In 2025, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said something that appeared to validate the film industry’s concerns since the pandemic: audiences no longer have the same desire to attend the movie theatre.
During the TIME100 Summit in 2025, Sarandos was questioned about whether the creation of films tailored for theatres and the collective experience of viewing them had become outdated.
“I believe it is an outmoded idea, for most people — not for everybody,” he replied. His logic was straightforward: falling box-office figures seemed to indicate that viewers preferred to remain at home.
A year later, that argument seems far less convincing. In 2026, cinema experienced more than just a good year, but a cultural revolution. Heading to the theatre has begun to feel culturally significant once more.
Domestic box office earnings generated roughly $4.6 billion during the summer — a 26% increase from the previous summer — making it the strongest summer since 2013. According to reporting from the Associated Press, younger audiences were among the groups helping drive that resurgence. Cineplex also reported that its second-quarter box-office revenue reached $176.2 million, its highest second-quarter total since 2019, while attendance increased 9.3% from the previous year.
Yet, the more compelling story isn’t necessarily about how much revenue Hollywood is generating but rather who is heading to the theatres, what audiences are seeing, and why they have suddenly become so invested.
Films such as Obsession, The Drama, Project Hail Mary, and The Odyssey have contributed to making 2026 feel remarkably packed with cinematic moments. Project Hail Mary pulled in about $685 million globally, while The Drama, featuring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, has surpassed $134 million worldwide. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has become a massive theatrical phenomenon, earning more than $1.7 billion worldwide.
And the year has not yet come to an end. Primetime, which features Pattinson and directed by Lance Oppenheim, was just released on Sept. 25, 2026. Titles like Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three also offer audiences additional theatrical events to look forward to.
So what changed?
The Movie Theatre Became a Social Event Again
Streaming simplified the way we watch movies. It didn’t always make the experience of watching them more thrilling.
For younger viewers, heading to the cinema is more than buying a ticket to watch a film. It’s an event, and at times, a cultural moment that people want to be part of as it unfolds. That difference is significant. You can watch a movie at home months afterward, but there is no way to fully recreate the experience of seeing it in a crowded theatre over the weekend when everyone is discussing it on social media.
After Sarandos’ remarks in 2025, director Rian Johnson made a comparable point, saying that when audiences receive a movie they genuinely want to watch, “they are going to show up for it.” Johnson placed particular emphasis on how important it is to sit in a packed theatre and share the experience of a movie with strangers.
By 2026, it appears that younger viewers are confirming what he argued.
These days, the experience no longer stops once the credits start rolling. A film turns into TikTok clips, memes, Letterboxd write-ups, interviews, debates, and inside jokes shared among friends. It is not that the internet has destroyed going to the cinema — oddly enough, it might be turning some theatrical releases into bigger cultural moments.
Obsession may be the most obvious case in point. Based on PostTrak figures cited by Variety, 75% of its viewers were aged 18 to 25. The movie’s performance at the box office was also quite unusual. Rather than dropping off after its opening weekend, it actually gained momentum. Its second weekend brought in roughly 30% more than its first, a pattern that is extremely seldom seen for a modern wide release.
It turned into the kind of film that people urged their friends to watch. That word-of-mouth impact matters even more in a culture where young people devote huge amounts of time to finding entertainment online. TikTok and YouTube can build the communities that draw people into movie theatres.
So attending the cinema has come to fit quite naturally with being perpetually online. What the internet cannot offer, the theatre provides: a real, physical space in which to experience what everyone online is talking about.
Hollywood’s New Faces Are Coming From the Internet
For years, a frequent grievance about Hollywood was that nearly everything appeared to be a sequel, remake, reboot, or cinematic universe.
Several of 2026’s most intriguing successes have called that assumption into question. No film illustrates that shift more clearly than Obsession.
The film’s directors, Curry Barker is 26 years old. Before his name was known in Hollywood, Barker built an audience through Youtube comedy sketches and low-budget films. After struggling to land traditional distribution, he posted his found-footage horror film online, which subsequently went viral.
Then Obsession arrived.
The film was produced with a budget of roughly $750,000. Barker handled the writing, directing, and editing himself, while relatively unknown actors Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette took on the lead roles. In just a few months, it went from a small-scale horror project to a global theatrical sensation.
By July, Obsession had grossed over $400 million worldwide.
A few years back, that story would have seemed nearly ridiculous: a YouTuber in their 20s creates a film for under $1 million using largely unknown actors, and young viewers make it one of the year’s most significant theatrical releases.
Still, Barker is far from the only case. At 20, Kane Parsons made his feature-film directorial debut with Backrooms, based on the viral horror videos he first made on YouTube. The film earned more than $81 million domestically during its opening weekend, despite having a production budget of roughly $10 million.
The triumph of Obsession and Backrooms makes that connection especially clear. Both originated from directors who built their followings and artistic identities online prior to breaking into Hollywood. As the two films took over the box office, the Associated Press characterized their achievement as part of a surge of filmmakers raised on YouTube who draw predominantly young viewers.
The pathway into Hollywood is shifting. The upcoming wave of filmmakers doesn’t have to come solely by way of film school, assistant positions, and the conventional studio system. They can start by posting something odd on YouTube.
This change is significant because these filmmakers grasp the audiences Hollywood is so eager to reach. They were raised in the same internet culture as the people who watch them. Barker isn’t a 50-year-old executive trying to figure out what a 20-year-old wants to watch — he belongs to the very generation he makes films for.
And audiences seem ready to reward originality when it comes across as genuine.
The success of Obsession carries particular weight, given that it was not tied to decades of pre-existing intellectual property. It required no superhero, no well-known franchise, or no familiar cinematic universe to persuade young audiences to venture out. It offered them something fresh.
The Movie Star Is Not Dead Either
There’s another factor that makes 2026 seem especially fitting for Gen Z: the actors who came of age with this generation have now arrived at a fascinating point in their careers.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are arguably the most obvious examples.
To many younger viewers, these aren’t far-off Hollywood stars who simply showed up one day as adults. Viewers have followed their careers develop in real time.
Zendaya moved from Disney Channel’s Shake It Up to Euphoria, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man Trilogy, Dune, as well as increasingly ambitious film roles. Pattinson has gone through an even more unusual evolution: starting as a teen sensation in Twilight, branching out to more independent films, starring in The Batman, and a steadily expanding set of offbeat, director-driven projects.
In 2026, the two starred together in The Drama, which earned more than $134 million worldwide.
Pattinson also appears in Primetime, a film by Lance Oppenheim inspired from the world of To Catch a Predator. Oppenheim is yet another younger filmmaking voice; the project represents his transition into narrative filmmaking following his documentary career, with Pattinson portraying a fictionalized take on Chris Hansen.
There is a distinctly powerful quality to pairing well-known stars with directors and stories that come across as fresh. Moviegoers enjoy the reassurance of a familiar face without being forced to sit through yet another rehashed franchise.
That could be one piece of the formula Hollywood had been lacking.
Cinema Is Back. Now It Needs to Stay Affordable.
This does not imply that streaming is going away.
In reality, the reverse is the case. A 2025 AP-NORC poll revealed that roughly three-quarters of American adults had streamed a new movie in the past year, while about two-thirds had watched one in a theatre. Price and convenience continue to be key factors behind people’s preference for watching at home.
Theatre attendance has recovered, but it has not magically returned to its pre-pandemic normal either. Even during 2026’s remarkable summer, ticket sales remained below pre-pandemic levels.
And that reveals what may be the greatest contradiction in cinema’s resurgence.
The generation that displays some of the strongest enthusiasm for movie theatres is also one for whom attending regularly can prove costly.
CableTV’s 2026 analysis of major American theatre chains put the average movie ticket cost at $16.30 USD. A night out with two tickets, a large popcorn, and two drinks could easily exceed $50 USD before transportation, parking, or anything else comes into the picture.
If cinemas hope to get younger viewers to transform the occasional trip to the movies into a real habit, ticket prices have to be within reach. Discount Tuesdays, student rates, subscriptions, and lower-priced screenings aren’t just marketing gimmicks; they reduce the distance between catching two films a year versus catching 20.
2026 made one thing clear: young people were never inherently against movie theatres. What they wanted was films worth going out for. They wanted films like Obsession and The Odyssey. They wanted well-known actors taking intriguing risks, 20-something directors being given cameras, original stories standing alongside huge blockbusters, and a reason to message their friends.
Ted Sarandos got one thing right: audiences will show Hollywood how they want to watch movies. In 2026, audiences gave their answer. At times, what they want is to watch films together.