Four months ago, Michael O’Leary paced the CinemaCon stage in Las Vegas warning theatre owners that the proposed USD $110 billion combination of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery threatened their business.

The Cinema United president and CEO had opened his annual State of the Industry address with the optimism theatre owners had waited years to hear. Attendance was improving, Gen Z was going to the movies more frequently, exhibitors were reinvesting and, most importantly, a healthier release slate was finally giving the business something it had spent years begging Hollywood to provide: movies. Then O’Leary pivoted to the two issues he believed could derail that progress — theatrical windows and consolidation.

“History shows us that consolidation results in fewer films being produced for movie theatres,” O’Leary told the industry gathered at Caesars Palace in April. “We believe this transaction will be harmful to exhibition, consumers and the entire entertainment eco-system.”

He was unusually specific about why. Combining two of the five remaining major Hollywood studios, Cinema United believed, would give fewer distributors greater power over film terms, theatrical windows, scheduling, screen placement and access to historic film catalogs. O’Leary promised to press those concerns “at the state and federal level,” as well as internationally. Later in the speech, while discussing Cinema United’s relatively new name, he returned to another subject that would prove more difficult to manage.

“We are better when we speak with one consistent, strong and disciplined voice,” O’Leary said. That unified voice lasted roughly 48 hours.

On the final day of CinemaCon, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison took the stage and made a series of promises about his commitment to theatrical releasing. Shortly afterward, AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron publicly broke ranks with Cinema United and endorsed the merger. “I am confident that David Ellison is sincere as to his intentions,” Aron said, “and truly believe that he in fact will wind up delivering on these commitments.”

The choreography was hard to miss. O’Leary had spent Tuesday warning that Paramount-Warner would harm theatres. Ellison made his case directly to exhibitors on Thursday, Aron declared himself satisfied and Cinema United convened an emergency board meeting that afternoon before responding that Paramount’s pledges were “not yet sufficient.”

Four months later, AMC has been joined by Regal and Cinemark in publicly supporting a path toward completing the transaction, though the latter two attached very large asterisks. Together, the three circuits account for roughly 60% of U.S. movie ticket sales. Their positions helped fuel stories of a “civil war” within exhibition and, on August 18, when Cinema United called on California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Ellison to negotiate a settlement, much of the coverage treated the move as a reversal.

Except Cinema United still has not endorsed the merger. To understand what actually changed, it helps to follow the conditions rather than the headlines. Cinema United has been identifying essentially the same risks since January. Regal and Cinemark’s supposedly breakaway positions embrace several of the same protections. Paramount has been winning support circuit by circuit while Bonta insists promises are not enough. And beneath the public sparring sits a much less glamorous group of theatres — regional, independent and sometimes single-screen operations — that Cinema United has told a federal court are the businesses most endangered if consolidation goes wrong. This is less a story about who is suddenly “for” or “against” Paramount-Warner than about who gets to write the rules if the transaction ultimately moves forward, how those rules are enforced and who they actually protect.

Cinema United’s Concerns Came First
Cinema United’s concerns about a Paramount-Warner combination did not begin at CinemaCon. In January, when Netflix was still positioned to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the organization submitted a prepared statement to Congress warning that further consolidation could be severe for theatrical exhibition. Netflix was the immediate concern because of the streamer’s historically limited use of theatrical distribution, but Cinema United went out of its way to make clear that putting Warner Bros. in the hands of another legacy studio would hardly solve the problem.

“If Paramount or another major studio ends up displacing Netflix as the buyer, our concerns are no less serious,” Cinema United told lawmakers. It warned that another major-studio merger would reduce theatrical output and increase the leverage distributors already possess over theatre owners, specifically identifying “periods of exclusivity for films, tailored scheduling to appeal to local communities, and screen placement” as areas where fewer competing studios could leave exhibitors with even less bargaining power.

Cinema United also came with receipts. Its congressional submission included a chart showing that Disney and 20th Century Fox averaged a combined 28 wide releases annually before Disney acquired most of 21st Century Fox in 2019. Excluding the pandemic-disrupted years of 2020 and 2021, their combined post-merger average fell to 14.3. “These concerns are not theoretical,” Cinema United told Congress, which was a polite way of saying exhibitors had already seen this movie and were not especially eager for a sequel.

By July, O’Leary had put that same argument under oath. On July 13, California and 11 other states sued to block Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on antitrust grounds. O’Leary submitted a sworn declaration supporting their request for a temporary restraining order, following through on the promise he’d made in Las Vegas that Cinema United would take its consolidation concerns to regulators.

“If the purchase of Warner Bros. by Paramount is approved, it will combine two of the biggest rival legacy movie studios,” O’Leary declared. “That combination will be harmful to theatrical exhibition, consumers, and the movie entertainment ecosystem overall.” Again, he focused not only on the number of films but on the additional leverage a combined company could wield in negotiations with exhibitors.

Then came the sworn declaration’s starkest claim: Cinema United identified operators with fewer than 75 screens as “the most vulnerable, with the highest likelihood of going out of business” if reduced studio output led to layoffs, curtailed investment and theatre closures. Smaller operators, O’Leary said, would feel the increased negotiating leverage of a combined Paramount-Warner “most acutely.” It was unusually stark language for a trade association whose public communications more often celebrate opening weekends, theatre investments and the resilience of moviegoing; Cinema United was telling a federal court that, if its fears proved correct, the merger could be existential for a large portion of exhibition.

Which is why the August 18 letter — widely interpreted as proof that Cinema United had capitulated and was suddenly “for” the merger — reads differently beside what the organization had already said in January, April and July. Cinema United urged Bonta and Ellison to meet, but said any resolution needed four core protections:

1. a long-term commitment to maintain or expand wide-release theatrical production, backed by meaningful exclusivity and full theatrical marketing;
2. protection against higher film-rental terms that could force exhibitors and moviegoers to absorb the cost of the transaction;
3. enforceable safeguards guaranteeing theatres of all sizes broad access to films without conditions that prevent them from making programming decisions responsive to their local markets; and
4. continued reasonable access to the Paramount and Warner Bros. film catalogs.

Those are not new concerns: output and windows, film rental and booking leverage, local scheduling, access to movies and catalogs — essentially what O’Leary was raising at CinemaCon. Only after a summer of lawsuits, negotiations and undoubtedly more than a few expensive lawyers were they translated into four enforceable conditions. What changed on August 18 was not Cinema United’s diagnosis of the merger, but its willingness to see whether those concerns could be resolved at a negotiating table rather than solely in a courtroom.

“Despite our ongoing concerns about industry consolidation,” Cinema United said in a statement accompanying the letter, “we have been open to steps that will protect the exhibition industry.” That is a long way from saying the merger is fine as proposed.

The “Civil War” Is Really a Negotiation
The disagreement inside exhibition is real, but it is more complicated than a row of dominoes falling from opposition into support. AMC was the first major break at CinemaCon. Aron doubled down in late July after the states sued, writing in Variety that the government did not need to protect his company. “The AG’s lawsuit argues, in part, that this merger needs to be prevented to protect companies like mine,” he wrote. “Well thanks, but no thanks.”

Aron was certainly correct about one thing: AMC is capable of protecting AMC. As the world’s largest exhibitor, it has the scale and leverage to negotiate directly with a studio chief. But O’Leary’s sworn declaration suggests AMC was never the sort of exhibitor Cinema United was most worried about. The problem was what happened farther down the food chain, where companies with fewer than 75 screens lack anything like AMC’s leverage.

With AMC already in hand, Paramount kept working its way through exhibition. Regal came next, and CEO Eduardo Acuña was unusually candid about his conversations with Ellison. He said Paramount had committed to at least 30 theatrical films annually, 45 days before titles could move to premium transactional video-on-demand, 90 days before subscription streaming and USD $30 billion in annual media-content investment for at least three years.

“I believe David is sincere in making these commitments,” Acuña said. Sincerity, apparently, is even more reassuring when backed by a consent decree: Ellison had offered to put the promises into one with the state attorneys general. Acuña also argued that a court fight stretching into the spring or summer of 2027 would not put another film into theatres and could damage an industry finally regaining momentum. Regal’s position was not that consolidation is wonderful, but that a regulated merger with measurable commitments was preferable to months of litigation and uncertainty.

“With these measures in place,” Acuña said, “we believe that Paramount can be an effective steward of these studios.”

Cinemark arrived at essentially the same destination on August 18, albeit in the polished legalese of a corporate statement. Same 30 films. Same 45-day PVOD and 90-day SVOD structure. Same concern about prolonged uncertainty. The prose was different, but the song sheet was remarkably familiar. What looked from a distance like the major chains simply “backing the deal” looked considerably more conditional up close.

The signatures on Cinema United’s August 18 letter make the point even more clearly. Acuña signed it, as did Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble and Executive Vice President Wanda Gierhart. Cinema United board chair Mike Bowers, president and CEO of regional circuit Harkins Theatres, signed as well. If this is a civil war, the opposing armies have a curious habit of signing the same letters. Regal, Cinemark and Cinema United appear to be arguing less about whether guardrails are needed than about how many, how long they should last and whether they protect the whole exhibition market rather than only its largest circuits.

AMC, conspicuously, did not sign. Why is not publicly known, but its absence is hard to miss.

By early August, Variety had seen enough to describe a “cinema civil war,” and the phrase captured something real. But every new public agreement also threatened to turn Cinema United’s coalition into a countdown: another exhibitor satisfied, another headline suggesting the opposition was crumbling. What the framing obscured was that the fight had shifted from whether the merger should happen to what Paramount would have to concede for different parts of exhibition to stop fighting it. If nothing else, the process forced Cinema United to get its own house in order.

And almost all of it is being negotiated in public. Paramount points to federal clearance and approvals abroad while Ellison says the company is willing to settle even as it prepares to win at trial. It has asked the court to require the states to post a USD $1.884 billion bond to keep the transaction frozen, while Ellison has threatened to move significant operations out of California if the dispute is not resolved. Bonta has called that threat “blackmail” and insists the 30-film pledge is a behavioral promise, not the structural fix his case requires.

Bonta’s latest comments sharpened the distinction. In an August 19 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he described Cinema United as “pro-settlement talks,” which he considered neutral, and said Paramount would need “real, robust, structural” remedies before the states would resolve the case. For an attorney general suing to stop the transaction, that is consequential: sitting down at the table is not the same thing as deciding the merger is legal as proposed or that Paramount’s remedies are adequate.

That leaves Cinema United with an awkward problem. Studio-exhibitor terms are negotiated company by company, so AMC, Regal and Cinemark can use their scale to secure protections a small regional circuit or three-screen independent cannot. Each major exhibitor that publicly says it can live with the transaction also gives Paramount another answer to the states’ argument that theatres need protection. If that process continued one circuit at a time, Cinema United could lose leverage even while the members it says are most vulnerable remained outside those conversations.

For exhibitors caught between a studio they may be doing business with for decades and a court case that could run into 2027, making their own calculations is hardly surprising. Seen in that light, the August 18 letter may have given Cinema United something it badly needed: shared industry guardrails that still leave individual exhibitors room to negotiate their own arrangements. A circuit can support the trade group’s call for enforceable protections and decide what else it needs from Paramount. That helps explain how one letter can carry signatures from global chains, regional operators and single-screen independents — and why it may have stopped, or at least slowed, Paramount from picking off the trade group’s leverage one exhibitor at a time.

The Theatres That Can’t Cut Their Own Deals
Cinema United’s August letter also puts numbers behind the warning O’Leary gave the federal court in July. The organization has 196 members operating in the 12 states challenging the merger; 130 operate fewer than 10 screens, 90 have fewer than five and 30 run a single screen. These are exactly the kinds of businesses O’Leary identified under oath as most vulnerable if consolidation reduces output or increases studio leverage.

Four days earlier, the Independent Cinema Alliance made much the same point from outside the trade group. “There has been considerable discussion in recent days about the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery transaction, including expressions of support from several of the industry’s largest exhibitors,” ICA said. “Those voices matter. But they are not the only voices in exhibition.”

ICA called Paramount’s commitments on output, investment and windows encouraging, but only a “constructive starting point.” Independently owned theatres account for roughly 67% of U.S. physical theatre locations, according to ICA, whose members operate about 5,000 screens. If protecting moviegoers in smaller communities is part of the case being made by both Paramount and the attorneys general, ICA argued, independents need a seat at the table.

That is not simply a question of fairness. A 20-screen multiplex can move an underperforming movie into a smaller auditorium, cut showtimes or replace it. A one- or two-screen cinema serving a rural community has far fewer options. A single-screen theatre has nowhere else to put it.

This is where some of Cinema United’s otherwise bureaucratic-sounding demands become very practical. Studios can require films to play for minimum periods, insist on particular scheduling patterns or require what the industry calls a “clean screen,” meaning an auditorium is devoted entirely to one release rather than split among several titles. Those conditions may be perfectly reasonable when demand supports them. They are much less charming when the only screen in town is tied up with a movie the town has already seen.

Film rental adds another layer. The share of ticket revenue paid to the distributor can vary by title and agreement, and exhibitors with little bargaining power have fewer alternatives when a single supplier controls more of the films audiences most want to see. That is why Cinema United’s concern has never been merely whether a combined Paramount-Warner produces 30 movies or 25. It is what happens to the negotiating relationship when one major supplier disappears and the remaining studios gain more leverage over access to the movies that keep theatres open. O’Leary was explicit that smaller operators would bear the greatest risk.

Nor would the consequences stop at the theatre doors. Cinema United calls exhibition a “Main Street industry,” citing research that estimates every dollar spent at a local cinema generates another USD $1.50 at nearby restaurants, bars, retailers, transportation providers and other businesses. The economic trail also runs backward through equipment vendors, concession suppliers, advertisers, marketing agencies and production. A merger among companies worth tens of billions can ultimately help determine whether the only theatre in a small town stays open and what its owner gets to put on screen next Friday.

That is why agreements with the three largest U.S. circuits do not settle the exhibition question. Aron’s “thanks, but no thanks” may make perfect sense for AMC. It does not answer what happens to the theatre operator who cannot call David Ellison and negotiate a separate set of protections.

Promises, Enforcement and the Rules That Come Next
There is a reason “enforceable” keeps turning up in this debate: theatre owners have heard merger promises before, and the Disney-Fox numbers Cinema United brought to Congress are a vivid reminder of what can happen after the press conference is over.

Warner Bros. Discovery is a fresher reminder. According to the states’ antitrust complaint, WBD said it would release 16 films in 2023 and more than 20 in 2024; it ultimately released 11 and nine. Paramount currently has 16 films scheduled for 2027 and WBD 19, enough to clear the 30-film floor if every title stays put, but for 2028, the respective numbers are seven and 15 — a combined 22. Release calendars will change, especially two years out, but a 30-film commitment would still require the combined company to maintain two robust pipelines. Films that once competed from separate studios would now share one corporate calendar and one pool of marketing resources, potentially cannibalizing each other. Thirty films is not merely a production promise. It is a long-term distribution strategy.

It also raises the obvious question: what counts as one of the 30? A rerelease? A festival acquisition pushed into theatres with minimal marketing? A smaller title released just widely enough to satisfy the letter of an agreement? Cinema United’s call for a wide-release slate with meaningful exclusivity and full theatrical marketing appears designed to prevent that sort of box-checking. Bonta made much the same point to The Hollywood Reporter, warning that a behavioral quota can look good on paper while being satisfied with a lightly invested film simply to meet the number.

Ellison says nobody should accept his commitments on faith. “I don’t ask to be taken at my word; the commitments are in writing,” he wrote in an August 4 guest essay in The New York Times. Fair enough, but written where? Enforceable by whom? Who decides whether a film qualifies, and what happens if Paramount releases 27? Bloomberg has reported that offers to AMC and Regal include penalties, though the mechanics are private, other than Acuña mentioning Ellison offering to enter a consent agreement.

That distinction matters. A handshake is one thing, a private contract another and a court-enforceable consent decree something else again. Most importantly for exhibitors outside the largest chains, do the protections apply broadly or only to companies holding private agreements with Paramount? A merger promise is only as good as what happens when keeping it becomes inconvenient.

Bonta’s objection goes further. He distinguishes behavioral remedies — promises about how the combined company will act — from structural remedies that change what it owns or controls. In his Hollywood Reporter interview, he cited moving a package of cable channels to another owner as an example. The states have not publicly laid out an equivalent structural prescription for theatrical, but Bonta has made clear that a 30-film promise alone does not get him there.

There is already a version of that approach overseas. The European Commission approved Paramount-Warner but required Paramount to exit United International Pictures, its longtime theatrical distribution joint venture with Universal in parts of Europe — a structural remedy, not a promise. UNIC welcomed the concession while strongly arguing regulators should have gone further on theatrical output, windows, contractual practices and catalog access.

The U.K. also cleared the transaction on competition grounds, while the government declined to intervene on public-interest grounds after Paramount made legally binding commitments covering editorial independence, Channel 5 News, children’s programming, media plurality, archive access and continued investment in original British programming. Different market, different law, but a government can still bless a merger and make the merged company give something up.

Nor is the underlying concern entirely new. Film access, booking practices and concentrated studio leverage echo issues addressed for decades by Hollywood’s historic Paramount Consent Decrees before their 2020 termination. The legal tools are different. The problem of too much theatrical distribution power in too few hands is not.

By now, the positions are clearer than some headlines suggest. Cinema United still opposes the risks it sees in the merger. Regal and Cinemark believe enforceable commitments could make the transaction tolerable. Bonta says advocating settlement is not the same as advocating the merger. That is not harmony, exactly, but neither is it capitulation.

Back at CinemaCon, O’Leary said exhibition was stronger when it spoke with “one consistent, strong and disciplined voice.” The months since have shown how difficult that becomes when every theatre company has its own leverage and interests. Perhaps unity was never going to mean the same public position. A better test is whether exhibition can establish common guardrails around output, windows, film terms, programming freedom and access that protect both companies able to negotiate directly with Paramount and those that cannot.

Those guardrails could outlast the merger. If Paramount accepts them, some may become de facto norms in negotiations with Disney, Universal, Sony and others because one major studio has conceded they are workable. They could also become the starting point the next time Hollywood decides five major studios are one too many. Rules written to get one merger over the finish line have a funny way of being difficult to put back in the drawer.

For now, Paramount-Warner is being fought in courtrooms and negotiated in boardrooms, press releases and op-eds. Its consequences will show up somewhere less glamorous: at the box office, on a booking sheet and, for some small-town theatre owner, in deciding what plays on the only screen next Friday night.

The post Cinema United Didn’t Back the Paramount-Warner Merger. It Put Its Terms on the Table. appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The most revealing audience statistic presented during CineEurope 2026 may have been the one that had barely changed. A slide from Rentrak’s UK PostTrak exit polling showed that 19% of current cinemagoers attended once a week or more during the first half of 2026, compared with 20% in 2019. The shares attending monthly, every other month or only once or twice a year were similarly close to their pre-pandemic levels.

That relative stability might have sounded reassuring had Lucy Jones, Executive Director at Rentrak, not placed it alongside a much less comfortable number: UK box office revenue in 2025 remained 21% below 2019. The British Film Institute’s official annual statistics independently reported the same decline, with 2025 receipts of GBP £996.8 million (USD $1.34 billion) compared with approximately GBP £1.3 billion (USD $1.75 billion) before the pandemic. The problem, Jones explained, was not necessarily that everyone who still goes to the cinema is going less often. It is that a substantial portion of the former audience is no longer showing up at all.

“The people that are in the cinema are coming just as often as they always were,” Jones said. “But there’s a group of people that really are just not coming at all.”

That distinction provided a useful starting point for “Audience Engagement Across Europe: What Really Works?,” a UNIC Focus Session held during CineEurope in Barcelona. Moderated by Cathy Huis in ’t veld-Esser, Chief Technology Officer at Gofilex, the session brought together Jones, Harry Bakas, Business Development and Marketing Manager at Village Cinemas Greece, Almudena Fernández-Golfín of the Federación de Cines de España (FECE) and Omdia analyst Charlotte Jones. Their presentations ranged from school trips and subsidized senior tickets to solo moviegoing and YouTube creators, but together they pointed toward the same conclusion: there is no single cinema audience waiting to be won back by one message, one price promotion or one sufficiently persuasive trailer.

Audience development works best when the industry first decides exactly whom it is trying to reach, identifies the particular obstacle standing between that group and the cinema, and then designs an invitation that is simple enough to understand and easy enough to repeat.

The Audience That Is No Longer There
Rentrak’s data also demonstrated why averages can obscure as much as they reveal. A demographic breakdown shown during Jones’s presentation found that women under 25 were the only group to increase weekly-or-more attendance between 2019 and 2026, with the share rising from 15% to 18%. Young women were not merely attending; they were also more likely to express an interest in seeing the same film again. Across all the titles Rentrak studied, 22% of respondents said they would like to rewatch the film in a cinema, with teenagers, young adults and women under 25 over-indexing considerably.

Music-oriented releases were particularly effective at generating that response. Jones said 43% of viewers surveyed for a Billie Eilish release wanted to see it again theatrically, as did 41% for “Michael” and 33% for “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” – evidence that repeat viewing can be a form of participation, especially when a film comes attached to a performer, community or shared cultural moment.

Women also frequently serve as the organizers of cinema visits involving families or groups of friends, Jones noted. In other words, their importance cannot be measured only by the individual ticket they purchase. They may be the person who initiates the outing and brings several other customers with them.

Solo cinemagoers present a very different opportunity. Approximately 12% of the audiences surveyed by Rentrak attended alone, with men and older moviegoers particularly likely to do so. That group is sometimes discussed as though going to the movies alone were a problem to be corrected, but it may be more useful to see solo attendees as customers who have already overcome one of cinema’s largest perceived barriers – they do not need to coordinate schedules, persuade a reluctant partner or assemble a group before buying a ticket.

What some may be looking for is not company during the screening, but a greater sense that the visit connects them to something beyond it. Jones suggested that films such as “Mother Mary” or “The History of Sound” could be paired with music events, while “The Christophers” might lend itself to an exhibition or discussion about art. The cinema, she argued, can function as a third space in which someone arrives alone to watch a film but remains to participate in a community.

This is the central challenge hidden inside the industry’s repeated calls to bring “the audience” back. Younger women, occasional moviegoers, lapsed patrons and solo attendees are not one constituency. They are groups with different motivations, habits and points of resistance, and treating them as interchangeable makes it harder to understand why some are returning while others remain absent.

Turning School Trips Into a Growth Engine
Village Cinemas encountered that problem in Greece despite already attracting a notably young customer base. According to Bakas, the circuit’s Marketing and Business Development Director, 65% of its visitors are between 18 and 35. Yet when Village examined school attendance more closely, it found a large audience “hiding in plain sight.”

Village’s presentation identified approximately 4,100 schools and 727,000 pupils in the areas where its cinemas operate, while school admissions in 2025 represented less than 3% of that potential audience. The circuit had screens, seats and strong brand awareness, but its approach to schools was largely passive – teachers contacted its commercial department to ask what was playing, with no dedicated educational catalog, targeted outreach or digital booking pathway.

Bakas described Village’s Cine School as taking “one of the oldest ideas in our industry – taking school students to the movies – and turning it into a platform, a genuine growth engine for our business.” Village did not invent school screenings; it attempted to remove the administrative and educational friction that made them difficult to organize.

The initial Cine School catalog contained 55 titles divided among documentaries, animated films, Christmas programming and narrative features, including films with positive social messages and current or recent releases that distributors had cleared for educational screenings. The selection covered primary, middle and secondary school levels, with documentaries addressing topics including science, society, arts, culture, nature and the environment.

For many of those titles, Village created downloadable educational guides containing suggested classroom activities and discussion topics, and teachers could keep students in the auditorium for another 30 minutes at no additional cost to discuss the film afterward. That small operational choice helped reposition the visit from an entertainment excursion that had to be justified to administrators and parents into a structured educational activity.

The program’s website turns the process into a defined sequence: choose an age-appropriate film, download the educational guide, submit a booking request and wait for a Village representative to make contact within two working days. Accompanying teachers receive free admission, the program offers free tickets to students from financially vulnerable households, and Village backed the platform with a dedicated schools database, outreach staff and promotion through its own media and the wider Antenna Group.

Village’s early results slide, covering March and April 2026, reported that the program had reached 1,000 schools and generated more than 700 website visits. The company reported a 165% increase in school-group visits and a 328% increase in school admissions compared with its 2025 benchmark.

Bakas was careful to acknowledge that much of the initial surge was driven by “Kapodistrias,” Yannis Smaragdis’s historical drama about Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first governor of independent Greece. The film’s local relevance made it an immediate success with schools, demonstrating that even the best audience-development infrastructure still benefits from the right content arriving at the right moment.

Still, the platform meant Village was prepared to capture that demand rather than merely fielding calls on an ad hoc basis. The company’s initial investment, Bakas said, was less than EUR €20,000 (USD $23,000), largely covering the website and promotional materials. Participating distributors did not require upfront licensing payments for the films.

The model will inevitably require localization if it is replicated elsewhere. School structures, curriculum requirements, distributor agreements and booking habits differ by country. What is transferable is the decision to treat teachers and schools as a defined customer group with needs of their own. The teacher does not merely need a film. The teacher needs suitable content, educational justification, predictable pricing, a safe environment and a booking process that will not consume an afternoon.

Tuesday Is for Cine Sénior
Spain’s Cine Sénior program addresses a very different audience through an almost opposite approach. Where Cine School required an educational catalog, teacher materials, direct outreach and human assistance, Cine Sénior succeeds partly because the offer can be explained in a sentence: people aged 65 and over can go to the cinema on Tuesdays for EUR €2 (USD $2.31).

Launched by Spain’s Ministry of Culture in 2023 with the support of the exhibition sector, Cine Sénior was created in response to two connected problems. Older audiences had not fully returned following the pandemic, while cinemas needed stronger attendance on traditionally quieter weekdays. Participating cinemas opt into the program voluntarily, and the government subsidizes the difference between the promotional ticket and the cinema’s usual price up to a defined limit. Because the subsidy is treated as part of box office revenue, distributors and rights holders are not asked to absorb the entire reduction.

According to figures presented by FECE, the edition discussed at CineEurope involved 397 cinemas representing more than 90% of the Spanish market, with EUR €11.5 million (USD $13.3 million) in total funding supporting a 12-month program. Since CineEurope, Spain’s Ministry of Culture has launched a fourth edition covering 394 cinemas and more than 2,800 screens, backed by EUR €11.15 million (USD $13.3 million) in funding for another 12 months.

The funding is essential, Fernández-Golfín acknowledged, and a nationwide subsidy of that size cannot simply be copied by every territory. But price alone does not account for the program’s effectiveness; Cine Sénior also combines routine, clarity, visibility and scale, with no membership scheme to decipher and tickets available through the cinema’s usual box office and online channels.

“Public funding is important. We cannot forget about that, but creating a strong sense of a cinema-day brand for them is important,” Fernández-Golfín said. “Tuesday is for Cine Sénior. It’s a well-known brand nowadays.”

That weekly appointment helps rebuild behavior rather than simply creating an occasional bargain. Going to the cinema becomes part of Tuesday’s routine, reinforced by hundreds of cinemas repeating the same straightforward message across the country. What might otherwise feel like a temporary promotion gains the credibility of a continuing national program.

The results also suggest that Cine Sénior is doing more than moving admissions from one day to another. FECE reported that Cine Sénior tickets represented 37% of all Tuesday tickets sold during 2025, while eight of the ten films most watched through the program were Spanish productions. Separate figures published by Spain’s Ministry of Culture show that the second edition drew nearly 1.69 million attendees in 2024, an increase of 83% over the inaugural year, and that the first 28 weeks of the third edition had already generated nearly 1.58 million admissions. The program has therefore created a meaningful weekday constituency while revealing a particularly strong affinity between older audiences and Spanish films.

The lessons are broader than the subsidy. A specific audience was identified, the economic barrier was reduced, a fixed moment was established and the communication was kept simple. As Fernández-Golfín’s presentation put it, targeted initiatives work when they respond to the needs of a specific audience. Older moviegoers are not passive or permanently lost; they respond when the proposition is clear, accessible and relevant.

When the Community Already Exists
Omdia’s presentation shifted the discussion from audiences that cinemas must cultivate to communities that have already formed elsewhere. YouTube ranked as the most-used video service across the United States, United Kingdom, France and Spain in Omdia’s November 2025 consumer survey, while long-form viewing on the platform has risen sharply across major European markets.

This does not necessarily mean younger audiences are choosing YouTube instead of cinemas. Charlotte Jones, Senior Principal Analyst for Cinema at Omdia, said approximately 45% of YouTube users also attended cinemas, rising to 55% among people under 35.

Rather than functioning only as a competitor for time and attention, YouTube has become an incubator for production skills, creative formats and intellectual property. Creators build direct relationships with viewers, receive almost immediate feedback and develop communities that may follow a project across videos, games, live appearances and eventually cinemas.

The documentary “Kaizen,” from French creator Inoxtag, demonstrated how quickly that online relationship could be converted into a theatrical event. According to Omdia’s presentation, the film sold more than 350,000 cinema tickets in a single day despite being scheduled to appear on YouTube two days later. The theatrical release did not depend upon keeping the film unavailable elsewhere for months. It gave fans a limited opportunity to gather around a creator and project they already considered their own.

“The Backrooms” provided Omdia with a more complex example of community-built intellectual property. Jones traced its development from an original 2018 post on 4chan through a growing online fandom, Kane Parsons’s YouTube series and an eventual A24 feature. The community did not appear when a conventional film campaign began; the movie arrived only after years of audience participation had already expanded and reinterpreted the idea. That history also explains why creator-led theatrical content cannot simply be polished into something unrecognizable – the attraction is often the voice, texture or unconventional quality that allowed the work to emerge outside traditional development systems in the first place.

“There’s obviously a very clear appetite for creator content, but to translate it into the cinema environment, that has to be done correctly,” Jones said. “It has to remain authentic, and it has to retain an appeal to the younger generation.”

The opportunity is not limited to horror, even if low-budget genre films such as “Obsession,” “Iron Lung” and “Backrooms” have provided some of the earliest examples. Comedy, animation and children’s content could follow, as could projects that do not fit neatly into the conventional distinction between a feature film and an event screening. Omdia’s larger point was that digitally native ideas and personalities are expanding what can qualify as a theatrical release.

“Younger audiences want to see that new IP, and they want to see their own heroes on the big screen,” Jones said. “Cinemas can harness that collective demand that is now building, and they can bring those fan communities together.”

One Screen, Many Invitations
Schoolchildren, Spanish seniors, solo moviegoers and YouTube fans may have very little in common demographically, but the programs and behavior presented at CineEurope shared a recognizable logic.

In each case, audience development begins by abandoning the notion that there is one undifferentiated public standing outside the cinema. The audience is made up of communities with their own motivations, constraints and expectations. The most effective initiatives do not ask everyone to respond to the same invitation. They identify the group, locate the friction and design a path into the cinema that makes sense for those particular people.

“It’s a matter of mentality – to open our minds, try new things and not stick to what we know,” Bakas said at the end of the session. “Cinemas will always be our core business, but trying to optimize what we have, or even finding new ideas, will get some payback.”

The industry may still speak about winning back “the audience.” The more productive task is determining which audience it means.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the seminars presented at CineEurope 2026 in Barcelona. See more reporting from the sessions below.

More from CineEurope 2026

• A Stronger Release Slate Eases One Problem for Cinemas, but Reveals a Harder One
• There Is No Global Formula for Cinema Success, but the Best Ideas Travel
• Gen Z Is Still Going to the Movies, but the Trip Has to Be Worth It
• Event Cinema Is Becoming an Always-On Business

The post Growing Cinema Audiences Starts With Knowing Who You’re Targeting appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Event cinema largely shed the label “alternative content” roughly 15 years ago, as live opera, theater and concert broadcasts became established parts of the theatrical calendar. The category acquired its own distributors and specialists, and audiences grew accustomed to seeing performances and cultural events on cinema screens. What is changing now is not the legitimacy of event cinema, but the way exhibitors approach it. Rather than waiting for an occasional major concert or one-night broadcast to arrive, some circuits are treating event cinema as an always-on programming discipline requiring the same attention to audience behavior, local market preferences and screen allocation as the conventional film slate.

That evolution was the focus of “Live & Direct: How Event Cinema, Live Experiences & Streaming Technology Are Set to Transform Cinema-Going,” an ICTA Focus Session held during CineEurope 2026 in Barcelona. Moderated by Gofilex CTO and co-owner Cathy Huis in ’t veld-Esser, the panel brought together Rentrak Manager, Statistics and Research Nathalie Kaiser, Cinépolis Group VP Global Film Programming and Content Miguel Rivera, Vue International Head of Event Cinema and Distribution Johnny Carr, Trafalgar Releasing CEO Marc Allenby and Gofilex CEO and owner Paul Huis in ’t veld. Together, they described a category that may account for a modest share of annual admissions, but increasingly requires year-round programming expertise.

One Category, Many Markets
Even defining what belongs within event cinema has become more complicated. Kaiser began the session by describing alternative content as a spectrum rather than a universally agreed category. A live opera, theatrical performance or concert broadcast clearly sits at one end. At the other are conventional feature films, while limited releases, rereleases, documentaries, anime, television-derived programming and other hybrid forms occupy an increasingly debatable space in between. The uncertainty is more than semantic: depending on what is included, measurements of the category’s market share and growth can change considerably.

Using a narrower definition centered on recognizably event-driven programming, Rentrak estimated that the category accounted for approximately 0.5% to 4% of 2025 box office revenue across the markets presented, with the UK at the upper end of that range. Its share of admissions was generally lower because event cinema often commands a higher average ticket price. The UK led Europe both in market share and absolute terms, while event-cinema admissions had risen from pre-pandemic levels in numerous territories. Latin America showed the strongest uplift in the comparison presented, followed by the UK, North America and Australia, although France and Italy remained closer to their earlier market shares.

The growth has not produced a uniform European market. Theater, led by National Theatre presentations and other stage productions, accounted for a particularly large proportion of the UK’s leading titles. Concerts, opera and children’s programming assumed different levels of importance in Germany, while the Netherlands presented a more fragmented mix led by music events. Concert films and music-related programming were prominent in Italy, while opera retained greater weight in Spain and theater, comedy and children’s events contributed more heavily in France. Rock and pop concerts came closest to being a broadly transferable category, but the larger lesson from Kaiser’s data was that an event that performs strongly in one country cannot automatically be expected to travel with equal force into another.

That regional variation is one reason event cinema increasingly demands dedicated expertise rather than occasional booking. “Get inspired by trends in other countries, or even realms outside and beyond the theatrical world,” Kaiser advised. The category’s fourth-quarter concentration also remains pronounced, with the final three months accounting for between 30% and 43% of annual event-cinema ticket sales in the post-pandemic averages presented. Major music releases, opera, theater and ballet seasons all contribute to that weighting, though a more diverse slate is beginning to create opportunities throughout the year.

Why Audiences Leave Home
The uneven supply of conventional studio releases since 2020 undoubtedly gave exhibitors more reason to seek those opportunities. Rivera noted that fewer major films created openings for additional programming, while Carr pointed to shorter theatrical windows and greater flexibility within cinema schedules. Yet the panelists were careful not to position event cinema merely as material used to plug holes in the film slate. Its stronger foundation is the appetite for experiences that audiences cannot reproduce by watching alone at home.

“There is a desire from audiences to come together to have a communal, collective experience,” Allenby said. Cinema exclusivity remains a major selling point, he added, along with the comfort, audiovisual presentation and sense of occasion offered by the auditorium. Carr cited “Doctor Who” as an example of content audiences may be able to watch free at home but nevertheless consider it an experience worth venturing out and paying for. “People will still choose to come to the cinema and be around fellow fans,” he said.

Affordability and access are equally important. A fan may be unable to secure a concert ticket, afford the price or travel to the city where the artist is performing. Rivera pointed to BTS’s concerts in Mexico City, where even fans who live in the city may not be able to afford a ticket to see the group live. The cinema provides what Rivera called “the next best way” to experience the event, while also adding the communal atmosphere and fear of missing out that have become especially important among younger audiences.

Kaiser suggested that the living room is not always event cinema’s real competitor. In many cases, cinema offers a more affordable and accessible alternative to attending the concert, opera or theatrical performance in person. Audiences are purchasing participation in a shared occasion rather than simply access to content that may later reach television or streaming.

Finding the Fans Who Will Show Up
Finding those audiences requires more than counting followers. Allenby cautioned that a widely recognized artist or property does not necessarily possess a fan base willing to commit to a cinema ticket.

“The breadth of the fan base doesn’t necessarily equate to an active audience that will commit to a cinema ticket,” he said. Smaller acts can sometimes have a more dedicated, even “rabid,” following capable of producing a stronger theatrical event than their overall reach might suggest.

For exhibitors, the process has become an exercise in continuous demand assessment. Carr said Vue evaluates comparable titles, studies how content has performed in other markets and works closely with distribution and internal marketing teams to determine the likely scale of each release. Advance sales are especially valuable. Once tickets go on sale, the circuit can monitor the initial response and expand or reduce the booking accordingly.

“You put something on sale and quickly monitor it,” Carr explained. “With some events, you’re there hovering to see what goes out the door at the start, and then you react.”

Cinépolis follows a similar approach, using presales to adjust the number of cinemas, screens and performances allocated to an event. Rivera said social listening has also become an increasingly valuable programming tool. Audience requests do not necessarily arrive through surveys or formal research. They can appear in the comments below an Instagram, TikTok or X post promoting an entirely unrelated film, with fans asking when a concert, anime title or other piece of programming will reach their local cinema.

“Constantly looking for and reading those comments and figuring out what people are looking for has become a source for us to go and seek out that content,” Rivera said.

An Always-On Programming Model
The breadth of those niches allows event cinema to become more frequent without necessarily making each individual presentation feel less special. Cinépolis programmed more than 80 event titles during 2025, according to Rivera. That volume need not diminish the sense of occasion because the programming can target entirely different communities.

Rivera noted that a BTS concert, a Pink Floyd presentation and World Cup matches could appear during the same week without competing for the same audience. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, then underway at the time of the panel, Cinépolis scheduled 32 matches in its Mexican cinemas, including stretches with one game per day.

Vue has moved even further toward what Carr called an “always-on approach.” Across the circuit’s markets, some form of event cinema may be available virtually every day, whether a live presentation, encore, children’s program or another specialized release. Larger music or theater titles can provide the commercial weight while smaller events serve more narrowly defined audiences.

Making that approach work is not simply a matter of putting more titles into the booking system. The exhibitor must match each event with the right locations, auditorium size, date and showtime. An oversized auditorium with a small audience can undermine the communal energy that drew customers to the event in the first place. Conversely, strong early sales may justify moving a presentation into a larger room, adding shows or opening additional cinemas.

“You want a decent occupancy,” Carr said. “You don’t want people in a room where there are two people here and four people there. That’s not the kind of experience I look for.”

The potential programming pool continues to expand beyond the concerts, opera and theater broadcasts with which the category first became established. Sports, preschool entertainment, television events and anime are already finding audiences, while Carr identified digital creators as a likely next frontier. Vue had recently carried “The Amazing Digital Circus,” a digital-native animated property with a large online following, providing one example of content developed outside the traditional film and television pipeline moving onto cinema screens.

“There’s an audience that’s growing up that’s fully digital, and they’re consuming content in a different way,” Carr said. “It’s going to be about leaning into that and bringing it into the theatrical space, giving it a theatrical pedestal and giving it that community moment to get the kids out of the basement.”

Paul Huis in ’t veld broadened the definition further, pointing to schools using cinemas to stream ceremonies for family members, companies transmitting executive presentations across multiple territories and exhibition groups sharing a local red-carpet premiere with cinemas elsewhere in their circuit. Such uses may not fit the public’s conventional understanding of event cinema, but they demonstrate how the same network of venues and delivery systems can be used to bring dispersed communities together.

Making Live Content Reliable
That opportunity depends on a technical foundation audiences should never have to think about. Paul Huis in ’t veld outlined the principal delivery options available to exhibitors, ranging from satellite and improvised internet feeds to managed IP streaming systems with local buffering and dedicated playback equipment. Recorded and encore presentations can increasingly be delivered as DCPs, giving cinemas additional scheduling flexibility, but genuinely live events require adequate bandwidth, backup paths and systems capable of surviving brief interruptions without immediately disrupting the auditorium.

Local buffering is particularly important because it allows a portion of the incoming stream to be held at the cinema, reducing the risk that a momentary connection problem will appear instantly on screen. Redundant delivery paths can offer further protection against equipment or network failures. The technical detail may vary by system, but the operational principle is straightforward: an exhibitor cannot promise a premium communal experience while treating delivery as an improvised laptop feed.

Testing is therefore as much a part of event-cinema programming as selecting the auditorium or setting the ticket price. A cinema must verify the picture, sound, synchronization, network connection and complete playback chain before customers take their seats.

“Make sure you perform the tests that are being made available,” Huis in ’t veld said. “Test before you put your audience in the auditorium and make sure that you have what you believe that you have.”

The final requirement may be organizational rather than technical. Allenby urged cinema companies to invest in people who can become specialists in the category and champion it internally, from getting shows on sale promptly to supporting local marketing and evaluating unfamiliar fan communities. Event cinema may no longer need to prove that it belongs on the theatrical calendar, but its next stage of growth will require exhibitors to treat it as more than a sequence of isolated special bookings.

The event itself should still feel exceptional. The programming, audience analysis and delivery behind it can no longer be occasional.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the seminars presented at CineEurope 2026 in Barcelona. See more reporting from the sessions below.

More from CineEurope 2026

• A Stronger Release Slate Eases One Problem for Cinemas, but Reveals a Harder One
• There Is No Global Formula for Cinema Success, but the Best Ideas Travel
• Gen Z Is Still Going to the Movies, but the Trip Has to Be Worth It
• Growing Cinema Audiences Starts With Knowing Who You’re Targeting

The post Event Cinema Is Becoming an Always-On Business appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

Asked where cinema operators should invest today if they want to remain relevant a decade from now, three industry executives gathered at the ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience did not begin by naming a projector, screen or sound system.

Christof Papousek, CFO and managing partner of Cineplexx International, led with quality and customer experience. Howard Kiedaisch, CEO of Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition, suggested that audiences increasingly approach out-of-home entertainment with a “go big or stay home” mentality, though he cautioned that what motivates customers varies by market and cinema.

Juan García, operations manager at Spanish exhibitor Odeon Multicines, was more emphatic, during the panel which was moderated by Marion Rosset, President of ADDE.

“For me, it’s identity, identity, identity,” García said. “It must be aligned with your idea of what cinema is for your customer. It’s not about one size fits all.”

That answer became a useful shorthand for much of the discussion that followed. Cinema operators are being presented with a widening range of premium screens, immersive sound systems, branded formats and alternative uses for their auditoriums. But the central question is no longer simply which technology produces the best technical result.

It is whether the technology fits the cinema, its market and its audience – —and whether the economics allow the exhibitor to pay for it before the next upgrade cycle arrives.

Different Technologies for Different Cinemas
García spoke from direct experience operating both premium LED auditoriums and advanced laser projection systems, including Christie’s CINITY format. Rather than positioning one as the inevitable replacement for the other, he argued that they offer different capabilities.

An emissive LED screen can change the way an auditorium is used. Because it does not require a projector or a completely darkened room, García sees the potential for cinemas to function more like adaptable event venues or even television studios, accommodating presentations, live events and community programming alongside conventional film screenings.

“It’s not about black or white,” he said. “It’s not about whether you prefer this or that.”

Laser projection and LED can both provide exceptional images, García argued, but they may suit different applications and different communities. Traditional projection also retains an important advantage: flexibility. A projector and screen can be installed or adapted in spaces where building a permanent LED wall would be impractical.

That distinction matters because technology purchases are often discussed as if the industry is moving toward a single future. García’s argument was that cinemas should instead begin with the experience they intend to create and the audience they are trying to serve.

The technology comes afterward.

When the Screen Is Ready Before the Movie
The limits of a hardware-first approach are particularly evident in the rollout of cinema LED.

García said Odeon’s LED auditoriums are still primarily presenting standard dynamic range versions of films because the supply of properly mastered cinema HDR content remains limited. The screens may be capable of far more, but the content pipeline has not yet caught up.

The problem is hardly unique to LED. Every new format creates what Kiedaisch described as a familiar chicken-and-egg dilemma.

Studios may be reluctant to create, manage and distribute another version of a film until a format has built a meaningful installed footprint. Exhibitors, meanwhile, are unlikely to make a substantial investment until they know there will be enough films to support it. Technology suppliers need both sides to move at roughly the same time.

Each additional format also adds complexity. Studios already manage numerous language, accessibility and technical versions across global markets. New premium variants require additional mastering, delivery, storage and quality-control work, increasing both labor and the possibility of mistakes.

The panel briefly discussed Disney Infinity Vision, the studio’s attempt to identify qualifying exhibitor-branded premium auditoriums and make them more recognizable to consumers. As Celluloid Junkie reported separately, Disney has positioned Infinity Vision primarily as a marketing and audience-navigation program rather than another consumer-facing technical specification.

Kiedaisch suggested Disney may be uniquely positioned to make such a program work because of its consistent supply of large-scale franchise titles. For exhibitors, however, the appeal is straightforward: a studio with considerable marketing resources would be helping audiences understand why certain auditoriums merit attention.

That may prove as important as the technology itself.

Four Questions Before Writing the Check
Papousek offered the panel’s most practical framework for deciding which investments are likely to create long-term value.

The first consideration is the economics of the market. Ticket prices, disposable income and the potential size of a premium surcharge differ considerably by territory. Cineplexx introduced certain high-end experiences earlier in Austria than it did in Serbia, Papousek noted, because Serbian ticket prices were roughly half those in Austria.

The second consideration is local history and audience expectations. Has the market previously supported premium presentation formats such as 70mm? Are moviegoers familiar with large-format cinema? Do local distributors support the necessary versions? In markets with a strong amusement-park tradition, motion-based or effects-driven formats may have more natural appeal.

The third factor is competition. Exhibitors must understand which systems are already available locally, whether a second mover can introduce something meaningfully different and whether contractual exclusivities affect the available choices.

Only then comes the fourth question: financial feasibility.

What is the capital investment? Can the system be financed as an operating expense rather than purchased outright? Will the supplier provide funding support? How long will the equipment remain commercially useful, and how quickly can the cinema recover its cost?

Papousek’s conclusion was bluntly pragmatic: the technically best system may not be the right technology for a particular cinema or market.

A less ambitious installation with a sustainable business model is more valuable than a spectacular auditorium whose economics never work.

The End of the 50-Year Projector
The pressure is greater because the digital cinema replacement cycle bears little resemblance to the equipment economics of the film era.

A 35mm projector could remain in service for decades. Digital cinema equipment may need to be replaced or substantially upgraded every seven or eight years, Papousek said, requiring exhibitors to begin planning for the next investment well before the current one has been fully depreciated.

The original conversion to digital projection was made possible in large part by the Virtual Print Fee model, which redirected some of the distribution savings from eliminating film prints toward exhibitors’ equipment costs.

There is no equivalent industry-wide mechanism funding today’s transition to laser, HDR, LED or the next generation of premium formats.

At the start of the digital rollout, cinemas could sometimes add a modest surcharge for a digital presentation. Early immersive sound installations could also command an additional fee. Those technologies eventually became standard, and the surcharges disappeared.

Exhibitors now face the prospect of repeatedly investing in technology that customers may soon regard not as premium, but as the basic price of admission.

Premium Pricing Requires Recognizable Value
Papousek said audiences remain willing to pay more when they recognize the added value, when the film suits the format and when the overall experience delivers on its promise.

That recognition cannot be assumed.

He cited a Cineplexx location in Vienna where a premium auditorium was installed within a cinema better known for arthouse and crossover programming. Some customers arriving for a weekday afternoon screening encountered a EUR €17 ticket and reacted by asking, in essence, whether the cinema had lost its mind.

The technology may have been impressive. The positioning was wrong.

Papousek also illustrated the demanding economics behind a large premium-format investment. An auditorium may need to generate somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 admissions annually to produce sufficient incremental revenue. With a EUR €5 net surcharge, the exhibitor might retain approximately EUR €2.50 to EUR €2.75 after the film rental split.

That can produce meaningful additional margin, but a system costing EUR €1 million – —particularly once financing costs are included – —remains a difficult calculation if its useful commercial life is only eight years.

Auditorium capacity matters. So does film supply. A premium room that performs exceptionally for a handful of tentpoles but sits underutilized during the rest of the year will struggle to justify its cost.

A Format Needs a Story
Papousek argued that a successful premium format requires more than equipment installed at the end of the production chain.

“The PLF high-quality experience needs a bigger story,” he said. “It starts at the beginning, with the creation and the work with the filmmakers, and it ends in the cinema auditorium.”

Filmmakers, studios and technology companies must collaborate if a format is to become recognizable and desirable. James Cameron’s association with “Avatar,” Christopher Nolan’s advocacy for IMAX and large-format film, and Denis Villeneuve’s work on the “Dune” films demonstrate how filmmakers can become ambassadors for a presentation experience.

Without that connection, exhibitors are left trying to market technical distinctions most customers neither understand nor necessarily care about.

Papousek also stressed that not every film belongs in every format. A spectacle-driven release may benefit from the largest screen and most advanced sound system available. A smaller arthouse title may be better served by a more intimate auditorium, careful programming and a cinema whose identity matches the audience.

Both can represent premium experiences. They simply offer different kinds of value.

Innovation’s Less Glamorous Backlog
Kiedaisch introduced another complication: while the industry discusses advanced screens and immersive formats, it has still not completed some of digital cinema’s basic technological housekeeping.

Trusted Device Lists, which identify equipment authorized to receive encrypted content, remain cumbersome and are often collected through manual processes. Security keys are still distributed by email. Advance ticketing remains inconsistent in some European markets. Live-event delivery lacks the standardized, integrated workflows needed to scale efficiently.

“There are still basic things that we don’t necessarily get right on the technology and operations side,” Kiedaisch said.

The Trusted Device List problem is particularly illustrative. The industry has discussed creating a global, non-proprietary system for years, but commercial interests and questions over ownership have repeatedly stalled progress.

“Ownership of the address book of the industry should be a pretty clear, simple thing to overcome,” Kiedaisch said, “but we’re still not there yet.”

None of this is as easy to market as a brighter screen or a new premium brand. Yet those foundational systems determine whether films, keys, live events and new formats can move efficiently through the theatrical ecosystem.

The cinema of the future will need both visible innovation and less visible infrastructure.

Audiences Still Come for the Film
For all the attention paid to projection, LED, HDR and immersive experiences, the panel ultimately returned to content.

“No one wakes up and goes, ‘I want to go see a big projector,’” Kiedaisch said.

Audiences choose the film, concert, sporting event or shared experience first. Technology can enhance that choice, make it more memorable and persuade customers that leaving home is worthwhile. It can also give exhibitors new ways to use their auditoriums and reach communities that traditional movie programming may not serve.

But it cannot manufacture demand for content audiences do not want.

That does not make technology secondary or unimportant. It means the investment has to support a larger idea: the cinema’s identity, the film being presented and the expectations of the audience buying the ticket.

García summarized the challenge by looking beyond the equipment itself.

“I look to the cinema, not the technology,” he said. “What are you doing with it?”

For exhibitors considering their next major investment, that may be the most important specification of all.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the 2026 ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. See more reporting from the seminar below.

More from ICTA Barcelona

• Disney’s Andrew Cripps Explains the Strategy Behind Infinity Vision
• The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out
• Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected?

The post Cinema Technology Is Advancing Faster Than the Business Model Supporting It appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

When cinema executives talk about competition, the conversation usually turns to streaming. Netflix. Disney+. The endless supply of entertainment now available from the comfort of the living room.

Karl Geraghty has a different view.

“Netflix doesn’t worry me at all,” said the head of Stella Cinemas. “The theatre down the road worries me more than Netflix.”

Geraghty was speaking during the International Cinema Technology Association’s Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience as part of a panel featuring the organization’s 2025–2026 EMEA Award winners. Moderated by CinemaNext’s Araceli Vaello, the discussion brought together Geraghty; Gregory Theile, CEO of Germany’s Kinopolis Group; and Tomasz Jagiełło, CEO of Poland’s Helios Cinemas.

Their companies operate very different businesses: a single-screen destination cinema in Dublin, a major multiplex circuit in Poland and a technologically ambitious new-build cinema in Hamburg. Yet they arrived at remarkably similar conclusions about what makes audiences choose one cinema over another – and, increasingly, what makes them leave home in the first place.

Competing for the Entire Evening
For Geraghty, Stella Cinema is competing not only with other cinemas, but with restaurants, cocktail bars, theatres, concerts and every other leisure activity vying for consumers’ limited time and discretionary income.

Stella’s goal is therefore not simply to show a film. It is to become the place people choose for the entire evening.

“We don’t just want “The Devil Wears Prada’ to do well,” Geraghty said. “We want Stella to be the ultimate place to go and see it.”

That philosophy influences everything from food and beverage to marketing and customer service. With only one screen, Stella may attract a completely different audience from one week to the next. The cinema therefore adjusts its cocktails, promotions and style of engagement to complement each film and the customers likely to attend it.

“The experience we’re selling for ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ would be very different from the experience we were selling for ‘Hamnet,’” Geraghty explained. “We have to pair the experience with the film.”

At Stella, that proposition is marketed as “a proper night out.”

“People will get dressed up to come to Stella,” Geraghty said. “They’re going to us because of the cocktails, the food and the level of service. That is what we sell.”

The Experience Is Only as Strong as Its Weakest Touchpoint
The emphasis on hospitality was notable given the setting. This was, after all, a cinema technology conference. Yet throughout the discussion, technology repeatedly took a supporting role to design, service and the complete customer journey.

That did not mean technology was unimportant. Theile stressed that excellent projection and sound remain essential. Kinopolis’ award-winning HafenCity cinema in Hamburg includes the city’s only Dolby Cinema and its only auditorium with D-BOX seating.

But technical excellence alone cannot rescue a disappointing visit.

“The experience is always as strong as the weakest touchpoint,” Theile said. “You might have 4K laser projection and Dolby Atmos, but if the waiting line is too long, if the app doesn’t work or if the restrooms aren’t clean, people will leave the cinema saying it wasn’t worth the money.”

Content can bring audiences through the doors despite an unremarkable building, Jagiełło acknowledged. But exhibitors cannot assume that will be enough to build loyalty.

Theile made a similar distinction.

“If you have the best and most modern theatre but you don’t have the content, nobody will show up,” he said. “The other way around, they might come once, but not a second time if the experience doesn’t meet their expectations.”

Creating Places People Want to Share
Jagiełło argued that moviegoing has become less habitual since the pandemic. Audiences increasingly respond to individual titles and the urgency created by concentrated marketing campaigns.

“People go to see the movie, not to go to the cinema,” he said.

That makes it more important for the cinema itself to become a destination – an interesting place where customers want to spend time and tell others they were there.

“Cinema must become a place people like to visit,” Jagiełło said. “They want to take a photograph and inform their friends that they are here, and their friends want to be there as well.”

Helios now considers social-media shareability when developing new projects. At one cinema, a decorative wall made from vintage VHS tapes became an unexpectedly popular backdrop for customer photographs.

“It has nothing to do with technology,” Jagiełło said. “It’s just an idea – creating funny, entertaining places where people would like to take a picture.”

Kinopolis approached its HafenCity cinema with a similar goal. Customers reach the lobby by escalator beneath a dramatic ceiling installation made from approximately 9,000 suspended tubes. The visual surprises continue through the bar and into auditoriums that have each been given a distinct design.

“It’s about surprising customers,” Theile said. “It’s about surpassing their expectations.”

He cautioned, however, that exhibitors should not simply install an obvious “selfie point” and expect customers to cooperate.

“The customer won’t take the bait,” Theile said. “It’s really the whole surrounding. They have to feel it.”

The most effective social-media marketing is therefore organic: a photograph of a cocktail, a glimpse of an auditorium or some other detail that communicates that a customer is enjoying an experience worth sharing.

For Stella, that peer-to-peer recommendation is particularly valuable.

“I don’t think most of our audience are necessarily going to Stella because of the company or because of me,” Geraghty said. “They’re going to go because their friends have told them, ‘This is the experience.’”

Premium Must Be Something Customers Can Feel
The panelists also questioned whether the cinema industry sometimes overestimates audiences’ understanding of technical specifications.

Jagiełło framed the issue in practical terms: Which investments will customers actually pay more to experience?

“People are ready to pay for recliners,” he said. “They’re not ready to pay extra for sound. They’re not ready to pay extra for picture quality.”

Customers may pay more for a recognized premium brand that incorporates superior projection and sound, Jagiełło added, with IMAX providing the clearest example. In that case, audiences understand and trust the overall proposition without necessarily knowing how the technology works.

Theile agreed that exhibitors and suppliers can become too focused on specifications.

“We overestimate the capability of our customers to understand what we are doing,” he said. “They have no idea about nits, foot-lamberts or resolution.”

There remains an audience for distinctive technologies, especially when a cinema offers something unavailable elsewhere in its market. But visible or tangible improvements – recliners, additional space, comfort and hospitality – are often easier to communicate and monetize.

The cinema industry may also be concentrating too much of its innovation inside auditoriums.

“I’m missing lobby solutions,” Jagiełło told the technology suppliers in the room. “Everyone is focused on the screen, the picture, the sound and the chairs. But the experience is not only here. The experience starts at the door.”

Charging More Without Leaving Audiences Behind
All three exhibitors supported charging appropriately for better experiences, though their different business models produced very different pricing realities.

Stella charges EUR €23 (USD $26) for a standard ticket, which Geraghty said is by far the highest cinema ticket price in Ireland. Nevertheless, the 215-seat venue regularly sells out.

“I don’t see any reason why cinemas should be paid less, or why people should pay less for cinemas,” he said. “But we have to up our experience. We have to up our game.”

Helios operates in a market where tickets generally range from approximately EUR €5 to EUR €10, with the upper end reserved for a genuinely premium experience. Jagiełło said pricing data showed that some customers would adjust the day or time of their visit to secure a lower price, while a much larger group appeared relatively insensitive to such differences.

That creates room for a broader price range, preserving affordable entry points while charging more for experiences with clearly higher value.

“Premium must be premium to stay premium,” Jagiełło said. It also requires standard auditoriums and standard seating against which that premium can be measured.

Theile likewise warned that the industry cannot allow cinema to become unaffordable. Operators need premium options capable of commanding EUR €17, EUR €18 or EUR €20 while also maintaining prices that allow families and more cost-conscious customers to attend.

The Refurbishment Trap
Behind the discussion of design, technology and pricing was a more difficult economic problem.

Many multiplexes are now between 20 and 25 years old. They remain profitable, Jagiełło said, but not profitable enough to finance the substantial investment required to transform them for contemporary audiences.

“Most investment goes to prime locations and prime cities,” he explained. “There are thousands of cinemas where there are simply not enough resources to transform them.”

The result is a refurbishment trap: buildings that generate enough money to continue operating in their present form, but not enough to fund the changes needed to remain competitive over the long term.

“If we do not adapt and if we do not change, many cinemas will have no road for further activity,” Jagiełło warned.

That challenge extends well beyond Poland. Across mature cinema markets, exhibitors are confronting venues that still function but no longer surprise, delight or provide audiences with a compelling reason to choose them over every other possible night out.

The panel offered no single formula for overcoming that problem. A boutique cinema in Dublin cannot be operated like a national circuit in Poland, nor can every existing multiplex reproduce the architecture or technology of a new-build venue in Hamburg.

What the three operators shared was a belief that investment should begin with a clear understanding of what customers value – not with a checklist of what a modern cinema is assumed to require.

Content remains essential. Technology is fundamental. But audiences judge the evening by everything surrounding them: the building, the seating, the service, the cocktails, the queue, the app and even the restrooms.

Award-winning cinemas are not necessarily created by doing more. They are created by making better choices.

And their competition is not simply Netflix or the multiplex across town. It is every other memorable way a customer could spend the evening.

Editor’s note: This feature is part of Celluloid Junkie’s coverage of the 2026 ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. See more reporting from the seminar below.

More from ICTA Barcelona

• Disney’s Andrew Cripps Explains the Strategy Behind Infinity Vision
• Cinema Technology Is Advancing Faster Than the Business Model Supporting It
• Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected?

The post The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

At Karlovy Vary’s Industry program (July 5-9), a sharp conversation held on July 6 on audience strategy argued that independent films can no longer afford to treat marketing as something that begins after distribution. Moderated by Deadline’s Zac Ntim, the panel, titled “Audience First: Rethinking Film Marketing Before Distribution,” brought together producer Mollye Asher, whose credits include Chloé Zhao’s “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” “The Rider” and Oscar-winner “Nomadland,” and Mathias Noschis, founder and head of strategy at European film marketing agency Alphapanda.

Asher said her approach to picking projects has changed over time, with the marketability an increasingly important factor. Earlier in her career, the key questions were whether she liked the filmmaker and the script. Now, she also considers whether there is an audience for a project, and whether the market wants it. “I do not necessarily always follow that,” she said, noting that instinct still matters, “but it is something I take into account, because it will also affect the financing of a project.”

Noschis argued that the best time to begin serious marketing work is not after a film is finished, but just before shooting. While producers can start thinking about audiences at the financing stage, too much can still change. Three or four months before production, once the script is close to final, is the ideal moment, he said, because teams can plan stills, interviews, social formats and festival positioning before everyone is consumed by the shoot.

The recommendation, however, also points to a growing pressure on independent producers: marketing is being pushed earlier into the production cycle, even as many teams are still struggling to close financing, secure cast and manage basic production logistics.

Creating Buzz, Prompting Debate
For Noschis, buzz is not something that can simply be manufactured after the fact. At festivals, it already exists in conversations between people asking what they have seen and what is worth catching. Alphapanda’s job, he said, is often to bring those conversations online, so that people beyond the festival can feel part of the momentum.

He cited Golden Bear winner “Yellow Letters” as a case where the campaign anticipated a wider discussion around politics and freedom of speech. By inviting people already active in that debate to engage with the film, the campaign was able to enter a conversation that was already happening. “Online you can never control everything,” Noschis said, “but up to a certain point, we were able to guide the conversation.”

Asher pointed to “Swallow,” which opened just as the pandemic hit, as an example of audience pockets becoming unexpectedly powerful. The film’s themes of female agency and confinement helped it travel online, while partnerships with Planned Parenthood and coverage in Architectural Digest gave it additional routes to visibility. With “Nomadland,” she said, she saw even more clearly how small audience clusters can help build wider awareness.

Partnerships, Timing and Visual Assets
The panel also tackled brand partnerships, still more common in the US than in Europe. Asher said she is currently exploring brands that are already organic to a project, partly for financing reasons but also for broader collaboration. Noschis warned, however, that any partnership must fit the film’s identity. “There is nothing worse, in terms of image, than a misfit,” he said.

That identity work, he suggested, starts with a simple exercise: imagine the film as a person. Is it a 15-year-old skater, or a 70-year-old woman who drinks coffee? From there, producers can ask which brands, influencers or communities genuinely match the film’s personality.

Timing was another major concern. Noschis warned that filmmakers can damage a project by going online too early and revealing too much about its progress. If a film has spent months or even years chasing a festival slot, the industry may start to perceive it as old. “This industry likes fresh meat every month,” he said. Materials should be created early, but not necessarily published early.

Asher agreed, adding that a press announcement only helps if there is a clear call to action, such as a market or financing push. Holding back images can also allow a team to choose the right trade publication for a first look and shape the public perception of the film.

Noschis was blunt about one practical requirement: hire a still photographer. “Get a still photographer to take proper stills, not screenshots,” he said. He added that poster designers need character portraits and images that actually communicate the tone of the film. Too often, he said, comedies arrive with no images that look funny.

In that sense, the discussion made clear that “audience first” is not just a strategic mindset, but a cost line. For smaller productions, the challenge is not only knowing what materials should be created, but finding the resources to create them properly before a distributor or sales agent is fully on board.

Old Gatekeepers Still Matter
The discussion also returned repeatedly to the enduring power of trade reviews. Noschis said buyers still rely heavily on a handful of major trades – Screen International, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline – even as the media landscape has fragmented. “Reviews are still extremely important,” he said, but relying only on them is dangerous. He cited Irish coming-of-age drama “The Quiet Girl,” which initially struggled to secure reviews out of Berlin’s Generation section, but built visibility through social media, later growing into an Oscar-nominated success.

That tension was one of the panel’s most revealing points: while marketing channels are fragmenting across social media, influencers and niche communities, the industry’s core validation mechanisms remain strikingly concentrated around a small number of festivals and trade publications.

For  “The Quiet Girl,” Alphapanda initially leaned into the film’s Irish-language identity as its unique selling point. Later, for the United Kingdom, United States and Oscar campaigns, that element was downplayed in favor of reviews and festival selections, showing how positioning can change throughout a film’s life.

Asked whether festivals still matter, both speakers were clear. Asher said most of her films have depended on festivals to attract distributors, audiences and reviews. Noschis described festivals as essential labels of reputation. For an acquisitions executive with limited time, a festival selection signals that a film is worth watching.

His broader message to producers was direct: thinking about marketing does not mean surrendering the film to commerce. It means being able to speak to sales agents and distributors at eye level. “Trust the people you work with and be ready to lose,” he said, “but have ideas yourself, because that is what starts the conversation.”

The post Indie Film Marketing Can’t Wait Until the Film Is Finished appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

For six years, Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome has sat dark on Sunset Boulevard, its familiar red-and-blue marquee offering moviegoers a daily reminder of what Los Angeles lost when Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas shut down during the COVID pandemic.

Now, the landmark finally has something it has lacked since March 2020: a credible path toward reopening.

Sony Pictures Entertainment and its wholly owned cinema chain, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, announced Wednesday that they will restore the Cinerama Dome and reopen it in early 2028. Renovation work is scheduled to begin next month, with Alamo operating both the Dome and the adjoining 14-screen complex formerly known as ArcLight Hollywood.

Cinema United President and CEO Michael O’Leary welcomed the announcement on behalf of the exhibition industry, describing Sony Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse as “two of exhibition’s strongest champions.” He added that “the timing could not be better, with moviegoers making clear this year that they love the unique experience of seeing a movie on the big screen.”

The announcement is also good news for anyone who feared that one of the world’s most recognizable cinemas might remain permanently stranded between Hollywood history and Los Angeles real estate economics. It is also about considerably more than rescuing a beloved building.

The Cinerama Dome gives Sony something more valuable than another cinema location. It gives the studio a globally recognizable centerpiece for an exhibition and experiential-entertainment strategy that has begun taking shape remarkably quickly.

Sony acquired Alamo Drafthouse in 2024, placing the circuit inside a newly established Sony Pictures Experiences division. In June, the company made a USD $100 million strategic investment in Cosm, the immersive entertainment company whose Shared Reality venues combine large-scale visual technology with live sports, entertainment and social hospitality. The Dome deal now adds one of cinema’s most famous physical venues to that portfolio.

The deal therefore provides the clearest answer yet to a question that followed Sony’s acquisition of Alamo: What does a major studio actually intend to do with a cinema circuit?

Apparently, restoring the Cinerama Dome is part of the answer.

Preserving the Dome, Reimagining the ArcLight
Sony says the approximately 86-foot-wide, deeply curved screen inside the Dome will remain central to its large-format presentation, while the Cinerama name and exterior branding will be preserved. The auditorium will not be converted into an Alamo-style dine-in cinema. Instead, it will maintain a traditional concession operation while adding Alamo’s repertory programming, filmmaker series, premieres and special events.

That is probably the right decision. Moviegoers have waited long enough to return to the Dome without also wondering whether a server will cross in front of them during the chariot race in “Ben-Hur.”

The adjoining 14-screen multiplex will operate very differently. It will become a full Alamo Drafthouse with dine-in service and curated programming. Sony says the complex will retain 35mm capabilities for archival prints and include premium auditoriums with immersive audio, 4K laser projection and 70mm presentation.

That split creates a potentially powerful hybrid.

The Dome can remain the architectural landmark and prestige event venue, while the former ArcLight becomes the larger commercial engine: a modern Alamo capable of playing mainstream releases, independent films, repertory titles and premium-format engagements across multiple auditoriums.

The famous white geodesic roof will inevitably attract most of the attention, but the adjoining multiplex may be just as important to the long-term viability of the project. Without it, Sony and Alamo would be restoring a historic single-screen venue. With it, they are creating a fully functioning Hollywood cinema complex.

Michael Kustermann, CEO of Alamo Drafthouse and head of Sony Pictures Experiences, called the location the circuit’s “new West Coast flagship.” That description is not marketing hyperbole. Alamo currently operates only one other Los Angeles venue, a 10-screen cinema in Downtown Los Angeles.

Variety reports that Decurion’s Robertson Property Group will retain ownership of the Hollywood real estate, with Sony operating the cinemas under a lease agreement.

For Alamo, the location solves a particularly Los Angeles problem.

Its Downtown cinema has built a devoted following, but Downtown is not equally convenient for moviegoers scattered across a city where a short distance on a map can turn into a considerable block of one’s afternoon. Los Angeles cinephiles will cross town for the right film, of course. That does not mean they enjoy doing it.

A Hollywood location gives Alamo a more central and visible presence near a large concentration of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, studios and entertainment-industry professionals. For a circuit built around distinctive programming, presentation standards and treating movies as events, there may be no more appropriate address.

The city’s cinephile population is likely to greet the arrival of Alamo in Hollywood with something close to jubilation; assuming everyone can remain patient until 2028.

More Than a Multiplex
What disappeared in 2020 was not simply a 15-screen cinema complex.

ArcLight Hollywood functioned as one of Los Angeles’ principal moviegoing town squares. It hosted premieres, press screenings, filmmaker appearances, festivals, industry events and awards-season gatherings. Its enormous lobby and adjoining café gave people somewhere to meet before a film, continue arguing about it afterward or discover that the person standing beside them in the concession line had directed it.

When Celluloid Junkie selected ArcLight Hollywood as its Cinema of the Month in 2017, we noted that the complex was important not because its amenities still seemed revolutionary, but because so many of them had become commonplace precisely because ArcLight helped popularize them.

When the multiplex opened in 2002, reserved seating was not yet standard across North America. Neither were spacious lobby bars, full-service cafés, cinema retail areas or the idea that audiences might arrive early and remain after the credits. ArcLight also became known for refusing late seating, eliminating most preshow advertising and having staff members personally introduce each feature before it began.

These details helped create a cinema designed less around processing customers and more around people who cared deeply about what was being shown and how it was presented.

“For many Angelenos,” we wrote at the time, “if they couldn’t see a new release at the ArcLight, then it wasn’t worth seeing.”

That may have been an exaggeration, but only slightly.

The loss was particularly acute for the local film community. ArcLight Hollywood was close enough to the studios to be useful, large enough to accommodate major events and prestigious enough that audiences actually wanted to attend them. Festivals could take over multiple auditoriums while using the lobby, bars and surrounding spaces for receptions and filmmaker gatherings.

The Dome gave the complex its iconography, but ArcLight gave it daily relevance.

That distinction is important as Alamo prepares to take over the site. The question is not simply whether Alamo can reopen the auditoriums. It is whether the circuit can restore the complex’s role as a gathering place while introducing its own programming culture and operating model.

Alamo is one of the few exhibitors whose brand is strong enough to make that transition plausible. Its identity has always extended beyond dine-in food service. The circuit grew out of repertory programming in Austin, operates Fantastic Fest and the American Genre Film Archive, and has spent nearly three decades cultivating audiences around themed screenings, filmmaker events and a deliberately theatrical approach to moviegoing.

Still, ArcLight Hollywood was not simply an empty multiplex waiting for a new sign. It had its own culture, rituals and loyal audience. The strongest version of the new complex will combine Alamo’s programming instincts with the presentation discipline and social character that made ArcLight influential in the first place.

Sony’s Experiences Strategy Becomes Visible
Sony’s acquisition of Alamo was initially notable because it placed a major Hollywood studio back in direct ownership of a significant cinema circuit.

Sony was not new to exhibition. It previously owned Loews Theatres and later held a substantial stake in Loews Cineplex. But the Alamo deal marked its return to the sector after more than two decades.

At the time, Sony said Alamo would remain open to films from every studio and distributor while becoming the foundation of Sony Pictures Experiences, a division focused on engaging entertainment fans outside the home.

That mandate was broad enough to mean almost anything.

The company’s Cosm investment made the direction clearer. Sony described Cosm as sitting at the intersection of technology, fandom and physical entertainment, with potential to extend film, television, music and gaming properties into immersive shared experiences. Cosm primarily presents live sports and other events inside large domed environments rather than operating conventional cinemas.

The Cinerama Dome occupies a different end of the experiential spectrum. It does not require inventing a new entertainment format because the experience already exists. Its value comes from being singular, historic and impossible to duplicate through an app or home-entertainment system.

Together, Alamo, Cosm and the Dome suggest Sony is assembling a portfolio rather than following a single model. Alamo provides a national cinema circuit and dedicated audience community. Cosm provides immersive technology and large-scale live experiences. The Cinerama Dome supplies history, prestige and a physical connection to Hollywood itself. The Los Angeles Times also placed the Dome deal within that sequence of Sony’s Alamo acquisition and USD $100 million Cosm investment.

For Sony, the value lies in having a permanent Hollywood venue through which its theatrical, television, anime, gaming and other entertainment businesses can connect directly with audiences. The complex can host studio premieres and fan events without becoming a Sony-only showcase, while its everyday operation remains grounded in Alamo’s broader programming identity.

That distinction matters.

The circuit’s credibility depends on programming films from throughout cinema history and supporting releases from every distributor, not merely filling screens with Columbia Pictures catalog titles. Turning the complex into a permanent Sony promotional pavilion would undermine much of what made Alamo attractive in the first place.

Sony now possesses a highly visible platform through which it can demonstrate what it means by “experiences” without abandoning the core theatrical business.

Six Years Is a Long Time for a Cinema to Sit Dark
For all the understandable celebration surrounding the announcement, early 2028 remains some distance away.

The extended renovation schedule suggests the project involves considerably more than replacing carpets and testing the popcorn machines. Cinemas do not generally improve while sitting unused, and the Dome and ArcLight complex have been dormant since March 2020.

Sony has not disclosed the renovation budget, the current condition of the auditoriums or which projection and sound systems remain onsite. It has also not said whether the Dome’s deeply curved screen can be restored or must be replaced, nor whether the venue will retain its ability to present three-strip Cinerama.

Those questions matter because the Dome was once equipped to handle an unusually wide range of formats.

During CJ’s 2017 visit, the auditorium had Christie Mirage 4K digital projection, Dolby Atmos, Kinoton film projectors capable of screening 35mm and 70mm, and a restored three-projector Cinerama installation with seven-channel stereophonic sound. What remains of that equipment nearly a decade later, and after six years without regular operation, is unknown.

The building’s designation as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument adds another layer of complexity. The landmark status protects the exterior rather than every interior element, but any substantial restoration of a venue this distinctive will still require balancing preservation, modern building standards and contemporary audience expectations.

Sony has promised to preserve the Dome’s aesthetic character, curved-screen presentation and traditional concession experience. That is encouraging. The real test will be whether the company can retain the qualities that make the auditorium unique while delivering the comfort, accessibility, projection brightness, sound quality and operational reliability expected of a modern marquee venue.

There will be ample opportunity to examine those decisions as the restoration moves forward. For now, the length of the schedule may be the clearest indication that Sony and Alamo recognize the scale of what they have taken on.

Los Angeles Reinvests in Its Historic Cinemas
The Cinerama Dome is also part of a broader wave of investment in Los Angeles’ historic movie palaces and landmark cinemas.

In Westwood, the Village Theatre is preparing to close for a year-long restoration under the ownership of the Village Directors Circle, a filmmaker group that includes Jason Reitman, Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas and Steven Spielberg. The American Cinematheque is expected to operate the venue, with plans for new releases, retrospectives, filmmaker conversations, awards events and festival programming when it reopens.

The cinema recently received a 70mm send-off with Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” before beginning the renovation

In Hollywood, Netflix completed a reported USD $70 million restoration of the Egyptian Theatre before reopening it with the American Cinematheque in 2023. The venue temporarily closed again this summer for further technical upgrades and is expected to return in the fall.

The ownership and operating models differ, but all three projects rest on the same premise: historic cinemas are not merely sentimental artifacts.

Properly operated, they can be strategic cultural assets; venues for premium presentation, premieres, repertory programming, festivals, fan engagement and events that ordinary multiplexes cannot easily reproduce.

That distinction may be increasingly important as exhibitors search for experiences capable of competing not only with home entertainment, but with every other use of an audience’s time and money.

The Village does not need to compete with a suburban multiplex on convenience. The Egyptian does not need 14 screens. The Cinerama Dome does not need recliners, mobile ordering or an endless menu.

Each needs to offer something audiences cannot get anywhere else.

In Sony and Alamo’s case, the adjoining multiplex may provide the commercial foundation that allows the Dome to remain singular.

Tom Rothman, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group,thankfully  summarized the enthusiasm less formally than most corporate announcements tend to allow: “Hot damn! We’re bringing the Dome back, baby.”

For once, the exuberance seems justified.

Sony is not simply adding another Alamo Drafthouse to its circuit. It is reviving a missing piece of Los Angeles movie culture, creating a showcase for its expanding experiences strategy and returning an important gathering place to one of the world’s most cinema-obsessed cities.

For a city built on movies, Hollywood has spent six years without one of its most important places to see them.

The wait is not over, but at least there is finally a date on the marquee.

The post Cinerama Dome Revival Gives Sony a Hollywood Flagship for Its Exhibition Ambitions appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The news that Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic “The Odyssey” would not hold “word of mouth” screenings for influencers was further fuel for the fire of a discussion that has raged in recent years. Is this marketing tactic – where commonly these more favourable, less critical reactions from influencers break on social media before the formal review embargo lifts – actually increasing awareness of these films, or is it devaluing the work of critics, whose more considered takes only get airtime after the breathless first wave of reactions.

The first reactions to “The Odyssey” flooded online after the global premiere took place in London on Monday, July 6. While there were some influencers and content creators in the mix – those who’d been invited to the premiere and/or seen advance screenings ahead of junket interviews – there were notably more mainstream critics and writers sharing first-look reactions, including Variety’s Jazz Tangcay, who called the film “a triumphant, spectacular epic” and the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw (“a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion”). When the film hits cinemas next week, the discourse around the necessity of influencer screenings will surely continue.

It’s a subject that was a central talking point at the 2026 European Film Market (EFM, 12-18 February), which took place earlier this year. Across various panels, conversations about social media marketing were notably less about “going viral” as a goal in itself, and more about whether online attention can be translated into something the industry can bank on, such as ticket sales, streaming subscriptions and durable audience habits. Across panels that ranged from TikTok’s #FilmTok showcase to a broader marketing strategy session on attention scarcity, one tension kept resurfacing: platforms can generate extraordinary cultural heat, but the path from community to cash remains uneven, difficult to measure and – too often – oversold.

That split was clearest on 13 February, when the EFM hosted “From Community to Box Office: How Fandom on TikTok Drives Impact,” an afternoon event framed around the platform’s growing role in shaping film discovery and consumption. TikTok’s Stephen Naughton positioned the platform as an entertainment destination rather than a traditional social network — “You don’t check TikTok; you watch TikTok,” he said — arguing that this mindset matters because users arrive primed to be entertained, not merely updated. He added that the company’s research suggests three-quarters of TikTok’s audience come to the app specifically to find new entertainment, and described the platform as a “24-7 virtual stage” where studios, creators and fans can meet on equal footing.

Naughton’s pitch leaned heavily on the idea that fandom on TikTok is participatory by nature: users do not just watch trailers but remix, analyse and reframe content, helping titles travel across borders in ways that can’t be replicated through classic top-down advertising. He sought to reinforce that narrative with headline figures: in 2025, an average of 6.5 million posts per day related to film and TV appeared on the platform; and, crucially, TikTok has been working with market-research company Media Control to track correlations between virality and theatrical performance. The topline result, according to Naughton: “15 of the 20 most successful theatrical releases in 2025 across Europe were TikTok viral hits,” defined as titles generating over one million related posts.

From Content to Connection
It was a confident argument — but it also underscored the central problem with social media “impact” claims: correlation and causation are easy to blur, especially when the biggest releases are already structurally advantaged through awareness, spend and broad availability. If a title is already set up to dominate the theatrical conversation, it will almost inevitably dominate the TikTok conversation too. The more interesting question is what happens beneath the top tier: can fandom meaningfully lift mid-budget and independent films into wider visibility, and can that lift be reliably engineered rather than hoped for?

TikTok’s preferred answer is “yes — if you treat creators as partners rather than megaphones.” Naughton argued that creator-led content can achieve up to 91% more engagement than traditional advertising assets, and pointed to the company’s work with Constantin Film, where collaborations across more than 15 releases generated over one billion video views. He also highlighted TikTok Spotlight, an aggregation tool that collects official and user-generated content into a central hub, suggesting that structuring fan activity — rather than merely observing it — can help campaigns sustain momentum.

Still, even within TikTok’s own framing, the emphasis was less on replacing conventional marketing than on rethinking what marketing is: less campaign-as-broadcast, more campaign-as-community management. Search behavior became part of that story. Naughton noted that one in five users searches for content within 30 seconds of opening the app, with film-related queries growing by more than 100% year-over-year — an indicator, he suggested, that audiences increasingly treat TikTok as a discovery engine for both theatrical and streaming titles, with real implications for how release campaigns are timed and structured.

Community Spirit
The panel discussion that followed broadened the conversation beyond theatricals into streamer-first dynamics, using Prime Video’s “Maxton Hall” as a case study of a #BookTok phenomenon turned screen hit. Moderated by journalist and presenter Aylin Kazi, the panel brought together Prime Video EU Head of Social Jacky Meire, TikTok creator Melo Nsuka and actress Runa Greiner. If Naughton’s presentation was an attempt to “prove” impact with numbers, the discussion that followed focused on what impact looks like in practice: community engagement as an “extra layer” of storytelling, where fans dissect scenes, debate character arcs and generate an ongoing sense of participation.

The subtext here matters for anyone marketing both theatrical and streaming titles: viewing is no longer a closed experience. Audiences often move straight from watching to TikTok, effectively recreating a shared, communal space around content — sometimes approximating the social energy of theatrical attendance, but with platform-native behaviors, such as commenting, streaming and (doom)scrolling. The talk also returned repeatedly to the idea of creators as trust brokers: recommendations from familiar voices often carry more weight than classic advertising, while behind-the-scenes access and transparency are presented as essential tools for maintaining momentum.

Yet the Maxton Hall example also highlighted a structural asymmetry: streamer launches are already “built” for rapid online conversation, with audiences able to watch immediately once curiosity is triggered. Theatrical releases, by contrast, require friction-heavy conversion: checking listings, choosing a showtime, travelling, paying. Social media can generate intent; cinemas still require action.

That friction came roaring back into focus on 19 February, at another EFM panel titled “Marketing That Works: Turning Change Into a New Advantage,” which approached the same broad subject from a more skeptical, conversion-first angle. Moderated by AC Coppens, the session featured Marina Kosten, USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future; Adriana Trautman, marketing strategist with experience at Paramount and Prime Video; and Oliver Fegan, co-founder and CEO of usheru, a marketing technology company supporting distributors across 30 countries. Where the TikTok session argued that fandom can drive measurable impact, this panel repeatedly asked: measurable how, and at what rate?

Under the Influence
Kosten framed the current environment as a brutal attention economy — “Content is everywhere, and attention is increasingly a zero-sum game,” she said — arguing that marketers often have mere seconds to communicate not just what a film is, but where and when to see it. “If people remember the where and the when, they are much more likely to convert,” she added, stressing that basic clarity is frequently overlooked even as campaigns chase novelty.

Trautman offered a blunt corrective to influencer-era wishful thinking: “Just because you cast an influencer, it does not mean their audience will convert,” she said — and rightly so. In other words, social reach is not the same as audience action — especially when the “influencer” relationship to the title is thin, transactional or obviously paid. In a market that sometimes treats social as a magic shortcut, her point landed as a necessary deflation.

Fegan then provided the kind of statistic that complicates almost any platform-led narrative of conversion: TikTok-driven traffic, he said, converted at just 0.1% when moving from platform to ticket purchase. That figure doesn’t mean TikTok is “ineffective” — it may still be powerful at awareness, discovery and cultural signaling — but it does force a tougher reading of what social media is doing at each stage of the funnel. If the jump from scroll to sale is that small, then campaigns live or die on what happens next: retargeting, repetition, and a cross-platform system that keeps nudging the interested-but-not-yet-committed audience until the friction is overcome.

In that sense, the most actionable ideas in the “Marketing That Works” session were not about chasing virality, but about engineering follow-through. Fegan stressed retargeting as essential — those who show interest but don’t purchase must be approached multiple times, often via automated but personalized messaging. The panel also turned to first-party data, arguing that direct relationships with audiences — through tools like usheru, cinema websites, email lists and smaller communities (including Discord) — are increasingly valuable in a landscape where platform metrics can be opaque and platform algorithms can shift overnight.

The panel’s European-vs-US contrast also sharpened the conversation. In the US, mass marketing remains dominant, supported by budgets that are simply out of reach for most European distributors. Fegan noted, “In Europe, distributors might spend EUR €3,000 (USD $3,425 to market a film in France,” and argued that such constraints force European campaigns to be smarter: niche targeting, community-building and direct audience relationships rather than scale-led saturation.

There was also a recurring emphasis on habit-building. Trautman and Kosten both argued that younger audiences will still go to cinemas, but often for events that feel communal — fandom experiences that resemble concerts or social gatherings. Trautman put it plainly: “They aren’t going for cinema itself; they’re going for connection with peers and shared fandoms.” In that framing, the real competition is not other films but other forms of connection — and the strategic goal becomes making theatrical attendance feel like participation rather than consumption.

Under the Influence
So what were the key takeaways from EFM 2026 overall, on social media marketing for films? Conversations and analysis were more measured than the usual hype cycles, but some contradictions persist.

On one side, TikTok’s case is persuasive in cultural terms: it is undeniably a major arena where audiences discover, discuss and reshape film and TV narratives, and where communities can form quickly around titles, talent and moments. Naughton’s insistence that fandom is “participatory, personal and perpetual” captures something real about contemporary audience behavior, especially when conversation can outlive opening weekend.

This is a point that was emphasised by more recent FilmTok research, released in April 2026. It bears noting that the research was conducted by TikTok and Cinema United, with support from Comscore. The findings proudly claim that TikTok conversation can lead to box office staying power, beyond the opening weekend buzz. Looking at four varied (albeit high-profile) examples — “The Housemaid”, “Sinners”, “Wicked: For Good”, and “Zootopia 2” — the report studies the correlation between increased TikTok activity tied a title, and strong box office holds. Of course, correlation isn’t causation, and buzzy box office hits could be seen to be driving the conversation on social media, rather than interpreting the relationship to be working in the opposite direction, but there were also positive findings relating to increases in #FilmTok and #MovieTok posts (up 55% year on year), and TikTok surveys indicating that 47% of users polled said they’d discovered new films via the platform, and 36% said they’d purchased a ticket as a result. Is short-form social media video the new watercooler?

“This report reinforces what we know to be true: that moviegoing is a cultural experience that resonates deeply with audiences,” said Michael O’Leary, President and CEO of Cinema United. “The data shows that when films connect with communities on TikTok, people come to theatres. That is good for our members, good for Main Streets around the world, and good for the movie industry.” It’s also worth noting that — even if it can’t be said for certain that TikTok is driving users to theaters — TikTok data could be another valuable tool for exhibitors making programming decisions, by indicating which film are still dominating cultural conversations.

On the other side, the more sobering data points from the “Marketing That Works” panel underline that conversion remains the industry’s weak link — and that social media is not a substitute for fundamentals. Availability, clear messaging (“where and when”), repeat exposure, and infrastructure for retargeting and direct audience contact still do much of the heavy lifting.

That’s why some of the most interesting EFM conversations were the ones that implicitly challenged the idea of social media as a silo. Even panels not explicitly “about” social platforms — such as Europa Distribution’s session on co-operation across the film value chain — kept circling back to a marketing reality: audience work cannot be detached from production, sales, exhibition and long-term release planning. The strongest campaigns increasingly start early, build shared objectives across partners and keep communication tight — because, as Spanish distributor Eduardo Escudero put it, “In our market, we only get one shot.” In a world of compressed windows and overstretched attention, that single shot at getting audiences in seats early on in the theatrical run has to be aligned across every link in the chain.

The biggest question, then, is not whether fandom can move audiences — clearly, sometimes it can — but whether the industry is building repeatable systems around that ability. The “Minecraft initiative” type of thinking — meeting audiences inside the spaces where they already play, create and socialise — can sound visionary, and it may well work for certain IP-driven titles and youth-skewing brands. But EFM’s more grounded voices would likely insist on two tests before celebrating any such initiative: show the conversion path, and show the cost per conversion compared to alternatives. Without that, innovation risks becoming experimentation.

Finally, there is the issue of credibility. Social marketing thrives on authenticity; film marketing often defaults to polish. The gap between those two aesthetics is where a lot of campaigns fail. The EFM panels repeatedly hinted at the same underlying principle: the most effective social strategies treat audiences as collaborators rather than targets — and treat creators not as add-ons, but as culturally fluent partners who can translate a film into platform-native language. A film like “The Odyssey,” with the built in appeal of Christopher Nolan – a rare crossover filmmaker as beloved by critics and cinephiles as mainstream audiences – might be big enough to be able to skip influencer screenings. But like many Nolan success stories, it could yet prove to be an exception rather than a rule.

The post Social Media, Fandom and the Hard Question of Conversion appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

That was the central argument emerging from the Cannes Docs panel “Micro Cinemas and Macro Impact: Independent Exhibition as a Social and Communal Practice,” held on 16 May at The Viewpoint, Lérins, and curated by DAE – Documentary Association of Europe. Moderated by Jeremy Chua, producer at Potocol and executive director of the Singapore International Film Festival, the session brought together Ruun Nuur, documentary programmer at the Vancouver International Film Festival and co-founder of No Evil Eye Cinema; Kira Simon-Kennedy, film producer and volunteer member of Paris’ La Clef collective; and Can Sungu, artistic director of Berlin’s SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA.

Chua opened the discussion by asking how such spaces address audiences underserved by conventional distribution, in a context where the Marché du Film itself embodies a traditional structure of buying and selling films.

For Simon-Kennedy, the answer lies in programming films that audiences are unlikely to encounter elsewhere. Speaking from the perspective of La Clef, a collective-run Paris cinema, she said the group’s work was driven by frustration with what is typically shown. “One of the guiding editorial lines, if there is one in a giant collective, is movies that aren’t shown elsewhere,” she explained. The aim was not to repeat “the same dead white guys,” but to look around the world for films that open up other histories and political memories.

Simon-Kennedy linked this directly to France’s colonial legacy and to gaps in cultural education. She cited the importance of showing films connected to independence movements, noting that works such as “The Battle of Algiers” had long histories of censorship or limited visibility in France. In that sense, programming becomes a way of “rectifying what’s not taught,” and of pushing back against what she called a “failed canon.”

Sungu argued that independent exhibition spaces can also offer distributors and producers a more meaningful route to audiences than some conventional festival strategies. While acknowledging the continued importance of premieres, he said that a small festival screening in a city may not always reach the communities a film is actually speaking to. By contrast, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA can sometimes screen a film three or four times, bringing it into contact with communities that are ready to engage with it.

“We are putting a lot of effort into finding the right communities, to bring the right film with the communities that they are really interested in,” he said. For Sungu, the value lies not only in attendance figures, but in the “discourse space” that opens around a screening, where audiences talk, argue, reflect and even dislike a film together. “I think this belongs to the cinema and this happens also in this physical space of cinema,” he added.

Nuur described how No Evil Eye Cinema’s own model emerged almost accidentally. When the collective first toured its programme “Sequence 01: Diasporic Reckoning”, it brought a new film and filmmaker to each town. “What we didn’t know at the time is we were creating a distribution model for this programme of short films that we would take all over the place,” she recalled.

Because No Evil Eye Cinema did not initially have access to sales agents or distributors, it used the networks it did have. Nuur, whose background is in film criticism, said the organisation made a point of inviting critics, editors, writers and festival programmers to screenings so that emerging filmmakers could receive coverage and visibility. The programme mixed first-time filmmakers with more established names, and this created a responsibility to support all of them beyond the single screening event.

Futureproofing Engagement
Looking ahead, Nuur said the collective is interested in working with a streaming platform that could host grouped programmes and pay filmmakers, expanding access beyond physical venues. She also described plans for masterclasses involving contemporary film workers, from cinematographers and directors to archivists and preservationists, as a way to connect audiences more deeply with artistic practice.

Sungu also pointed to SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA’s “Cinema of Harmony” project, launched in 2022, which brings together alternative cinema practices around the world, with a focus on the Global South while also involving European partners. The initiative shares films between micro cinemas, supports subtitling and allows works to circulate across different cities and linguistic contexts. He suggested that these models may eventually create new synergies with distributors.

The conversation became more urgent when an audience member raised the lack of cinemas in low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour, particularly in New York. Simon-Kennedy responded by connecting cultural access to wider systems of inequality. “There’s an enormous lack of access,” she underscored. “There’s an overconcentration of resources, but not just cultural – like medical, educational – in the wealthiest, whitest neighbourhoods because of racism and segregation.”

Nuur made a similar comparison, saying the lack of cinemas in Black, brown and low-income neighbourhoods resembled the existence of food deserts. “Film, art, cultural centres are a source of nourishment in a way like food is,” she said. He pointed to grassroots initiatives such as Alfreda Cinema in New York and Cinespeak in Philadelphia as examples of organisations bringing films directly to communities rather than expecting audiences to travel to institutional spaces.

For Sungu, the key was trust. He expressed scepticism about top-down outreach policies aimed at BIPOC communities, arguing that meaningful audience-building can only work through organic relationships. “I don’t believe in these kind of outreach policies that some institutions are doing,” he said. “This can only function if the organic relation is basically functioning.”

The speakers also discussed practical tools: La Clef’s printed flyers distributed in local markets, No Evil Eye Cinema’s press outreach and partnerships with institutions connected to filmmakers, and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA’s use of Q&As, conversations and even WhatsApp groups where communities organise outside mainstream social media platforms.

Across the session, micro cinemas emerged not as marginal alternatives, but as living infrastructures: spaces where distribution, access, criticism, community and care can be rebuilt from the ground up.

The post Micro Cinemas, Major Impact: How Grassroots Exhibitors are Rebuilding Film Culture appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

The headline numbers read as stability rather than rebound. Cinemas across the trade body’s 39 territories generated EUR €6.875 billion (USD $7.84 billion) at the box office in 2025, down 1.2% from 2024, while admissions fell harder, down 4.4% to 873.2 million tickets. Part of that gap is a pricing story: the implied average spend per admission across Europe rose from about EUR €7.62 (USD 8.69) in 2024 to roughly EUR €7.88 (USD $8.98) in 2025, an increase of just over 3%. The topline held up in part because tickets cost more, not because more of them were sold — a pattern that recurs market by market, not just in the continent-wide total.

“Although 2025 did not present as significant a step on the road to recovery… as many hoped,” wrote Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association and UNIC’s outgoing president, in the report’s opening section, “there were still many positive signals” for the sector. That caveat matters: the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes continued to ripple through the 2025 release calendar, contributing to an uneven schedule of U.S. titles, while several countries lacked the breakout domestic hits that lifted attendance the year before. Europe did not move as one market in 2025 — it rarely does, but this year made the differences unusually visible.

A Patchwork of National Results
Box office grew year over year in 17 markets, including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ukraine; France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Belgium, among others, declined.

The UK was the cleanest growth story among major Western markets: box office reached GBP £990.5 million (USD $1.36 billion), up 1.2%. “A Minecraft Movie” was the year’s top-grossing title at GBP £52.3 million (USD $69.4 million), while “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” was both the UK’s top local release, at GBP £43.3 million (USD $57.5), and — across Europe — the single most-watched European film of 2025, with 11.8 million admissions.

France and Spain show the other side of the price-cushion pattern. French admissions fell 13.9% to 156.2 million, though the comparison is complicated by the fact that 2024 had been lifted by the extraordinary, one-off success of “Un p’tit truc en plus,” which alone drew 11 million admissions. This year’s top French film, “God Save the Tuche,” sold 3 million tickets — the only local title to crack the annual top 10, but no match for the prior year’s outlier.

Spain’s admissions fell 8.5%, to 65 million, while box office fell a shallower 5%, to EUR €453 million (USD $516 million)— a similar per-ticket cushion at the country level. Revenue was up 3% in the first half before falling 16% in the second, while Spanish films held a steady 19% share, roughly flat against 2024 and a sign the problem was thin overall supply rather than a weak local slate.

Where Local Cinema Did the Heavy Lifting — and Where It Wasn’t Enough Alone
Germany delivered the cleanest example of domestic strength translating into real growth: box office rose 6.4% to EUR €924 million (USD $1.05 billion) and admissions rose 2.1%, with local films capturing 27.4% of admissions, up eight percentage points, led by Michael Herbig’s “Manitou’s Canoe,” which drew more than 5 million admissions and EUR €50.9 million (USD $58 million).

Denmark posted the strongest attendance growth in Scandinavia, up 4.5% to 10.25 million admissions, on a record 37% domestic market share against 23.3% in 2024; “Checkered Ninja 3” and “The Last Viking” led a slate of local releases that nearly doubled, from 19 titles to 39.

Italy is the more complicated case, and the one that best captures the report’s central tension. Local productions claimed 32.7% of box-office revenue, the highest share since 2016, on the strength of Checco Zalone’s “Buen Camino,” which opened on Christmas Day, took EUR €36 million (USD $41 million) in its first week, and went on, with a strong holdover into 2026, to become the highest-grossing release in Italian box office history, surpassing 2009’s “Avatar.” Yet Italy’s overall box office barely moved, up just 0.5%, and admissions actually slipped slightly, because Hollywood’s share of Italian revenue fell 25% year over year. Local content did not lift the market so much as keep it from sinking under that pullback — arguably the clearest evidence in the report for UNIC’s case that exhibition needs both halves of the slate.

Across the EU, European films held a 31.4% market share — down from 33.3% in 2024, though still above the 26.1% recorded in 2019. A record 42 European titles ranked among the top five highest-grossers in their national markets, up from 39 in 2024 and 26 in 2023: evidence of a broader, more evenly distributed slate, even as the aggregate share dipped.

Hollywood Still Anchors the Slate
The report does not pretend Hollywood is any less essential to the recovery story. The year’s most widely viewed titles across UNIC territories included Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “Lilo & Stitch”; Warner Bros.’ “A Minecraft Movie”; Universal’s “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “Wicked: For Good”; Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”; and Sony’s “28 Years Later.”

Those titles supplied the tentpole infrastructure local hits need to flourish — Italy’s case shows what happens when that infrastructure weakens. UNIC’s report argues that cinema-going cannot be sustained on tentpoles alone, nor can local production carry every market on its own; it takes a steady, year-round mix of both to keep admissions from sliding further.

Windows, Mergers and the Fight Over Supply
That argument is why theatrical exclusivity sits at the center of UNIC’s policy section, linked directly to admissions recovery, reduced piracy risk and exhibitors’ ability to keep investing in auditoriums and premium formats. The timing is not incidental: UNIC devotes substantial space to opposing the proposed Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery transaction, citing Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox as precedent, where the combined studio’s theatrical output fell more than 30% despite assurances made at the time.

UNIC wants the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to make any release-volume and windowing commitments legally binding rather than voluntary — a fight that will shape exhibitor supply conversations well beyond this CineEurope. With fewer studios controlling more must-see content, the risk is not only a further shift in bargaining power away from cinemas, but a narrower and less diverse release pipeline overall.

Momentum Builds Into 2026
The report closes on a more optimistic note than 2025’s figures alone suggest. December 2025 generated $3.5 billion at the worldwide box office, the strongest December since 2019 and up 10% year over year, momentum that carried into the first quarter of 2026, with more than 15 European territories posting double-digit growth. Gower Street Analytics has revised its 2026 outlook accordingly, raising its international projection, excluding China, by $50 million to $18.45 billion, citing stronger performance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

That optimism and the merger fight are two sides of the same argument. UNIC’s pipeline case — a deeper, steadier slate, with windows protected regardless of how the Paramount-Warner deal shakes out — is what is supposed to turn 2026’s early momentum into something durable rather than another year propped up by pricier tickets.

The challenge is making that less of a patchwork and more of a pattern. Whether that happens may depend less on audiences than on what regulators in Brussels and London decide to do next.

The post UNIC Reports European Box Office Held Near €6.9 Billion in 2025, But Admissions Tell a More Complicated Story appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.