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.

Locarno Pro (August 5-11) – the Swiss film festival’s industry platform – closed its biggest edition yet this August with 2,140 industry accreditations (up 10% year-on-year), nearly 100 countries represented and 1,463 pre-scheduled meetings. Among the 76 films shown across its industry programs was one whose journey encapsulated a less obvious question facing the sector: once a film has been rescued and restored, what happens next?

“Letter from My Village,” Safi Faye’s 1975 debut feature, won the third Locarno Heritage Restoration Contest in 2025 after being selected from more than 30 submissions. Cinegrell subsequently undertook the digital restoration, which was presented at Locarno in 2026. Arsenal Filminstitut, which has represented Faye’s oeuvre since 2015, sees the restoration as the first step in a broader effort to return her work to circulation, including a retrospective planned for late 2026 followed by screenings and events internationally.

The Senegalese filmmaker’s work was not tackled directly during Locarno Pro’s Heritage Monday roundtable, “How Classic Cinema Finds New Audiences.” But its return to the screen offered a timely case study for many of the questions raised there: what comes after restoration, who is responsible for rebuilding an audience around a catalog title, and how can repertory cinema compete for attention?

For Leslie Vuchot, founder and CEO of Timeless Cinema, the problem often begins with access.

Her company grew partly out of requests from cinemas seeking festival and classic titles during the pandemic. Rights could be difficult to clear, while locating prints, DCPs, subtitles and information about territorial availability could become a project in itself.

Timeless Cinema, launched this summer, aims to simplify that process for programmers. But Vuchot stressed that making a film available does not automatically make it attractive to an audience.

“Every venue needs curation and editorialization and eventization,” she said. The challenge is to extend the circulation of classic films in a theatrical environment already crowded with new releases.

Exhibition Can Fund Preservation
For Film Noir Foundation founder Eddie Muller, exhibition itself became the engine of preservation.

Muller began organizing festivals after publishing his book “Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir,” only to discover that some of the films he wanted to screen were effectively unavailable. That led him to establish the nonprofit foundation to locate and restore orphaned or neglected films.

Today, revenue generated by its festivals feeds back into restoration work, creating what Muller described as a closed loop beginning with exhibition.

The foundation now operates ten festivals in the United States. Muller deliberately works with venues that can offer something of a classic moviegoing experience, with double bills, ushers and programming designed to make the screening feel like a night out rather than simply access to an old movie.

“My actual job was maintaining the audience to watch these movies,” he said.

That can mean keeping audiences coming through the doors during 10-day festivals even on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when repertory cinemas might otherwise struggle to fill seats.

The cultural argument, however, has limits when dealing with commercial rights holders.

Recalling his efforts to convince US studios to make seemingly dormant titles available, Muller boiled the pitch down to one sentence: “I’m going to make you money.”

“That is the only viable answer that you can give in the United States of America,” he added.

As an example, he cited “The Crimson Canary,” a 1945 B movie that had barely been requested for decades but nevertheless found an audience through the foundation’s festivals. Another supposedly “lost” film, “Laughter in Hell,” produced an even simpler explanation from a Universal archivist: “It wasn’t lost. It was just nobody was asking for it.”

Give Audiences More Than a Screening
At the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, the same principle operates at a different scale. Its two theaters screen around 600 repertory titles each year, according to the museum’s director and president Amy Homma, but programming increasingly expands beyond the film itself.

A screening of Disney’s “101 Dalmatians,” for example, featured a real Dalmatian in attendance, and also ran alongside a live drawing class exploring hand-drawn animation. When Guillermo del Toro participated in a Hitchcock program, he was encouraged to work with archival papers and production materials rather than simply introduce the screening.

The aim, Homma explained, was to create “forever memories.”

“We have to be thinking of audience engagement as creatively as we possibly can,” she added.

Not every repertory venue can produce that level of event regularly, but Homma argued that consistency matters almost as much as scale. A dependable monthly screening can gradually create word of mouth, membership and a recognizable community around a venue.

Heritage Is Not Just Nostalgia
Perhaps the strongest evidence that this is not simply a nostalgia market came from Arsenal artistic director Stefanie Schulte Strathaus — whose institution, separately from the panel discussion, is also behind the renewed circulation of “Letter from My Village.”

“We make more income now with heritage film than with new films,” she told the audience.

The unexpected successes include restored shorts by India’s feminist Yugantar collective and the Sudanese Film Group. These are not necessarily canonical titles with pre-existing mass recognition, yet they have been circulating internationally.

Schulte Strathaus linked that interest to a younger audience searching the past for alternatives to dominant historical narratives.

“Film heritage offers so many potential futures,” she said.

Interest also extends to analog processes themselves. Arsenal’s workshops on Bolex cameras, film development, digitization, cataloging and projection can book out within days. The institution sometimes screens material before restoration, allowing audiences to understand the condition of the work and follow the process of bringing it back.

“Being transparent, being open, letting people in and not keeping them outside is the key,” she said.

That approach gives additional context to Arsenal’s plans for Faye. The restoration of “Letter from My Village” is not being positioned as an isolated technical achievement: the institution says it is intended to initiate renewed visibility for her wider filmography.

Build the Relationship Earlier
A second Locarno Pro session suggested that this audience-first thinking begins long before a film reaches the archive..

During Open Doors’ “It Takes a Village: Investing in Film Beyond Cinema,” Darcy Heusel, founder of audience-development and US distribution company Outside, described audience as something more fundamental.

“Audience really is the infrastructure,” she said.

Heusel argued that a small but committed group can be more useful than hundreds of thousands of passive social media followers, and that the relationship should begin during development rather than shortly before a festival premiere or theatrical release. Ugandan producer Samuel Tebandeke echoed that point. “I need to build that community from the moment I get a green light and say, ‘We’re shooting this film,’” he said.

For a newly financed feature and a 50-year-old restoration, the mechanics are obviously different. The underlying challenge is not. Films do not automatically find audiences because they have been funded, selected, digitized or restored. Someone still has to provide context, create an experience and establish a relationship between the work and people who might never have known to ask for it.

For “Letter from My Village,” Locarno’s restoration therefore marks less an endpoint than the beginning of another cycle: from preservation to circulation, and from circulation to rediscovery. Restoration can save a film; rediscovery, however, requires an audience.

The post At Locarno, Restored Films Face Their Next Challenge: Finding an Audience appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

For nearly six years, the cinema business has been living one year ahead of itself.

Next year would bring the stronger film slate. Next year would restore attendance. Next year would finally mark the beginning of a sustained theatrical recovery.

“For the past six years, we have been the industry of tomorrow,” Javier Sotomayor, President of Cineworld International, told attendees at CineEurope in Barcelona. “Next year will be the year. Next year will be the year. Next year will be the year.”

This time, he believes the industry may finally have arrived at that elusive tomorrow.

“I believe this is the year,” Sotomayor said. “This is the start of the takeoff.”

Sotomayor’s cautiously optimistic assessment came during CineEurope’s Executive Roundtable, held as the convention marked its 35th anniversary. Moderated by Sharon Reid, Director of Marketing and Partnerships at Cinema First, the discussion brought together Sotomayor; Kinepolis Group CEO Eddy Duquenne; Laure de Boissard, Managing Director of Pathé Cinémas France; Anna Marsh, CEO of STUDIOCANAL and Deputy CEO and Chief Content Officer of CANAL+; and French screenwriter and director Cécilia Rouaud.

The anniversary framing invited a certain amount of looking backward, from the arrival of the multiplex and home video to digital ticketing, luxury seating and premium large formats. Yet the panel’s more consequential argument was about what comes next.

The industry’s recent difficulties, the speakers suggested, were not evidence that audiences had permanently abandoned cinemas. They were primarily the result of an insufficient and inconsistent flow of films.

A healthier supply is now beginning to test that diagnosis. But more films will not, by themselves, guarantee a complete recovery. Exhibitors and distributors must still make audiences aware of what is playing, give a wider variety of films enough screens and time to find their public, preserve the accessibility of cinema-going and create experiences that turn an occasional visit into a habit.

An Audience Waiting for Films
Duquenne offered the panel’s clearest diagnosis of the post-pandemic theatrical market.

“Don’t forget that in 2025 we were working with one-third fewer wide releases,” he said, referencing the pandemic production shutdowns, labor strikes and a period in which several major studios directed considerable resources toward streaming.

Duquenne argued that the performance of major titles – and of less predictable successes – has steadily undermined the idea that the underlying appetite for cinema-going has disappeared.

“The good news is that we don’t have a demand issue,” he said. “If you have a big blockbuster, it is breaking new box-office records after opening weekend. We had a supply issue.”

The first half of 2026 provided encouraging evidence. A more consistent mix of Hollywood releases, local productions, genre films and unexpected breakouts gave audiences more reasons to return regularly rather than waiting months between obvious theatrical events.

De Boissard said the effect extends beyond the performance of any individual film. Successful releases create a broader sense that cinemas are once again places where something is happening.

“When you have a strong lineup with different kinds of movies that people want to see, you have positive momentum around the moviegoing experience,” she said. “The media is talking about success in cinema. It gives people the idea to go.”

That momentum had been particularly visible in France, where films including “Marsupilami” and STUDIOCANAL’s “Gourou” (“Guru”) performed alongside major American releases and horror titles such as “Obsession” and “Backrooms.”

“The more you go to the cinema, the more you want to go to the cinema,” de Boissard said.

For Marsh, the value of theatrical success also extends well beyond the revenue generated during a film’s initial run. She pushed back against the suggestion that cinemas primarily provide studios with an opportunity to pay off production costs before titles move into subsequent windows.

“When you release a movie theatrically, you’re setting it up for success for years to come,” Marsh said. “You’ve got the marketing buzz, the publicity and the talkability, but it becomes a theatrical asset for many years. It’s not just about amortization. It’s long-term value.”

Sotomayor agreed that content remains the initial driver. But getting audiences through the doors is only the first part of the job.

“Content brings people in, but the experience will make people come back,” he said. “That is our duty. That is our responsibility.”

Selling Films, Not Only Cinemas
A fuller release calendar solves one problem while intensifying another.

Audiences now have access to more entertainment, across more platforms, than at any point in cinema history. Even within theatrical exhibition, the number of films, formats and programming options can make it difficult for individual titles to break through.

Duquenne said consumer research conducted by Kinepolis repeatedly identifies awareness as a leading barrier to attendance.

“People don’t know what we have on screen,” he said.

That has required exhibitors to reconsider the distinction between promoting their venues and marketing the films inside them.

“Thirty-five years ago, we didn’t do marketing,” Duquenne said. “The only thing we did was branding: ‘We are the best cinema.’ The studios were attracting visitors. Today, we need to attract visitors. We need to learn to sell movies.”

The observation gets to the heart of the industry’s next challenge. Restoring the number of wide releases may repair the supply chain, but it does not guarantee that audiences will know those films exist. Outside the handful of titles capable of generating blockbuster-level awareness, films increasingly arrive without penetrating the wider cultural conversation.

De Boissard said exhibitors and distributors can no longer treat marketing as two separate assignments, with distributors promoting titles and cinema operators concentrating on their brands.

“It is not the distributor’s job to do the entire marketing and for us to do our brand marketing,” she said. “We need to communicate together and work ahead to make sure people are aware of a film that is being released.”

That cooperation must become more specific as audiences become more fragmented. The goal is not simply to tell the largest possible number of people that a film exists, but to identify the communities most likely to respond to it.

Sotomayor argued that each cinema should function as “the heart of the community where it is placed.” The growing diversity of those communities gives exhibitors an opportunity to expand their programming beyond films traditionally identified as local content.

A cinema in the United Kingdom, for example, may serve a sizable Polish, Tamil or Punjabi population. Yet relying only on historical ticketing data can obscure that demand if the venue has never programmed or promoted films for those audiences.

“If we haven’t played any Polish content, then we don’t have data that Polish content works,” Sotomayor said. “But there are other tools that we can use to identify those local communities.”

Theatrical programming can therefore move from a largely passive model – waiting to see what distributors supply and what audiences have previously purchased – to what Duquenne described as “active movie programming” built around customer clusters and the demographic realities of individual catchment areas.

Local content, in that context, does not necessarily mean content produced in the country where a cinema is located.

“With the cultural influence of a particular country, or the diaspora in other countries, it becomes more and more relevant,” Sotomayor said. “We have the tools to identify those opportunities, and we should do that.”

Reaching future audiences will also require introducing young people to cinemas before they have established entertainment habits elsewhere.

Reid pointed to the work of UK film education charity Into Film, whose annual festival brings schoolchildren into cinemas around the country. According to Into Film, more than one-third of participating children are experiencing a movie theatre for the first time.

Marsh described that introduction as an industry responsibility.

“If nobody ever has the opportunity as a young child to see their first film, how will they ever know?” she asked. “It’s a real responsibility to work with young people from all walks of life and all corners of every country.”

The objective is larger than generating admissions for a single family release. The first cinema visit can begin a habit that carries across genres, life stages and generations.

Choice Requires Screens
The panel repeatedly returned to the importance of giving audiences choice. Yet having more films available does not necessarily mean audiences will have a meaningful opportunity to see them.

Marsh welcomed the exhibitors’ stated commitment to variety before making a direct plea on behalf of distributors and producers.

“We need the screens,” she said. “We’re fighting for screen space. We’re fighting to be held from one week to the next. We’re fighting to hold that screen drop week to week.”

The comment exposed a tension underneath the industry’s improving content supply. More films may be entering the market, but each must compete for finite screens against established franchises, premium-format commitments and the next wide release arriving only days later.

A film that is removed before awareness and word of mouth have developed cannot contribute much to the diversity the industry says it wants to offer.

“Every movie made is a miracle,” Marsh said. “Every window of exploitation is extremely important for the continued health and profitability of these movies, so we can reinject that success back into the industry.”

Reid raised research presented earlier at CineEurope concerning the difficulty “mid-tier” films have in securing visibility and theatrical traction. Marsh questioned whether the category itself was useful.

“I think it’s kind of weird – ‘mid-tier,’ whatever that means,” she said. “A movie can be made for any budget. You just have to make it for the number you feel the market can support and ensure that as much of that money as possible goes on screen, that it looks gorgeous and that it is undeniably cinematic.”

For Marsh, the more meaningful criteria are the quality of the storytelling, the authenticity of the filmmaker’s perspective and whether the film offers audiences something they did not already know they wanted.

“It’s not necessarily about asking the audience what they want,” she said. “They don’t know what they want. But when they see it, then they know they want it.”

Her answer did not make the commercial challenge disappear. Films still must be financed according to plausible market potential, and exhibitors still must allocate screens according to demand. But treating “mid-tier” as a fixed creative or commercial identity can become self-fulfilling if it limits a film’s release before audiences have had an opportunity to respond.

Rejecting the category does not eliminate the practical constraints behind it. Exhibitors still have a finite number of screens, and a film’s initial allocation and early box-office performance – not the terminology used to describe its budget – will determine whether it receives enough time to find an audience.

A healthy theatrical market needs tentpoles. It also needs enough room for films whose potential is less obvious on opening day.

Attendance Before Revenue
The same question of choice runs through the industry’s accelerating investment in premium formats, luxury seating and enhanced food and beverage.

Premiumization has helped exhibitors increase revenue per visitor while giving audiences experiences that clearly differentiate cinemas from home viewing. De Boissard said Pathé has also found that premium locations attract younger customers.

According to figures she cited during the session, the average age of customers falls by between six and eight years when Pathé converts a cinema to its premium model. She added that one out of every two tickets sold by the circuit during the previous year went to a customer under 35.

“Younger audiences want specific experiences,” de Boissard said. “The traditional experience of a standard auditorium is still an amazing experience that you don’t get at home. Having a great screen, great sound and sharing emotions with people is a premium experience compared with television.”

Duquenne put the economics more succinctly.

“Content drives customers,” he said. “Premiumization drives revenue.”

Yet premiumization cannot become the only version of cinema audiences are offered. Sotomayor warned against judging recovery solely through rising box office if that growth is driven by higher average ticket prices while fewer people attend.

“It is worrying that box office continues to grow if attendance drops,” he said. “At Cineworld International, we believe that we should bring people back. I would put, in terms of priority, attendance first.”

Premium offerings allow cinemas to segment upward, Sotomayor said, but operators should also be prepared to create simpler and more affordable models suited to smaller markets. A city of 50,000 to 80,000 people may not be capable of supporting recliners, extensive food menus or multiple premium large formats. It may nevertheless be able to support a well-run cinema offering strong presentation and a more limited range of amenities.

“Cinema needs to keep being accessible for the masses,” Sotomayor said.

Duquenne maintained that even premium cinema remains relatively affordable compared with many other out-of-home activities and argued that customers tend to protect occasional cinema visits even when household purchasing power is under pressure. Kinepolis seeks to keep premium upgrades optional, he said, allowing audiences to select the format and price point appropriate for each occasion.

That distinction matters. Premiumization is most effective when it expands the number of available choices rather than replacing the accessible standard experience.

The industry must therefore measure recovery in more than monetary terms. Revenue per patron is important, particularly for an exhibition business with substantial fixed costs. But rebuilding attendance, frequency and cinema-going habits will determine whether the current recovery has a durable foundation.

“I Need to Make Errors”
The roundtable’s closing discussion about artificial intelligence might have seemed disconnected from questions of film supply and audience recovery. Instead, it clarified the role technology can – and cannot – play in addressing them.

The exhibitors saw potential operational uses throughout the business. AI could help analyze audience clusters, improve film scheduling, identify the most appropriate screens and showtimes, support marketing campaigns and reduce administrative work. Duquenne was particularly enthusiastic about AI-assisted dubbing, which could make local-language films more accessible in international markets.

De Boissard said Pathé had created an AI division spanning exhibition, production and back-office operations to explore how the technology could be applied. The purpose, she argued, was not necessarily to replace creative work but to simplify routine tasks and give people more time to concentrate on work requiring human judgment.

Rouaud remained less certain that speed and simplification should automatically be treated as progress.

Discussing AI from the perspective of a writer and director, she compared herself to “a kid driving a truck” – aware that the tool was powerful but unsure how it should be controlled or where it was heading.

Some filmmakers she knows use AI as a research assistant or creative sparring partner. Rouaud said she already has human collaborators who serve that purpose. More importantly, she resisted the idea that the inefficiencies of creativity are flaws waiting to be removed.

“I believe in the long time it takes to create,” she said. “We are running after gaining time – going quick, being fast – and I don’t recognize myself in this. I need to take time to create because it is part of the process.”

Her most direct answer also became the panel’s clearest defense of the human uncertainty behind the films the rest of the industry is trying to market, program and monetize.

“I need to be lost,” Rouaud said. “I need to make errors. I need to be human.”

Rouaud was not rejecting technology. She was asking the industry to understand its purpose before deploying it simply because it promises efficiency.

“Why would I like to simplify my life?” she asked. “More time for what? We need meaning.”

That question applies beyond artificial intelligence.

A stronger flow of films can repair the supply shortage that has constrained cinemas since the pandemic. Data can help exhibitors find underserved audiences. Premium formats can generate additional revenue. More sophisticated marketing can improve discoverability. AI may eventually optimize everything from programming to dubbing.

But none of those tools explains why people leave their homes to sit in a dark auditorium beside strangers.

At the beginning of the session, the panelists described cinema as one of the few remaining places where people gather to experience the same story and emerge wanting to discuss, debate or even argue about what they have seen. That enduring human appeal is why the current supply recovery matters.

The films may finally be returning in sufficient numbers. The cinema business must now ensure audiences can find them, afford them and have enough reasons to come back.

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

• 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
• Event Cinema Is Becoming an Always-On Business

The post A Stronger Release Slate Eases One Problem for Cinemas, but Reveals a Harder One appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

In Australia, a family could watch “Toy Story 5” in a premium-format auditorium during the day without paying the same price as an evening audience. In Nigeria, a local film premiere might arrive with music, food, fashion, influencers and enough spectacle to transform a screening into a cultural event. In Mexico, Cinépolis discovered demand for an unlikely religious film not through a traditional studio campaign, but by noticing what audiences were saying online. On the surface, those strategies have relatively little in common, which was precisely the point of “Best in Class: Lessons From Around the World,” a CineEurope panel examining how exhibitors in dramatically different markets are finding their own routes to growth.

Moderated by Zsófia Varga of Everyman Cinema, the discussion brought together Cameron Mitchell, Executive Director of the Cinema Association Australasia; Mojisola Oladapo, Chief Marketing Officer of Filmhouse Group; and Cinépolis CEO Alejandro Ramírez Magaña. Between them, the panelists offered perspectives from Australia, Nigeria, Mexico, India, Indonesia and numerous other territories in which the economic conditions, audience habits and content ecosystems vary considerably. Varga opened with a deceptively simple question. Global admissions and revenues were improving, she observed, but growth was not happening evenly – or for the same reasons. What drives people to the cinema, she asked, and what keeps them coming?

The answers differed substantially from market to market. Yet beneath those differences, several principles kept resurfacing: affordability, cultural relevance, sustained investment, audience trust and a willingness to listen closely enough to understand what cinemagoers actually value. The strongest lesson from the session was not that one territory had discovered a model everyone else should copy. Rather, it was that the best-performing markets tend to remain unusually close to their audiences, even when the methods they use to achieve that proximity look completely different.

Premium Does Not Have to Mean Expensive
Australia has long been one of the world’s strongest theatrical markets by several measures. Roughly two-thirds of Australians visit a cinema at least once each year – a figure Varga cited in framing the discussion – making moviegoing the country’s most popular out-of-home cultural activity. Mitchell said the market generates approximately 60 million annual admissions and around AUD $1 billion (USD $700 million) at the box office, while the Cinema Association Australasia describes Australia as the world’s most affordable cinema market when the average ticket price is measured against the minimum wage. For Mitchell, that performance is rooted in a combination the industry too often treats as contradictory: premium experiences and affordability.

“A premium offer doesn’t always have to mean an expensive price,” he said.

Australian exhibitors have invested heavily in recliners, large-format auditoriums, upgraded food and beverage, premium service and new presentation technologies. Mitchell highlighted venues operated by Event Cinemas and HOYTS, including the latter’s APEX format, which combines a large curved LED cinema screen with premium seating and immersive sound. Yet he argued that the technology and furnishings are only part of the equation. Australian operators also use dynamic pricing, student offers, family promotions and loyalty programs to make those experiences available to different customers at different times.

During daytime screenings of “Toy Story 5,” he noted, families could access premium seating and formats at an affordable price, even if those same auditoriums commanded more during evening sessions. That flexibility allows exhibitors to maximize the value of their investments without turning the best auditoriums into spaces reserved only for customers able to pay the highest possible ticket price.

“The exhibitors have invested massively in great CRM [customer relationship management], great loyalty platforms, and they’re really targeted and really dynamic in the way they price their experiences,” Mitchell said. “They make cinema an everyday occurrence, not a special occasion.”

That distinction may help explain another unusual feature of the Australian market. While exhibitors in many territories worry that young people are abandoning cinemas, Australians between the ages of 14 and 24 remain the country’s most frequent cinemagoers. Mitchell attributed that not simply to the films being released, but to venues designed as enjoyable places to spend time. Quality picture and sound were essential, he said, but no longer sufficient by themselves.

“An incredible image and sound is not negotiable,” Mitchell said. “That’s like having a sharp knife and fork in a restaurant. You can’t not have it.”

The differentiation comes from everything surrounding the film: comfortable seating, inviting public spaces, good coffee, credible food and beverage, simple transactions and a price that does not make regular attendance feel reckless. Mitchell argued that cinemas should not measure their concessions or hospitality against the neighboring multiplex, but against the best restaurants, cafés and service businesses their customers encounter elsewhere.

Australia’s approach cannot simply be transplanted into every economy. Its specific price points, wage levels and consumer habits are local. But the broader lesson travels: premiumization does not have to mean restricting the best experience to the smallest possible number of customers. Properly structured, investment in premium venues can help broaden the audience rather than narrow it.

Local Content Is an Ecosystem
Affordability also emerged in Nigeria, where Filmhouse Group uses pricing initiatives and partnerships to expand access. Oladapo, however, placed even greater emphasis on a different form of proximity between cinemas and audiences: cultural recognition.

“Our audience feels closer and digests content more deeply when they see themselves on those screens,” she said. “We are a country that really embraces our culture, and our cultural relevance is very important to us.”

Filmhouse’s position in the Nigerian market gives the company an unusually broad view of that relationship. The group is active in exhibition, while FilmOne operates across production and distribution, including development partnerships and the theatrical release of Nigerian and international films. That involvement throughout the value chain allows information gathered from cinema audiences to influence decisions about the content that ultimately returns to those same screens.

Oladapo described customer data feeding back into conversations about scripts, casting, production quality, positioning and marketing. Filmhouse and FilmOne are not merely waiting for local films to be completed and then deciding how many showtimes to give them. They are participating in an ecosystem designed to improve the commercial appeal and audience relevance of Nigerian films before they arrive at the box office.

“Success with local content doesn’t happen overnight,” Oladapo said. “It happens with constant and consistent investment in those product pipelines.”

That investment is showing up at the box office. Nigerian cinemas sold more than 752,000 tickets during the first quarter of 2026, the market’s strongest Q1 admissions total in six years and approximately 14% more than during the same period in 2025. The previous year also produced a symbolic shift across Anglophone West Africa, where Nollywood films accounted for 49.4% of box office revenue, narrowly edging Hollywood’s 48.8% share for the first time.

The growth of Nigerian cinema has therefore been more than a matter of adding screens or waiting for a breakthrough title. It has involved improving the professionalism of distribution, building deeper relationships with filmmakers, developing more commercially responsive stories and creating confidence among audiences that local films will deliver. Oladapo said that investment over time had produced trust both within the industry and among cinemagoers, who increasingly expect Nigerian films to reflect their lives while meeting a higher standard of storytelling and production.

For Oladapo, however, cultural relevance does not end when a film is delivered to the cinema. It also shapes how the film is presented to the public.

“We have perfected the art of eventizing every single thing,” she said.

Filmhouse screenings and premieres frequently incorporate prominent influencers, music, food and fashion. The company has also cultivated relationships with specific fan groups, including anime communities that arrive prepared to dress up, participate and share the experience online. Nigeria is a market in which entertainment, music, fashion and social media readily intersect, and Filmhouse has learned to present theatrical releases as part of that wider cultural conversation.

“We love a good party,” Oladapo said, summing up the strategy with disarming directness.

The festivities are not simply decorative additions to a conventional screening. They turn a film into something audiences can join, identify with and help amplify. A successful premiere generates images, video and conversation that travel far beyond the people in the auditorium, while influencers provide access to communities that may respond more strongly to a trusted personality than to a traditional advertising campaign.

“You are more likely to believe what your influencer – someone you believe in, someone you trust – has said about a film,” Oladapo said. “Trust is something that we can all do better at as exhibitors.”

Australia and Nigeria are using very different methods, but they are working toward a similar outcome. Australian exhibitors use pricing, loyalty and venue investment to make cinema part of everyday life. Filmhouse uses local stories and eventization to make theatrical attendance feel culturally and socially important. One strategy normalizes the cinema trip. The other intensifies it. Both are designed to create habits.

Listening Before Programming
Operating across 18 markets, Cinépolis cannot assume that a programming or marketing strategy successful in Mexico will work in India, Indonesia, Spain or the United States. Ramírez Magaña nevertheless identified one practice that has become increasingly valuable throughout the circuit: monitoring how audiences organize and express enthusiasm online.

“Word of mouth has always been critical to the success of a movie,” he said. “But in the age of social media, opinions get magnified exponentially.”

Cinépolis uses social listening partly as a forecasting tool. Strong audience response can signal that a film deserves additional showtimes or a longer theatrical run. Negative reaction travels just as quickly, giving exhibitors an early indication that initial demand may not hold. More significantly, Cinépolis also uses social listening to find content that might otherwise escape the company’s attention.

“Social listening allows us to identify some relevant local content and some alternative content,” Ramírez Magaña said.

The company watches conversations surrounding concert films, anime, filmed stage productions, online entertainment properties and other programming serving audiences that may be highly organized but not visible through traditional film-marketing channels. Ramírez Magaña cited “The Amazing Digital Circus” and the filmed stage production “Hadestown: The Musical” as examples of titles whose audience interest could be detected online before a conventional release campaign had fully developed.

K-pop and anime fans in Mexico offered another example. Ramírez Magaña described Mexico as one of the largest K-pop markets in the world and said Cinépolis had sold more than 500,000 tickets for a BTS presentation within 48 hours. Their geographic distance from South Korea or Japan has done little to diminish that enthusiasm, while social platforms have made those communities easier to identify and mobilize. What can look like niche programming from the outside may represent a substantial and highly motivated theatrical audience, particularly when fans view attending together as an expression of identity rather than simply another way to consume content.

One of Ramírez Magaña’s most revealing examples involved “Bendito Corazón,” a Mexican religious drama Cinépolis initially regarded as a modest prospect. As comments and requests accumulated online, the circuit reconsidered, gave the film an opportunity and watched it grow into a significant commercial success.

“We didn’t think much of it, and then we started getting a lot of comments on social media,” Ramírez Magaña said. “We said, ‘Let’s give it a try.’”

The film went on to earn more than MXN $55 million (USD $3.17 million), according to Ramírez Magaña. The example demonstrated both the value and the limitations of data. Social listening did not mechanically predict the film’s precise result. It alerted Cinépolis to an audience the company had not fully recognized and gave the exhibitor a reason to reconsider its assumptions.

Filmhouse takes a related approach through its close relationships with influencers and fan communities. The difference is largely one of emphasis: Cinépolis listens for communities that are already forming, while Filmhouse creates occasions through which those communities can visibly express themselves. Australian exhibitors use CRM and loyalty data to understand how often customers attend, which offers they respond to and what makes them return.

In all three cases, programming and marketing are becoming less about placing a title on a schedule and waiting to see who appears. They are increasingly about understanding the audience before, during and after the booking.

Local Films Need More Than a Screen
The connection between audience listening and local content became particularly apparent as Ramírez Magaña compared the performance of domestic films across Cinépolis territories.

“Countries that have healthy local content have recovered much faster post-pandemic,” he said.

In Indonesia, local films captured approximately 64% of the national box office in 2025, while domestic productions accounted for roughly three-quarters of Japanese box office. Ramírez Magaña described an especially dramatic shift in Indonesia. Before the pandemic, Hollywood films represented approximately two-thirds of the market and domestic titles one-third. That relationship has since reversed as Indonesian production has expanded and local films have become more commercially successful.

India provides an even more complicated example. International discussions frequently use Bollywood as shorthand for Indian cinema, but the market also supports substantial Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada-language industries. For an exhibitor such as Cinépolis, operating in India therefore means responding not to one national content market, but to numerous regional industries with distinct stars, audiences and release patterns. Ramírez Magaña said local films account for approximately 90% of the Indian market, helping make it one of the territories to have surpassed its pre-pandemic performance.

Mexico and parts of Latin America present the opposite challenge. Ramírez Magaña said Mexican films had accounted for about 10% of the country’s box office before the pandemic, an already modest share that subsequently fell to approximately 6%. Brazil has produced individual successes, including “I’m Still Here” and “The Secret Agent,” but isolated hits do not necessarily create the sustained pipeline required to support domestic films year after year.

The problem, in his view, is not a lack of filmmaking activity by itself. A healthy local-content market requires an interconnected system of financing, development, screenwriting, production, distribution, marketing and exhibition. It also requires stories that genuinely connect with the audience.

“You cannot manufacture what feels natural to you as an audience,” Oladapo said. “When the audience sees themselves, they connect a lot more.”

Filmhouse has benefited from being involved throughout the value chain, but Oladapo did not present vertical integration as a universal requirement. Her larger point was that sustained investment and collaboration create trust among producers, distributors, exhibitors and audiences.

“That investment over time creates trust, both within the industry and with your audience,” she said.

Australia complicates any argument that local-content share alone determines the health of a cinema market. The country maintains strong theatrical attendance despite relying heavily on international films, particularly Hollywood releases. Mitchell nevertheless agreed that Australian cinema needs a stronger domestic pipeline. A relatively small population makes it difficult for highly specific Australian films to recoup their costs without traveling internationally, while public funding does not always prioritize projects with broad theatrical appeal.

“If you look globally, a successful cinema has about 20% occupancy,” Mitchell said. “It’s 80% empty, so there’s massive amounts of capacity and space for more stories.”

But availability alone is not enough.

“The key is they have to be a great story,” he added.

The panelists were not arguing that audiences will support films merely because they are domestic. They were arguing that local films have structural advantages when they speak authentically to their market – and structural disadvantages when the surrounding ecosystem is too weak to develop, position or sustain them.

Giving Word of Mouth Time to Work
Even a strong local film may not arrive with the marketing budget required to deliver an enormous opening weekend. That creates a particular responsibility for exhibitors, Ramírez Magaña argued.

“We also need to support local content – to have a little bit more patience with domestic films for the word of mouth to kick off,” he said.

That patience can be difficult in a crowded marketplace. An exhibitor must balance support for a promising domestic title against the immediate performance of every other film competing for the screen. Yet the opening weekend is not always a reliable measure of long-term demand, particularly for films that depend upon community recommendations rather than expensive national advertising.

Social listening can make that judgment more informed. If audience enthusiasm is building despite modest initial grosses, an exhibitor has more reason to hold the film and allow that conversation to convert. “Bendito Corazón” offered Ramírez Magaña a case in point. Had Cinépolis relied entirely on its original assumptions, or removed the film before its community mobilized, the circuit might have missed the business altogether.

The question of time also informed Ramírez Magaña’s comments about theatrical exclusivity. Asked which feature of another market he would most like to adopt, he singled out France.

“France is the envy of every market in the world,” he said, praising an ecosystem that supports local production, international and arthouse films, cinemas and film culture more broadly.

France’s regulated media chronology does not establish one simple window for every form of post-theatrical distribution. Instead, it creates an ordered framework under which access to films on home entertainment, television and subscription streaming services depends partly upon each platform’s investment in film production. What Ramírez Magaña most admired was the clarity and stability that system creates for audiences and for the businesses financing, producing and exhibiting films.

In most Cinépolis markets outside the United States, he said, films receive at least 45 days of theatrical exclusivity. That gives audiences a reasonably clear choice: see the film in a cinema or wait at least a month and a half. By contrast, he argued that the collapse of established windows in the United States during the pandemic created uncertainty about when and where films would become available.

“Audiences don’t know when and where to expect a movie,” Ramírez Magaña said. “There’s a lot of confusion.”

He was particularly critical of the 17-day premium video-on-demand window Universal introduced for some titles in the United States, arguing that it interrupted theatrical momentum, encouraged piracy and left revenue on the table. Not every distributor or territory will agree on a single number, but the broader lesson was that predictability matters. Audiences are more likely to understand the value of theatrical exclusivity when the rules do not appear to change with every release.

Stop Waiting for 2019 to Come Back
As the panel drew to a close, Mitchell expressed frustration with the industry’s continued habit of judging every market result against the final full year before the pandemic.

“I have a frustration that we always compare to pre-COVID, which is six years ago,” he said. “I hope one day we stop doing that.”

The comparison remains useful. It demonstrates how far admissions have recovered, where markets remain weaker and how audience behavior has changed. Mitchell’s objection was not to using 2019 as a data point, but to allowing it to define the industry’s entire understanding of success.

Cinema is no longer simply waiting to restore the exact business it had six years ago. New formats have expanded. Local films have taken greater market share in several territories. Alternative content has become more important. Loyalty programs and dynamic pricing have grown more sophisticated. Fan communities can organize worldwide in a matter of hours, while audience reaction can alter programming decisions before the first weekend is over.

Mitchell argued that the industry has been too willing to let others shape the story of its performance.

“We don’t share ideas about cinemas,” he said, adding that the industry has “this amazing opportunity to stop talking about 2019” and instead spotlight the growth already underway.

Oladapo agreed that the recovery itself deserves greater recognition. COVID-19 damaged far more than cinemas, she said, affecting businesses, hospitality and families across the world. The work required to rebuild attendance should not be overlooked simply because the resulting market does not look identical to the one that preceded it. That recovery has also depended on collaboration among exhibition, distribution, production, streaming platforms, creators, brands and audiences.

The markets represented onstage offered no universal blueprint. Australia’s wage levels and dynamic pricing cannot simply be transplanted into Nigeria. Filmhouse’s position across production, distribution and exhibition cannot be recreated overnight by every operator. France’s media chronology cannot be imported wholesale into the United States. Cinépolis’ global social-listening operation may exceed the resources available to a small independent circuit.

But the underlying ideas can travel. Premium experiences can be structured to remain accessible. Local films can be treated as long-term investments rather than occasional programming obligations. Influencers and fandoms can be understood as communities rather than marketing channels. Audience data can inform decisions throughout the content chain. Domestic films can be given enough time to develop word of mouth. Theatrical windows can be communicated with clarity.

The lesson from Barcelona was not to copy another market’s party, price point or release policy. It was to understand why those strategies work for their audiences – and then ask what the same principle might look like at home.

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
• 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
• Event Cinema Is Becoming an Always-On Business

The post There Is No Global Formula for Cinema Success, but the Best Ideas Travel appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.

For years, Gen Z offered the cinema business a convenient explanation for almost any troubling audience trend. Raised on smartphones, streaming services and social media, the first truly digital generation supposedly had little interest in sitting through a two-hour film inside a darkened auditorium. Research presented at CineEurope 2026 suggested almost the opposite: across five European markets, Gen Z reported higher cinema attendance than the general population and ranked among the most frequent moviegoers.

The difficulty, it turns out, is not convincing Gen Z that cinema has value. It is making sure every outing delivers enough of it. Younger audiences appear willing to spend on moviegoing and its accompanying food and beverages, but they evaluate the entire visit – not simply the film – against the cost, time and effort involved. Exclusive content, immersion and communal experience can bring them through the door. High prices, long queues, limited choice and an otherwise unremarkable outing can just as easily persuade them to do something else.

That was the clearest takeaway from “Inside the Gen Z Mindset,” a Coca-Cola-sponsored seminar held during CineEurope in Barcelona. The session combined research presented by Francisco Serrano, Market Research Executive at Conecta Research & Consulting, with a wider examination of Gen Z consumer behavior from Laila Kaid, Commercial Graduate – Category Executive at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, and a practical TikTok case study from Sara Nieuwdorp of Cineplex Deutschland. Stephanie Morgner, Senior Director Away-from-Home Customer Cinema, Leisure & Entertainment at The Coca-Cola Company, moderated the presentation.

Together, they described a generation that has not rejected cinema so much as raised the standard each visit must meet.

Gen Z Never Really Left
Serrano described Conecta’s study as comprising between 1,200 and 1,500 interviews across the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Poland and Romania, rather than providing a single precise sample total. The research combined a general-population sample with additional interviews intended to ensure sufficient representation among cinemagoers and specific audience groups, including Gen Z.

Across the five markets, 77% of Gen Z respondents said they attended the cinema, a higher proportion than among the general population. Gen Z and respondents between the ages of 30 and 39 were also the most frequent moviegoers in the research, with attendance becoming increasingly occasional as respondents grew older. Younger audiences tended to visit on Fridays and Saturdays, particularly Saturdays, and usually attended with a partner, friends or family rather than alone.

Those findings are especially notable because cinema competes for space within an unusually active leisure schedule. Gen Z respondents over-indexed across a range of social activities, with cinema ranking behind only gathering at home with friends and eating out, and roughly alongside going out for drinks. Moviegoing is not simply an alternative to watching content at home, but part of a broader social life competing for the same limited hours.

The principal reasons younger respondents gave for attending had less to do with access to a film than what the theatrical experience added: exclusive content, immersion, the scale of the screen, relaxation and the opportunity to share the occasion. Streaming may offer convenience, but it cannot reproduce a packed auditorium collectively reacting to a film, concert or fan event.

“For Gen Z, cinema is about experience – things that they cannot get at home,” Serrano said.

The Outing Has to Earn Its Place
Cinema’s position within Gen Z’s social life also makes it vulnerable. Younger consumers have no shortage of alternatives competing for their time, and the Conecta research suggests they make a practical calculation before deciding where to spend it.

“For Gen Z, every visit needs to feel worth the effort,” Serrano said.

That calculation begins well before the lights go down. Approximately two-thirds booked tickets online in advance, while nearly half actively looked for a discount. Ticket price and a preference for streaming at home were major barriers across all age groups, but Gen Z respondents were more likely to cite a lack of time, concession prices, having nobody to accompany them and treating cinema as something reserved for special occasions.

Asked what might encourage them to attend more frequently, younger respondents again mentioned price, but they also pointed to shorter queues, better food and drink options and additional amenities capable of making a visit feel more distinctive. Lower prices may help, but even an inexpensive experience can represent poor value if it is inconvenient, uninspiring or no longer meaningfully different from staying home. Friction at any single point can diminish the value of everything around it.

The lesson is less “make everything cheaper” than “make the price make sense.”

Concessions Are Part of the Cinema Ritual
The strength of Gen Z’s relationship with cinema concessions was one of the study’s more striking findings. Across the five markets, 91% of Gen Z cinemagoers said they consumed food or beverages at the cinema, doing so during approximately seven out of every ten visits. Both figures were higher than those recorded among the general population.

Popcorn and traditional soft drinks remained dominant, but younger respondents were more inclined to supplement them with nachos, burgers, sandwiches and pizza, along with juices, frozen drinks and energy drinks. They also showed greater interest in variety, customization and purchases encouraged by promotions, gifts or novelty.

Approximately half bought concession combos, motivated by sharing, convenience and perceived value. More importantly, younger moviegoers viewed food and beverages as something that made the cinema experience feel special and complete, rather than simply satisfying hunger or thirst. Buying popcorn because it is part of going to the movies is a ritual, not merely a transaction.

That ritual creates an opportunity, but it does not guarantee a sale. High prices, waiting times, unappealing combinations and limited choice were all cited as barriers. Gen Z respondents expressed interest in more affordable and flexible combos, broader selection, greater customization and portions that offered a clearer sense of value.

For operators, the answer is unlikely to be replacing popcorn with whatever product happens to be trending that month. Traditional concessions remain powerful precisely because they are associated with cinema. The opportunity lies in building around them with limited-time items, customizable combinations, bolder choices and promotions that offer novelty without making the concession stand unnecessarily complicated.

Novelty attracts attention. Convenience closes the sale.

From Discovery to Hype – and Back Again
The cinema visit is only one stage in Gen Z’s relationship with a film. Kaid described a cycle in which audiences discover a title on TikTok, encounter content that builds anticipation, buy a ticket, attend and then return to post reactions, jokes, reviews and material from the outing, stimulating further discovery among other users.

Separate U.S. research cited during the presentation found that 47% of surveyed adult TikTok users had discovered a new theatrical film on the platform. Of those who discovered a film there, 36% subsequently bought a ticket. The numbers did not come from Conecta’s European study and were not presented as Gen Z-only findings, but they illustrate how difficult it has become to separate traditional film marketing from the social culture surrounding a release.

A trailer may introduce the film, but memes, fan edits, reactions and the fear of missing a shared cultural moment can turn awareness into urgency. For exhibitors, social media is therefore more than another outlet for trailers, showtimes and posters. It is where anticipation takes shape and the cinema experience continues after the customer leaves.

Cineplex Stops Advertising and Joins the Entertainment
Cineplex Deutschland’s TikTok strategy offered the seminar’s clearest example of how an exhibitor can participate in that cycle rather than merely advertise beside it.

Cineplex combines a national brand presence and campaign strategy with locally operated cinemas that remain closely connected to their communities. Many locations maintain their own Instagram and TikTok channels, while the national account focuses on broader campaigns, partnerships and brand communication. Nieuwdorp, who comes from a family of cinema operators, said that background gave her both a marketing perspective and a practical understanding of daily exhibition.

When Cineplex began developing its national TikTok presence shortly after the pandemic, younger audiences had become increasingly accustomed to watching films at home. The company concluded that simply advertising new releases would do little to rebuild an emotional connection with the theatrical experience.

“We no longer wanted to just advertise movies,” Nieuwdorp said. “We wanted to become part of the entertainment.”

Cineplex chose TikTok because, for younger users, it functions as an entertainment app, search engine, community and place where cultural trends accelerate. Cinema was already a subject of considerable conversation there, though much of it approached moviegoing negatively or ironically. The attention was present; Cineplex’s challenge was to redirect some of it toward the pleasures of the theatrical experience.

The company initially worked with an agency to understand the platform and continues to produce content in monthly batches, including scripting, filming and editing. Yet Nieuwdorp said the team quickly learned that TikTok could only truly be understood through regular experimentation.

“You only really understand TikTok by creating content yourself,” she said.

According to figures presented during the session, the national Cineplex account had grown to more than 82,000 followers and accumulated more than one million likes. Those totals referred specifically to the national account and did not include the separate audiences built by individual local cinema channels. Cineplex’s most successful national video had reached 4.5 million views.

The content responsible was often remarkably simple. Relatable cinema situations performed well: customer interactions, familiar auditorium behavior, employee experiences, inside jokes and self-deprecation drawn from everyday operations. Short point-of-view stories and “things everyone knows from the cinema” gave viewers something recognizable to share.

“The more relatable something is, the more likely people are to feel connected to it and engage with it,” Nieuwdorp said.

Discussions involving age-rating rules, ticket prices and moviegoing etiquette could also generate significant interaction. Cineplex answered audience questions with videos, allowing the community to influence what the account produced next, while special programming and fan events – including a “Harry Potter” marathon and content related to “28 Years Later” and “The Amazing Digital Circus” – created opportunities to connect with audiences already organized around a film, franchise or fandom.

People Follow People
One of Cineplex’s most important lessons was that successful TikTok content did not require expensive equipment, immaculate production or an overt sales pitch. It required recognizable people who appeared comfortable, enthusiastic and genuine.

“People don’t follow perfect brands,” Nieuwdorp said. “They follow people.”

That can be uncomfortable for marketing departments accustomed to controlling every frame. On TikTok, overproduction can make a video feel like advertising immediately. Cineplex found that authentic employees, humor and familiar situations often carried more credibility than polished promotional material.

“Entertainment must always come first,” Nieuwdorp said. “The brand comes second.”

Speed matters as well. A trend may remain relevant for only 48 hours, making prolonged approvals and rigid campaign calendars poorly suited to the platform. Cineplex balances planned monthly production with spontaneous videos that respond quickly to a trend, question or conversation. Authenticity does not require abandoning the brand; it means recognizing that relevance and personality can be more valuable than perfection.

Nieuwdorp said Cineplex now sees a direct impact from its TikTok work on ticket sales, although she did not present conversion data or explain how the company attributes individual sales to the platform.

“Community is often more important than pure reach, because a lot of views don’t automatically mean real engagement,” Nieuwdorp said.

Comments, recurring interaction and viewers contributing to the conversation may therefore reveal more than one viral result. Reach can introduce a cinema to an audience. Community gives that audience a reason to continue paying attention – and potentially to return.

A Willing Audience, Not a Captive One
Nothing in the CineEurope research suggested that Gen Z is destined to rescue theatrical exhibition. Younger audiences are not automatically loyal to cinema, individual circuits or established concession habits, and the same active social life that makes moviegoing attractive also gives them an abundance of alternatives.

But neither are they a generation the industry has already lost. They attend frequently, value collective experiences, buy concessions at high rates and extend the outing online, turning films, fan events and even familiar moments at the concession stand into material for social conversation.

What they appear less willing to accept is an outing that feels interchangeable, unnecessarily difficult or disconnected from the cultural activity surrounding it. Cinema’s challenge is not to compete with the smartphone by demanding that younger audiences put it away forever. The phone may be where a film is discovered, plans are made and anticipation builds – and where the experience continues afterward.

The auditorium offers something the screen in their hand cannot: immersion, collective emotion and the feeling of being present when something happens.

For Gen Z, that still matters.

The cinema business simply has to make the rest of the trip worth it.

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
• Growing Cinema Audiences Starts With Knowing Who You’re Targeting
• Event Cinema Is Becoming an Always-On Business

The post Gen Z Is Still Going to the Movies, but the Trip Has to Be Worth It 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.

On a busy Friday night, a modern multiplex can look like a small technological miracle.

Digital cinema packages arrive through a delivery network. A theatre management system schedules and plays them. Projection, sound, lighting and building controls are automated. Tickets, concessions and loyalty transactions flow through a point-of-sale system. An audience member may use an app for audio description or another language.

“Six sophisticated systems, six brilliant pieces of engineering,” said Till Cussmann of Vista Group during the “Connected Cinemas” panel at the ICTA Barcelona Cinema Technology Experience. “But here’s the problem: half of them don’t really speak to each other.”

That disconnect remains one of the cinema industry’s most persistent operational contradictions. Individual systems have become extraordinarily capable, but employees still re-enter information, export spreadsheets and manually transfer data between products inside the same building.

The problem is not a shortage of technology. It is getting the technology to cooperate.

Timo Holtkamp of Gofilex described a content delivery workflow that can send digital cinema packages and security keys into a theatre management system, but offers limited visibility into what happens afterward. At the other end of the chain, Seneit Debese’s Greta app provides accessible and alternate-language versions, but still depends on accurate film and screening information.

Employees as the Integration Layer
When those connections fail, employees fill the gaps. Sophie Doherty of TAPOS noted that some operations managers are still entering information manually at the end of the night.

“For a lot of exhibitors, that would be at two or three in the morning,” she said. “That should not have to happen.”

Doherty added that many point-of-sale providers can automate end-of-night reporting. Sometimes the issue may be training, configuration or a small development request. Still, staff members are too often required to act as an unofficial integration layer.

Why Integrations Require More Than an API
Building a real integration is considerably more complicated than adding a few lines of code.

Asked what had allowed OneCinema to connect programming schedules with projection equipment, power management and building automation, Andreas Stier offered a concise answer: “Perseverance, and a lot of love, sweat and tears.”

The work can involve non-disclosure agreements, API documentation, discussions between developers, access to equipment for testing, remote laboratory sessions and validation inside a functioning cinema. An API, or application programming interface, is a controlled doorway through which one system exchanges defined information with another.

Even when that doorway exists, it must be maintained. A software update on either side can break an integration that had previously worked.

David Ong of Arts Alliance Media, now a Qube Cinema company, said AAM’s theatre management system is connected to 31 different point-of-sale companies, yet many more remain unsupported.

“Who is actually owning that integration?” Ong asked. “And if one side changes their API, that could potentially break that integration.”

The challenge begins with something as fundamental as identifying the film.

Stier said the industry still lacks a single film and release identifier consistently used across markets, cinema circuits and software platforms. The problem multiplies when the same title has several releases, formats, languages or accessible versions. Identifier systems exist, but none has been universally adopted across booking, scheduling, delivery and operations.

Cinema has already shown that standards can work. The digital cinema package, or DCP, standardized how movies are packaged and played, while the key delivery message, or KDM, controls when and where encrypted content can be screened. Neither created a universal language for the data surrounding a show.

The Real Barrier Is Commercial
According to Ong, the main obstacle is not technical.

“It’s definitely commercial,” he said. “I believe every technology problem can be solved. We have a lot of smart people in our industry.”

The real question is whether both companies see enough value to commit development time, testing resources and ongoing support.

“Both vendors, or both platforms, need to see the value for them to be incentivized to put that time and money into that integration,” Ong said.

That does not necessarily mean vendors oppose openness. Software teams have finite capacity, and integrations compete with customer-specific features and product development. Doherty suggested that exhibitors may rank broader integration below tailor-made functionality already requested from their POS supplier.

There are also incentives to keep customers within a single product ecosystem. A tightly integrated stack from one vendor can be easier to install, support and operate than several specialist systems. Doherty said many cinema operators choose the vertical option when available because it is simpler and can produce a better experience.

The danger is that convenience can become dependence.

Stier argued that exhibitors should retain the freedom to choose the best product for each part of their operation.

“It shouldn’t be a walled garden,” he said. “It should be the customer’s choice.”

He was equally direct about claims that allowing another vendor to use an API would expose a company’s intellectual property.

“API is not intellectual property,” Stier said. “The other party defines what they give into the API.”

Providing controlled access to selected information is not the same as handing over source code or unrestricted access. Stier also argued that operational and customer data generated by an exhibitor should remain under its control.

“In my perspective, it’s the customer’s data,” he said. “I think it’s the right of exhibition to forward their data to other parties, and suppliers should enable that.”

What Disconnected Systems Cost Cinemas
The business case for better connectivity goes beyond saving employees from late-night spreadsheets.

OneCinema’s systems can start auditorium equipment before the first screening and shut it down after the final show, reducing staff hours and preventing equipment from running unnecessarily. They can monitor whether servers and projectors are ready, copy content at the appropriate time and alert staff before a technical problem becomes a missed performance.

When a screening fails, the cost is not limited to refunded tickets.

“You have to pay back the ticket price, but the reputational damage is way higher,” Stier said.

Reliable automation also frees employees to spend more time with guests instead of checking that each auditorium’s equipment has started correctly.

Artificial intelligence will not make the underlying problem disappear. AI may improve forecasting, maintenance and reporting, but it can only analyze the information it can access.

“If everything is still siloed, your prediction output, or whatever you’re trying to predict, will always be very limited,” Ong said.

Open Standards or Vertical Integration?
The panel did not settle whether connected cinemas will arrive through open standards, company consolidation or some combination of the two. Consolidation can remove interfaces by placing more products under one roof. Open standards preserve choice and make it easier for specialized suppliers to enter the market.

A neutral industry body or third party could define data standards, certify open interfaces or act as a trusted intermediary between competing suppliers. Yet such a system would still require funding, governance and vendors willing to participate.

Exhibitors may therefore have the most immediate leverage. Ong urged cinema operators to ask vendors about interoperability before signing a contract: Does the platform have an open interface? What is its API strategy? Which integrations are supported? Who maintains them when either product changes? Can the exhibitor direct where its operational data is sent?

Those questions would begin to turn connectivity from an optional benefit into a basic condition of purchase.

As Ong concluded, cinema will finally be truly connected when interoperability becomes “a competitive expectation and not a competitive advantage.”

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
• The Best Cinemas Aren’t Competing With Netflix. They’re Competing With a Night Out

The post Cinema Technology Has Never Been More Sophisticated, So Why Is It Still So Disconnected? appeared first on Celluloid Junkie.