Five years removed from some of the darkest days the movie theatre business has experienced, the industry conversation has changed considerably. According to Cinema United’s newly released Fall 2026 Cinema Investment Report, North American exhibitors have spent USD $2.7 billion on capital improvements over the past two years, including USD $1.2 billion during the most recent year. The eight largest exhibitors accounted for USD $1.8 billion of the two-year total and USD $840 million during the past year. 

The obvious takeaway is that exhibitors are investing in their theatres. They clearly are. The more interesting question is what kind of exhibition industry all that money is building.

More Than a Fresh Coat of Paint
Cinema United’s report also serves as a counterpoint to a stubborn narrative that movie theatres are somehow standing still while the rest of the entertainment business moves on around them. As a trade organization representing exhibitors, making the case for continued investment in moviegoing is part of its job.

The report is not a comprehensive audit of every cinema in North America, nor does it pretend to be. Cinema United itself says the document showcases “just a few” examples of the investments being made across the industry. Conducting a detailed survey of the physical condition and capital spending of every member company would likely require an entirely different research exercise… and presumably quite a bit more time and money. 

There are certainly theatres across North America where it can appear the last meaningful capital improvement arrived sometime around 2002. Maybe even earlier. But that doesn’t negate the billions being spent elsewhere. If anything, it helps explain why continued investment matters.

More importantly, the money isn’t simply going toward replacing worn carpet and applying a fresh coat of paint.

Cinema United estimates that installing a new digital projector in a single auditorium carries a median cost of USD $88,000. A new sound system runs about USD $58,000. Installing 1,000 seats across multiple auditoriums can cost roughly USD $1.1 million, while adding a kitchen costs around USD $450,000 and a full-service lobby bar about USD $575,000. Reopening and completely transforming a closed cinema can reach USD $8 million. Building a new cinema entertainment center from the ground up? About USD $45 million. (Just ask the folks at B&B Theatres.)

Suddenly USD $2.7 billion starts looking less like an abstract corporate expenditure and more like a very large collection of projectors, seats, screens, kitchens, bars, auditoriums and construction costs.

Follow the Money
Perhaps more revealing than the amount being spent is where exhibitors are choosing to spend it.

During the first half of 2026 alone, Cinemark added 21 premium large format auditoriums — seven XD, 12 ScreenX and two IMAX — along with 112 D-BOX motion-seat auditoriums. The circuit says 72% of its auditoriums now feature recliners, while 60% of its locations serve alcohol.

Arizona-based Harkins Theatres says it invested more than USD $30 million during the past year, adding 13 CINÉXL premium auditoriums and four CINÉBAR locations while continuing a major remodel of its Norterra location in Phoenix, including Arizona’s first Lumma 4D E-Motion auditorium. 

Epic Theatres renovated its Deltona, Florida flagship with recliners, expanded food and beverage, a bar, arcade and a Lumma 4D E-Motion system. Megaplex’s Downtown Daybreak location combines premium auditoriums with bowling, lane-side dining, games and private event space. 

There are smaller-scale examples as well. CineLux renovated its Tennant Station location in Northern California with a reimagined lobby, digital marquee and luxury recliners across 11 auditoriums. Classic Cinemas, which remarkably seems to always be upgrading at least one of their locations, recently completed what it describes as a decade-long capital expenditure initiative across its circuit. 

All this spending suggests that cinema operators increasingly see their competitive advantage not simply as having a movie on a big screen, but, as that hackneyed mandate goes, in providing an experience that is demonstrably different from watching that same movie at home. Yes, that means premium formats. Better projection and sound. Recliners. Improved food and beverage. Motion seating. Social spaces. In some cases, bowling, arcades and other entertainment options that turn the cinema into something closer to a broader entertainment destination.

In case anyone was wondering, this is the kind of investment studios love, and apparently they’d like more of it.

When Disney’s Head of Global Theatrical Distribution Andrew Cripps appeared at a June industry discussion marking the renovation of Regal’s Sherman Oaks Galleria in Los Angeles, the panel generally agreed that cinemas remain under-screened when it comes to premium large format auditoriums.

Cripps explained the distributor’s interest rather plainly: when a studio spends hundreds of millions of dollars producing and marketing a film, it wants those first moviegoers seeing it in the best possible environment. Those customers then become some of the film’s earliest advocates. “You want as many premium screens as possible,” he said.

The contrast with just a few years ago is hard to miss. In 2021, studios were still experimenting with shortened windows, day-and-date releases and, in some cases, sending films directly to streaming.

Now one of Hollywood’s largest distributors is saying there aren’t enough premium screens. For movie theatre owners, that is a considerably better problem to have.

About That USD $1.2 Billion
There is an interesting wrinkle in Cinema United’s numbers. If exhibitors spent USD $2.7 billion over two years and USD $1.2 billion during the most recent year, simple arithmetic puts spending during the preceding year at roughly USD $1.5 billion.

In other words, annual capital spending declined. Now, that sounds more ominous than it necessarily is. After all, capital spending is inherently… well, lumpy, for lack of a better word.

A circuit that spends several million dollars converting a theatre to laser projection, recliners and premium auditoriums in one year doesn’t need to spend those same millions upgrading the same location again twelve months later. The equipment is installed. The seats are there. The work has been done. Ideally, capital can move on to the next location or be used for other purposes.

Some of the equipment being displaced can move on as well. Projectors, servers and other cinema hardware don’t necessarily reach the end of their useful lives simply because one exhibitor has upgraded. Refurbished equipment can find a second life with smaller operators, meaning one cinema’s capital investment can sometimes put better technology within reach of another at a lower cost than buying new.

So while the decline from approximately USD $1.5 billion to USD $1.2 billion is worth noting, it would be difficult to draw much of a conclusion from that movement without knowing the timing of individual renovation programs. Annual expenditures can decline even while the number of upgraded cinemas continues to grow.

Nor is all of the spending coming from the largest chains. Roughly USD $900 million of the USD $2.7 billion spent over the two-year period came from exhibitors outside the eight largest circuits. During the latest year, that figure was approximately USD $360 million.

In an industry whose investment story can sometimes sound as though it begins and ends with AMC, Cinemark and Regal, that’s kind of refreshing to hear.

There is another way to appreciate the scale of the spending. Cinema United puts the 2025 North American box office at approximately USD $9 billion. On that basis, USD $1.2 billion in annual capital investment is equivalent to roughly 13% of an entire year’s theatrical box office.

That is not the same thing as saying exhibitors are spending 13% of their revenue, much less their profits. Theatre operators keep only a portion of ticket grosses and, naturally, generate substantial revenue from concessions, advertising and other sources. But the comparison is useful if you’re looking for a measure of scale.

Put another way, the industry has gone from a business that emerged from the pandemic wondering how much of its physical infrastructure it could afford to preserve to spending an amount equivalent to more than one-tenth of annual box office on improving that infrastructure.

The Job Isn’t Finished
None of this means every moviegoer walking into a cinema this weekend will encounter laser projection, a premium auditorium, a freshly renovated lobby and a bartender waiting to make them a martini (I take mine stirred, not shaken, no matter what James Bond says).

They won’t. The experience remains highly uneven, sometimes even within the same chain or market. Cinema United’s featured locations are illustrative examples, not a statistically representative sample of the average North American cinema.

The report also stretches beyond North America for some of its case studies, spotlighting investments by Major Cineplex in Thailand and HOYTS in Australia, even though the headline USD $2.7 billion capital expenditure figure applies specifically to North American exhibitors. 

But that distinction doesn’t obscure what the report does demonstrate.

And those expenditures are beginning to reveal what exhibitors believe the future of moviegoing looks like: fewer generic auditoriums, more premium experiences; better projection and sound; more comfortable seating; broader food and beverage offerings; and, increasingly, venues designed to offer customers more than the movie itself.

The more interesting question is how quickly that investment can move through enough of the cinema estate that upgraded moviegoing stops feeling like something customers have to seek out and starts becoming what they simply expect when they go to the movies.

The post Cinema Owners Have Invested $2.7 Billion in Theatres. What Is That Money Buying? appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta had a peculiar assignment on Monday: announce the settlement in his antitrust lawsuit that effectively clears the way for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery while making clear that he still does not think the two companies should merge.

“This settlement is not a vote of support for this merger,” Bonta said at a September 21 press conference. His written statement was similarly careful, calling the agreement “the best course of action” rather than suddenly discovering virtues in combining two of Hollywood’s five remaining major film distributors.

Paramount CEO David Ellison sounded significantly less conflicted. In a memo to employees after both the states and Writers Guild of America settled their antitrust lawsuits, Ellison said Paramount now has “complete clearance for this merger” and expects the transaction to close in approximately two weeks.

Between those two statements lies one of the most consequential Hollywood antitrust settlements in decades.

This was a merger much of Hollywood did not want, involving a company whose last several decades have already been defined by difficult combinations, restructurings and breakups. Cinema operators did not get the merger stopped. More than 5,000 actors, directors, writers and other industry workers signing a public letter did not get the merger stopped. The Writers Guild did not get the merger stopped. Ultimately, a lawsuit brought by 12 state attorneys general did not get the merger stopped either.

What those efforts did produce was a set of protections intended to cushion some of the consequences — for a while.

And before getting to what movie theatres received, it is worth stating what Bonta did not get; There is no structural remedy that Paramount must undertake before it can acquire Warner Bros.

No studio is being spun off. No cable network must be sold. Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures are not required to remain separately controlled competitors. The merger closes intact.

That is rather noteworthy for a case in which Bonta repeatedly argued that a structural competitive problem required structural remedies rather than promises about future corporate behavior. Instead, the structural remedies wound up becoming the punishment if Paramount violates the behavioral remedies Bonta once said were insufficient.

But we’ll come back to that.

This Time, They Put It in Writing
For theatrical exhibition, the settlement is considerably more substantial than the headline promise that Paramount-Warner will release “30 movies a year” suggests.

For cinema operators, the headline terms of the proposed five-year consent decree are unusually specific:

• 30 theatrical releases annually for years one and two, rising to 32 for years three through five
• At least 20 wide releases annually, rising to 21, with “wide” defined as 2,000 screens
• A 45-day exclusive theatrical window and 90-day SVOD holdback
• At least 20% of the slate must have production/acquisition budgets of at least $50 million and reach 3,000 screens
• Marketing support comparable to similar releases
• Three years of protection around existing film-rental terms
• Five years of continued access to the Paramount and Warner Bros. catalogues
• USD $30 million per-film consequences for output shortfalls, with Miramax divestiture after an uncured breach

Just as important are the anti-gaming provisions behind those headlines. A film released on fewer than 600 U.S. screens does not count unless it expands to 1,000 within 30 days. Re-releases, commemorative editions and repackaged versions of previously released intellectual property do not count at all. At least four films each year must qualify as Independent Films, though the definition is considerably looser than the label implies: any film based on an original screenplay qualifies, even if developed and financed entirely in-house. The word “independent” is doing some unusually heavy lifting. Separately, the decree creates a USD $5 million-a-year fund to acquire independent films. And at least half of the annual slate must be produced or jointly produced by the combined company — a qualification that becomes important later. The decree also calls its USD $50 million/3,000-screen titles “tentpoles,” a fairly modest budget threshold for what the industry usually means by that word.

For anyone who has spent the past decade listening to theatrical promises made during studio mergers, the important difference is obvious.

This time, somebody put them in writing. In an industry where assurances have become a depreciating asset, that is incredibly important, even if it does not make the underlying consolidation any easier to trust.

That matters given that movie theatre owners have been here before.

When Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, exhibitors repeatedly warned that combining two major suppliers of theatrical films would eventually mean fewer films and greater negotiating leverage for the surviving studio. The state attorneys general later cited what happened next: Disney and Fox averaged roughly 28 wide releases every single year before combining; from 2022 through 2025, the merged company released 54… in total.

The lesson exhibition carried forward from Disney-Fox was not simply that studios sometimes make optimistic promises before mergers. It was that those promises have limited value once the merger is complete and the negotiating leverage has changed.

Cinema United’s position earlier this summer was therefore remarkably specific. The trade association wanted a long-term commitment to theatrical output backed by meaningful exclusivity and marketing; protection against higher film-rental terms; safeguards ensuring theatres of all sizes could obtain films without programming restrictions that undermined local decision-making; and continued reasonable access to both studios’ libraries.

The state settlement meaningfully addresses three of those four demands, with perhaps the most consequential being film rental.

For the first three commitment years, Paramount-Warner must maintain rental terms consistent with the pre-merger “best practices” of Paramount and Warner Bros. for each exhibitor. The language includes honoring existing rental rates and terms and establishing a benchmark based on the terms each studio offered that same exhibitor before closing.

That is not a universal film rental freeze, and it does not mean a single-screen independent suddenly receives AMC’s economics under a most-favored-nation deal. What it does is anchor each exhibitor to its own pre-merger relationship with Paramount and Warner Bros. and attempts to prevent the combined company from immediately using its increased leverage to impose materially worse terms. The precise application of the decree’s “higher of the rental rate schedule” language will bear watching, even if the verbiage is convoluted.

For theatre owners who remember the rental changes that followed Disney-Fox, that is not a minor provision.

The decree also requires both Paramount and Warner Bros. film catalogues to remain available to exhibitors throughout the commitment period on terms broadly comparable to those offered during 2025, with limited exceptions around major reissues.

Cinema United President and CEO Michael O’Leary was broadly positive about the settlement, saying the agreement “accomplishes many of exhibition’s objectives.” He pointed to increased film production, theatrical exclusivity and wide distribution, protection against cost increases and continued access to both studios’ catalogues, while acknowledging that “no settlement can eliminate all risk from a merger of this size.”

Notably absent from O’Leary’s statement was Cinema United’s earlier demand for broad film access and programming autonomy for theatres of every size. The decree contains no comparably explicit prohibition on minimum-play requirements, clean-screen demands or other booking conditions that can be particularly burdensome for smaller operators. That omission matters beyond this deal: had such limits been written into a federal consent decree, they could have established a benchmark other distributors would have had a much harder time ignoring.

Thirty Movies Is Not Thirty Paramount-Warner Productions
There is another important distinction buried beneath the whole “30 movies” clause.

The decree requires Paramount-Warner to release 30 films in the first two years and 32 thereafter. It only requires half of them to be produced or jointly produced by the combined company.

Thirty movies sounds somewhat different once you read the verbs.

In the first two years, only 15 must be produced or co-produced by Paramount-Warner. In the final three years, the number is 16. A Legendary-style arrangement in which an outside company originates or substantially finances a project while Warner participates as co-producer and distributor can satisfy that requirement. The remaining films can be acquired for distribution.

That may be perfectly satisfactory to a theatre owner whose immediate concern is having attractive movies to put on screens. A ticket buyer does not particularly care which corporate balance sheet financed the negative cost.

But it matters enormously when analyzing what the merger does to Hollywood’s industrial structure. The decree guarantees a pipeline of movies. It does not guarantee the survival of the two independent studio pipelines that existed before the merger. Again, see Disney-Fox for how that turned out.

There is no requirement that Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures maintain separate greenlight processes, acquisition departments, distribution strategies or corporate priorities. One independent buyer of scripts, talent and projects still disappears when the companies combine. That means ParaBros or Warnermount or whatever the name of the new company is, may be trying to make more movies than they do today, with what will likely be fewer human resources.

The first two years’ 30-film floor is also less expansive than it might sound. Paramount itself said earlier this year that it planned 15 theatrical releases in 2026 and that Warner Bros. also had 15 on its calendar. In other words, the initial 30-film commitment largely makes the combined companies’ already-planned level of output enforceable rather than requiring an immediate increase above it. The meaningful additions are the definitions, release thresholds, windows, marketing requirements and enforcement provisions surrounding that number.

The Exhibitors Who “Flipped”
The settlement is already producing a convenient narrative in which theatrical exhibitors — particularly AMC, Regal and Cinemark — helped collapse the states’ case by switching sides.

There is some truth buried inside what is surely convenient shorthand. Bonta’s lawsuit alleged that the merger would harm theatres. When the three largest U.S. circuits individually reached accommodations with Paramount and publicly supported a negotiated path toward closing, the states were left arguing that exhibition needed protection while several of its largest companies were saying they had found a way forward.

That unquestionably complicated the litigation. But saying exhibitors simply “flipped” mistakes a negotiation for an ideological conversion. AMC, Regal and Cinemark appear to have reached the practical conclusion that Paramount would probably acquire Warner Bros. one way or another. They used the period in which Ellison badly needed industry support to negotiate commitments before the merger closed.

While AMC has the size and financial might to protect AMC, a regional circuit with 30 screens — much less an independent operator with one or two — cannot negotiate with Paramount from remotely the same position.

That imbalance is precisely why Cinema United’s August position mattered. The trade group did not endorse the merger. It said that if Bonta and Paramount were going to negotiate a resolution, any settlement needed protections covering output, windows, film rental, booking practices and catalogue access across the exhibition market.

As we previously detailed, Cinema United changed tactics. It did not suddenly announce that eliminating one of five major theatrical distributors was a wonderful idea. That nuance has been increasingly lost as the merger reaches the finish line.

The decisions by AMC, Regal and Cinemark unquestionably made Bonta’s case harder. It is difficult to argue that theatres need protection from a transaction their three largest operators have decided they can live with. But blaming exhibitors for the settlement confuses a loss of leverage with the decision to settle. Exhibitors did not settle the lawsuit. Twelve attorneys general did.

The Structural Remedy That Became a Penalty
Which brings us back to the biggest contradiction in the agreement.

Bonta spent weeks distinguishing between behavioral promises and structural remedies. On September 18, just days before settlement, Reuters reported that he continued to regard structural remedies as the most effective way to protect competition.

Yet, the final decree requires no structural change before Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Instead, the agreement contains two possible future divestitures.

If Paramount-Warner fails to hit the annual theatrical-release requirement, it gets six months to cure the shortfall. If it still fails, the combined company must divest its ownership interest in Miramax. Separately, Paramount owes USD $30 million for every missing film, whether or not the shortfall is subsequently cured. None of that money goes to exhibitors: 50% goes to union health and retirement trusts, 40% to the Motion Picture & Television Fund and 10% to the National Association of Attorneys General Fund. In other words, it is a deterrent, not a make-whole remedy for the theatre that did not get the movie.

Should Paramount eventually fail to release enough movies, the answer to excessive studio concentration is therefore, apparently, to sell Miramax. 

Sure, Miramax possesses a valuable library and recognizable intellectual property, of which Paramount owns a 49% stake. What it does not possess is anything resembling the scale, distribution infrastructure or current production output of Warner Bros. Pictures or Paramount Pictures. Selling it after a violation would be a structural action. But it would not recreate the major independent theatrical distributor eliminated by the merger.

The cable remedy, however, is more substantial. Paramount and Warner Bros. must negotiate basic-cable carriage separately for five years and cannot use their combined leverage to tie the two portfolios together. (Why the same kind of remedy wasn’t applied to theatrical distribution is a mystery.) An uncured violation can ultimately force the divestiture of BET — a network Paramount has shopped in recent years — along with VH1, Comedy Central and several other cable networks.

That would be a meaningful structural penalty. But again, it is a penalty for violating a behavioral remedy, not a structural remedy imposed on the merger itself.

Wall Street’s reaction was more mixed than a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Warner Bros. Discovery shares rose more than 10% Monday as closing risk receded, while Paramount fell nearly 3%. With many settlement terms already circulating before the announcement, the moves are better read as a repricing of certainty and deal costs than as an antitrust verdict on Bonta’s concessions.

Five Years Is Not A Long Time When It Comes to a Warner Bros. Merger
There is another fundamental mismatch in the settlement; The merger is permanent. Most of the protections are not.

The commitment period covers five full calendar years following closing. Worse, after only two full commitment years, Paramount-Warner may ask the court to modify the decree if it can demonstrate that the restrictions impair its ability to operate successfully or compete effectively and that the requested modification is not substantially likely to lessen competition. Paramount bears the burden of proving that case, so this is not an automatic two-year escape clause. It is nevertheless an explicit opportunity to seek relief from a settlement being sold publicly as a five-year commitment.

Five years is on the very low end of where this agreement should land. The Justice Department’s consent decree permitting Comcast to acquire NBCUniversal imposed behavioral conditions for seven years. The original Live Nation-Ticketmaster decree ran for ten. When DOJ later alleged that Live Nation had repeatedly violated that settlement, the decree was strengthened and extended another five-and-a-half years.

Indeed, a Justice Department antitrust official once described the central problem with temporary behavioral merger remedies using Comcast-NBCUniversal: when the decree expired, the merger remained. The department contrasted those temporary restrictions with structural relief intended to solve the competitive problem permanently.

That observation could have been made about the Paramount-Warner agreement. For an industry that greenlights films years before audiences see them, five years is not especially long. Ten would have covered something closer to multiple complete development and release cycles and provided a far longer test of how the combined company behaved once integration was complete.

Warner Bros., meanwhile, has spent much of the past quarter-century demonstrating that its mergers deserve a warranty longer than five years.

AOL and Time Warner combined in 2001, only for major pieces of that empire eventually to be spun back out. AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2018 and then, less than four years later, separated WarnerMedia and combined it with Discovery to create Warner Bros. Discovery in April 2022. Now Warner Bros. Discovery is preparing to disappear into Paramount Skydance.

The corporate structure keeps changing. The WB water tower, on the other hand, seems to have remarkable job security.

Enforceable — But By Whom?
Then there is the word “enforceable,” which has appeared repeatedly in descriptions of the settlement… and appropriately so.

This is not simply a David Ellison promise from a CinemaCon stage. The commitments sit inside a federal consent decree overseen by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Paramount must appoint an internal compliance monitor. An independent monitoring trustee, jointly selected by Paramount and a committee of the states, receives access to relevant personnel and records and reports on compliance. The CEO and general counsel must certify compliance annually.

That is somewhat meaningful since an antitrust decree does not enforce itself.

If Paramount disputes compliance, any of the plaintiff states can bring an enforcement proceeding in federal court. The decree requires notice and a meet-and-confer process before enforcement litigation, with non-binding mediation also available.

More importantly for exhibitors, theatre owners are not third-party beneficiaries of the decree. The agreement expressly says no outside person or entity may claim rights as a beneficiary under it. Meaning, if an exhibitor believes Paramount-Warner has violated the rental, catalogue, window or output commitments, the theatre cannot simply march into federal court and enforce the decree itself. It needs the states to care. And it needs them to continue caring three, four or five years from now, potentially under different attorneys general, after the merger has ceased to dominate Hollywood headlines.

The decree also includes a force-majeure provision covering events including wars, pandemics, strikes, labor disruptions, supply-chain failures and economic recessions. Paramount is excused only to the extent such an event actually prevents performance, and the states may ask the court to review an invocation of the provision. It is not the blank check some critics have suggested.

Bonta Ran Out of Room — Not Reasons
None of this means the states had an easy path to victory if they continued litigating. The exhibitors were only one part of a much broader squeeze. By September, Bonta’s room to maneuver had narrowed considerably.

California political figures had pressed for a resolution. Paramount was threatening a possible (if impractical) relocation of corporate operations. Federal regulators had already cleared the transaction. The Justice Department had even intervened in the recent bond dispute on Paramount’s side of the procedural question. And every additional delay increased Paramount’s financial exposure under the merger agreement.

At Monday’s press conference, Bonta did not pretend he had suddenly become enthusiastic about the transaction. He defended the settlement as the strongest practical result available while continuing to say he would have preferred the companies remain separate. That is worth taking seriously. Litigation has risk, and antitrust plaintiffs do not get to substitute certainty about their own theory for certainty about what a judge will ultimately decide. But that does not make the difference between Bonta’s original position and his final settlement disappear.

The states sued over what they characterized as a structural reduction in competition. They settled for temporary behavioral protections backed by monitoring, monetary consequences and structural penalties for future violations.

That is a legitimate settlement strategy. It is not the structural solution Bonta spent much of the summer saying was necessary. The decree is not insubstantial outside exhibition: it also requires at least USD $1.5 billion in incremental U.S. production spending over five years, with higher domestic-production thresholds if new federal and state tax credits are enacted, and creates a News Editorial Independence Board for CNN and CBS News. Both are meaningful commitments. Neither changes the merger’s structure. Bonta has said he intends to pursue tax-credit legislation that could trigger the higher production requirements.

What Exhibition Actually Won
Calling the settlement a victory for theatrical exhibition would probably be an overstatement, even if being considered of primary importance during a USD $110 billion merger was a nice change of pace.

Exhibitors did not ask for the number of major film distributors to fall from five to four. Cinema United spent months arguing that such concentration would increase studio bargaining power, threaten output and make smaller operators particularly vulnerable. The merger still does all of the structural things they worried about.

But in a deal they were increasingly unlikely to prevent, exhibitors did accomplish something they failed to secure during Disney-Fox: important protections were written into an enforceable court order rather than left in an executive’s talking points. The particulars are familiar by now, but the achievement is straightforward: output, release width, theatrical windows, catalogue access, film-rental terms and consequences for noncompliance are no longer merely negotiating promises; they are written into a federal consent decree. 

That will be important beyond Paramount-Warner.

The next time Hollywood decides that three major film distributors would be more efficient than four — because apparently this remains an evergreen corporate brainstorming exercise — Cinema United and individual exhibitors will not begin negotiations with a blank sheet of paper.

They can point to Paramount-Warner.

If one merged studio could accept minimum output, defined release widths, theatrical windows, catalogue access and film-rental protections, the next studio combination will have to explain why those provisions suddenly became impossible. That may prove to be one of the more durable results of this entire fight.

The battle also demonstrated something else. Disney-Fox moved through the regulatory process without anything approaching the sustained resistance Paramount-Warner encountered. This transaction required months of litigation, a federal no-close order, negotiations with major exhibitors, concessions to organized labor, thousands of entertainment-industry opponents, intervention by political leaders, settlement with 12 states and a 32-page federal consent decree.

Paramount got its merger. Nobody contemplating the next one can reasonably conclude that it was effortless. Whether that makes another combination less likely is impossible to know. It certainly increases the regulatory, financial and reputational cost that anyone considering such a move will have to price into the transaction.

For Hollywood stakeholders, the list of unambiguous winners is fairly short. David Zaslav stands to be handsomely rewarded for completing the transaction, while David Ellison gets the company he fought so hard to buy and avoids the enormous financial consequences of a failed deal. For theatrical exhibitors, the achievement is more defensive than triumphant: they did not make the merger desirable; they forced some of the risks exposed by Disney-Fox to be acknowledged and turned corporate promises into enforceable obligations.

Now comes the harder part. The protections have to survive integration, economic pressure, management changes, future litigation over their meaning and the simple passage of time. They exist for five commitment years, with Paramount permitted to seek modification after two.

Paramount and Warner Bros. will still be one company in year six. Most of the obligations intended to make that combination tolerable will not. That is when the industry will find out what this settlement was really worth

The post The Paramount-Warner Merger Is Permanent. The Guardrails for Movie Theatres Are Not appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

That was one of the more interesting takeaways from one of the events panel discussions, “Exhibitors & Tech Partners Fueling Box-Office Growth.” Inevitably, much of the conversation turned to premium formats, as cinema industry panels tend to do these days. But the discussion moved beyond the familiar argument that audiences will pay more for experiences they can’t replicate at home.

The more complicated question is what happens once a multiplex contains several of those experiences.

A Portfolio, Not a Single Format
B&B Theatres, for instance, has built a strategy around offering moviegoers a range of formats and concepts rather than relying on one premium auditorium. Depending on the location, that can include the circuit’s proprietary Grand Screen, ScreenX, 4DX, MX4D, D-BOX, screenPLAY! and other concepts ranging from Max Relax seating to Lyric and Marquee Suites. “We love concepts. We love to give customers a lot of options,” said B&B Theatres’ Brock Bagby.

At a 12-screen location, Bagby said, perhaps half the auditoriums might contain some kind of differentiated concept while the remainder retain a more traditional recliner configuration. The idea is not to premiumize every room, but to give audiences a choice in how much they want to spend and how they want to experience a particular film.

“What we continue to find on movies such as ‘Spider-Man’ is people have their format they want, and they’re seeking it out,” Bagby said.

Premiumization is no longer necessarily about steering a moviegoer toward the biggest screen in the building. Increasingly, exhibitors are offering multiple versions of “premium,” each with its own technology, price point and value proposition.

Which creates another problem: moviegoers have to understand what all of them are.

Daniel Loria, editorial director of Boxoffice Pro and moderator of the CinéShow panel, summed up the evolution neatly. “We’ve gone from marketing a movie to marketing a theatre, and now we’re marketing auditoriums,” he said.

That may be one of the less discussed consequences of exhibition’s continuing investment in premium formats. A consumer may already understand what IMAX means. Explaining the difference between a circuit’s proprietary large format, motion seating, 4D, enhanced audio, an upgraded seating concept or some combination of those technologies requires more work.

The Branding Problem
Regal Chief Commercial Officer Adam Rymer acknowledged that branded offerings can be particularly challenging. “We all suffer a little bit from some of our proprietary formats, whether that’s XD or RPX or SuperScreen or whatever it might be, and having the consumers understand what that is,” he said.

For exhibitors, that means the marketing job doesn’t necessarily end when a studio convinces somebody to see a movie. The theatre still has to explain why the customer should see it in one auditorium rather than another, and why the experience merits an additional charge.

Bagby said B&B has increasingly tried to do that directly, including through a social video series in which he explains the technology behind various theatre concepts. “A lot of them don’t get it,” he said of consumers. “They know it’s a big-ass screen, right? But they don’t get anything else.”

Explain the sound system, screen or projection technology, however, and Bagby said audiences — including a new generation of technically curious cinephiles — become considerably more interested.

The challenge becomes even more complicated when studio marketing enters the equation. Rymer said Regal works with distributors to understand which premium formats they intend to support and to obtain marketing assets appropriate for individual locations. Sometimes, however, those efforts collide with format-specific studio campaigns.

Regal has received one-sheets promoting a film in IMAX for theatres where the circuit does not operate an IMAX auditorium. Putting that poster in the lobby can amount to advertising another theatre in the same market. “We’re basically promoting our competition,” Rymer said. “This is something we need to push back on.”

It is a small example of a much larger change in theatrical marketing. As premium formats proliferate, a studio campaign built around one branded experience may help sell the movie while simultaneously steering customers toward whichever exhibitor in a given market happens to offer that format.

Disney is already trying to address a version of this problem with Infinity Vision, the premium-auditorium certification and marketing program it unveiled at CinemaCon earlier this year. Disney’s head of global theatrical distribution, Andrew Cripps, said during an ICTA event in Barcelona in June that there were roughly 75 exhibitor-owned premium large format brands in North America and more than 320 worldwide. “It’s very difficult — impossible — for us to effectively market all of those brands,” Cripps said. Infinity Vision is intended, in part, to give Disney a common marketing label it can use to steer moviegoers toward qualifying premium auditoriums that might otherwise carry dozens of different exhibitor-owned names.

That doesn’t eliminate the branding problem. If anything, the need for a program like Infinity Vision illustrates how complicated the premium marketplace has become. A cinema may have invested substantially in an excellent proprietary large-format auditorium, but unless audiences understand what the name means, the exhibitor still has to persuade them that the experience is worth seeking out… and paying more for.

What the Market Will Bear
There is also no universal formula for deciding which premium experiences make sense.

Cinemark International President Valmir Fernandes said the premium-format conversation in Latin America has evolved much as it has in the United States, with exhibitors offering customers more choice, but price sensitivity makes the economics considerably different.

“The formulas that work for some premium formats here, cost-wise, don’t work necessarily in Latin America,” Fernandes said. That doesn’t mean audiences in the region won’t pay for premium experiences. Fernandes said they will, when the location and product are right. The challenge is being more selective about where to make the investment and how much of an upcharge a particular market can sustain.

Fernandes said one of the more reliable ways Cinemark has found to build that audience is through its loyalty program, steering its most frequent moviegoers toward premium formats first. “They value cinema more than the non-frequent user,” he said, and those members tend to be more receptive to trying a premium auditorium once they’re offered the chance. He described it as a lower-risk way to accelerate the shift from standard to premium screens, market by market, rather than relying on price cuts or broad marketing to do the job.

The same calculation applies within the United States. Bagby said B&B has learned to set lower base ticket prices in smaller markets, allowing it to add a premium-format surcharge without pushing the total ticket price beyond what the local market will bear.

“That’s something we actually had to learn the hard way in a couple markets,” he said.

The lesson is particularly relevant for independent and regional exhibitors looking at premium-format investments. Adding a premium auditorium is only one part of the equation. An operator also has to determine what the local audience will pay for it, how often suitable films will be available and how the format fits with the other auditoriums at the complex.

The Scheduling Problem
Pricing is only part of the calculation. The next challenge is keeping a premium room productive. As operators add more premium rooms, those screens become valuable assets that have to be kept productive. Rymer said Regal spends significant time analyzing when audiences are coming, which customers are likely to respond to a particular format and how different films might be scheduled across those screens. “You now have an asset inside of your theatres which needs to be monetized,” he said.

That becomes especially tricky when multiple films capable of supporting premium pricing arrive at roughly the same time.

It is one reason Lumma partner and board member Rolando Rodriguez argued that the next stage of premiumization may involve not simply adding a premium format, but adding enough differentiated experiences that an operator is not forced to choose between titles.

Rodriguez, whose company offers 4D E-Motion and the lower-cost Magnify 8 format, cited investments ranging from roughly $60,000 to $70,000 for Magnify 8 up through substantially more expensive large-format installations, with motion-seating auditoriums falling somewhere between.

The precise economics of any installation will naturally vary by theatre, market, utilization and deal structure. But the larger point echoed what exhibitors on the panel were saying: premium has become less a single category than a portfolio.

Nicole Woods, RealD’s vice president of cinema and content partnerships for the Americas, framed that same portfolio logic from the opposite direction: for exhibitors with 3D-capable auditoriums already in place, differentiated premium inventory may already be sitting in the building. RealD is encouraging operators to treat 3D as a year-round strategy — spanning animation, concert films, anime, horror and repertory releases — rather than as an occasional offering tied primarily to tentpoles.

Whether every one of those formats ultimately earns a meaningful premium from audiences will depend on the market. The important shift is that exhibitors are increasingly thinking about their auditoriums in much the same way they think about their film slate: as a collection of different products aimed at different customers.

That makes the multiplex of the future considerably more complicated to operate… and arguably more resilient, provided audiences can find their way to the right room.

Right now, exhibitors are largely solving that problem individually rather than collectively. Bagby’s answer has been to go directly to consumers himself, on camera, explaining what a laser projector actually does. Rymer’s answer has been to push back on studios for sending the wrong marketing assets to the wrong theatres. Both are reasonable responses to the same underlying gap: the industry has not yet developed a shared consumer vocabulary for premium formats comparable to the one IMAX built for itself over decades. Infinity Vision is one attempt at a shortcut. It won’t be the last.

For an industry that spent decades largely marketing what was playing, the next competitive battleground is explaining, room by room, why it’s worth paying more to watch it there instead.

The post Cinemas Aren’t Just Marketing Movies Anymore. They’re Marketing Auditoriums appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

At CinéShow 2026 in Dallas, two consecutive sessions examined different systems for reducing friction in theater operations. One focused on the technology and processes that help exhibitors identify lost sales; the other showed how redesigning the concession stand can make purchases faster and easier.

Two Panels, One Diagnosis
During “The Cost of Guessing in Theatre Operations,” speakers examined how exhibitors can use analytics, apps, kiosks and regular testing of the customer journey to identify operational friction that top-line sales figures may not reveal. Brandon Calder of CinemaPlus offered one particularly striking example.

Calder said the conversion funnels his company reviews sometimes show between 65% and 87% of customers who begin an online ticket purchase abandoning it before checkout. He did not present that as an industry-wide rate, but as evidence that exhibitors should investigate where their systems introduce friction — a broken page, payment redirect, difficult seat map, unexpected booking fee or slow mobile transaction.

The operations panel examined how technology, data and routine testing can expose and reduce those obstacles. In the session immediately afterward, Epic Theatres Director of Food and Beverage Dan Herrle applied the same principle to a more physical system: the concession stand.

“When you’re on your websites and you’re clicking through, where is that friction? What is stopping that transaction?” Herrle asked. “It’s the same thing that happens in the concession stand. Where is the friction? Why are people turned off? Why are they walking past your concession stand instead of just browsing and shopping and making it part of the experience?”

The alternative Herrle described looks less like a conventional concession counter and more like a retail marketplace. Customers move through a deliberately designed shopping area, pick up packaged products, serve themselves popcorn and beverages and complete the transaction at either a staffed register or self-checkout kiosk.

“It should be easy,” Herrle said. “We’ve got to remove that friction.”

From Line to Marketplace
In a traditional cinema lobby, the concession line is primarily a mechanism for keeping customers orderly while they wait to reach the counter. In a marketplace layout, the queue becomes part of the sales floor. Operators can place candy, packaged food, collectibles and other merchandise directly along the purchasing path, giving customers time to browse and decide before they ever reach the register.

A conventional counter, by contrast, processes customers largely one at a time: an employee takes an order, retrieves the products, fills drinks, handles payment and repeats. Even a simple transaction can become a bottleneck when several auditoriums are seating at once. Marketplace designs separate product selection from payment, so a guest who already knows what they want can move quickly while someone browsing does not block the next customer.

Herrle presented results from NCG Cinemas showing how consequential that change can be. NCG had started from an especially traditional model, with everything kept behind the concession stand and not even impulse candy racks positioned in front of customers. Working with NCG’s Jason Brown, Herrle said the circuit introduced a relatively simple queueing and grab-and-go system that let customers move through the space, pick up products and let other guests pass while they kept deciding.

According to figures NCG provided to Herrle, revenue increased 51% at one test location and 165% at another, while per-capita spending increased 41% and 36%, respectively. Herrle said the new system generated approximately $7,454 in additional monthly revenue and paid for itself in roughly two months.

Those unusually large increases should be considered in light of NCG’s starting point. A theater that already displays products throughout its concession area is unlikely to replicate the same gains. But the results demonstrate how much revenue can be constrained when nearly every purchasing decision must be made at the counter.

Putting a Buc-ee’s in the Lobby
Herrle’s marketplace vision extends beyond a few candy racks alongside a conventional queue.

“You can put a Buc-ee‘s in your lobby,” he said, invoking the Texas convenience-store chain known for turning roadside retail into something approaching a tourist attraction. That could include reach-in coolers, packaged food, novelty merchandise and even a bar, folded into the same shopping environment rather than operated as a separate destination. The approach lets an exhibitor expand its number of stock-keeping units without forcing every product to compete for limited menu-board space or a single coveted spot beside the register.

Design matters. Herrle pointed to Cinemark’s own queue redesign (credited to David Haywood, the circuit’s senior vice president of food and beverage) as a model: aisles wide enough for one customer to browse while another passes, low fixtures that preserve sightlines across the lobby, and familiar brands positioned at both the start and end of the shopping path to draw people in and reassure them on the way out.

The model also suits the growing assortment of film-related merchandise exhibitors now sell — premium popcorn buckets, drink vessels and collectibles priced well above the ticket itself, which are better suited to a retail display customers can browse and examine than to a line on a menu board. None of this means every lobby needs to become a convenience store. It means the product mix has outgrown the counter it’s traditionally sold from.

Self-Service Changes the Labor Equation
Every Epic Theatres location now uses a marketplace-style, grab-and-go model with self-checkout, Herrle said, with products barcoded and scanned at the end of the shopping path. One employee typically welcomes customers at the entrance; another stays near checkout to help when needed. “Customers know what to do,” Herrle said.

Self-service popcorn and Coca-Cola Freestyle machines extend the same logic. Herrle said customers enjoy filling and topping off their own popcorn, and that Freestyle machines encourage two people who might once have split a large drink to buy separate ones because they want different flavors.

The bigger change is staffing. Herrle said it is possible to run concessions at a 14-screen complex with one person behind the counter, supported by an usher overseeing self-service — a setup he said could replace work that might otherwise require five to seven employees. During a packed “Spider-Man” weekend, he said, Epic’s concession lines never built up; employees spent their time popping corn and restocking while customers moved through on their own.

On the operations panel, Rob Crocker of The Boxoffice Company described apps and kiosks as tools that can automate transactions and compensate for staffing constraints. Think of an app, he said, as “an employee that’s working for you 24/7 and never calls in sick.” Herrle’s marketplace model applies much the same principle to the physical concession stand: product selection, dispensing and payment no longer require an employee at every step. That flexibility matters in a business where traffic can move from quiet to hundreds of customers arriving before an evening show.

Employees are still needed — to welcome guests, restock, assist with kiosks and troubleshoot — but no longer to perform every stage of every transaction. Herrle said leaving customers entirely on their own isn’t the goal, even though he has seen the system keep running when an employee calls out sick. For exhibitors, the more useful measurement may be throughput per labor hour: how many customers a cinema can serve during its busiest periods, and how much they buy while they are there. Pairing self-checkout with cashless payment can add further savings by eliminating cash handling, trips to the bank and armored-car pickups.

Efficiency or Inconvenience?
Whether self-service feels like an improvement depends entirely on execution. A system that moves quickly and gives customers control feels convenient. One that leaves a guest confronting an unresponsive kiosk with nobody nearby to help merely exchanges one kind of friction for another.

The same applies to mobile ordering. Herrle said apps work well once a customer has already downloaded one and connected payment and loyalty information. Requiring someone to download an app, create an account and enter a credit card while sitting in an auditorium introduces precisely the obstacle the technology was supposed to remove.

The lesson isn’t that every human interaction should be automated. It’s that exhibitors need to distinguish between service that adds value and steps that exist mainly because that’s how the theater has always operated.

More Sales, Less Control
The marketplace model also asks operators to reconsider a principle that shaped concession design for decades: inventory control.

A traditional counter keeps most products behind employees, where customers cannot handle them before purchase. That reduces theft, limits waste and makes inventory easier to monitor. Moving products onto the sales floor inevitably creates more opportunity for shrinkage. Herrle said Epic has not experienced significant losses and that most customers scan and pay for everything they select. The circuit continues to inventory certain items but no longer treats the possible loss of an individual cup, bag or piece of candy as the overriding concern.

That is the fundamental tradeoff. Keeping every product behind the counter may reduce shrinkage, but if it slows service, discourages impulse purchases or causes customers to abandon the line, some of that control is being purchased with revenue the theater never records. A successful marketplace still requires disciplined replenishment and enough supervision to prevent self-checkout from becoming the new bottleneck. Control does not disappear; it shifts from restricting access to managing inventory and customer flow across the sales floor.

Converting Demand Already in the Building
Much of the cinema industry’s attention understandably focuses on creating demand: finding the right films, marketing them effectively and convincing audiences to leave home. The CinéShow discussions raised a more immediate question. Once someone has decided to visit a cinema, how much potential spending is lost because the transaction takes too long, the purchasing path is confusing or the theater lacks the capacity to serve everyone during a short peak?

“The number one data point that operators don’t focus enough on,” Calder said, “is not what sales did I close, it’s what sales did I not close, and why.” Herrle’s marketplace argument applies the same idea to the lobby instead of the website: the moviegoer who arrives prepared to buy concessions but meets a line or ordering process that makes the purchase feel like too much trouble. In both cases, the customer’s intent already exists. The operator simply fails to convert it.

Crocker recommended that exhibitors regularly become their own customers — buying tickets, joining loyalty programs, attempting refunds — and Calder added that they should do it on the mobile devices and cellular connections their audiences actually use, rather than testing everything on an office desktop with reliable broadband. The same principle belongs in the lobby: walk the concession queue at peak times, try to read the menu, pick up products and complete a purchase exactly as a customer would.

There is no single model for every theater. Older buildings may lack the lobby space for a retail-style queue, and some locations will keep benefiting from personal service where menus are more complex. Others may land on a hybrid: grab-and-go products and self-service beverages, backed by staffed registers. But the underlying question applies everywhere: how much of the concession operation is organized around making it easy for customers to buy, and how much simply reflects the way cinemas have always sold?

For decades, the concession counter controlled the transaction by placing an employee between the customer and nearly every product. The marketplace reverses that logic, putting customers inside the selling environment and asking employees to support the transaction rather than personally conduct every part of it.

The popcorn machine is not going anywhere. The line in front of it might.

The post The Cinema Concession Stand Is Becoming a Marketplace appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

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.