie meant half-watching while scrolling TikTok. The narrative became depressing. Theaters were a relic, blockbusters aside. The couch won.

But something kind of unexpected is happening. Young people are showing up to theaters. And it’s not necessarily because of the cocktails, heightened food experience, or fancy reservable seats. According to new exhibition data, Gen Z theater attendance jumped 25 percent last year. Even more telling, the share of Gen Z moviegoers who go at least six times a year jumped from 31 percent to 41 percent in a single year. Gen Alpha is even more bullish. Nearly 60 percent say they prefer watching films on the big screen over at home, outperforming both Millennials and Gen Z.

This isn’t nostalgia (they don’t remember a pre-streaming world). Moviegoing, for them, has quietly shifted from a casual habit into something with cultural gravity.

The best example is the almost cultish rise of AMC Stubs A-List where attendees can see (essentially) unlimited movies per month. Members talk about it as if it were a personality trait. They recruit friends aggressively. It has lore – see: Nicole Kidman’s AMC pre-roll monologue, which still gets applause when she reminds us that “heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”

For Gen Z, Letterboxd has even created a stats-centric, somewhat performative approach to 21st-century movie-watching: logging, rating, curating. Suddenly everyone has become a critic. This is where moviegoing moves from passive consumption to cultural participation. Yet it may be what saves moviegoing.

Seeing a film in theaters gives you something to post, defend, and argue about. It helps that distributors like A24, Neon, and Mubi understand how to speak this language. They treat films as culture, not just content. They build merch people actually want. They give young audiences something to belong to.