For over twenty years the end of cinema has been announced, first because of DVD, then streaming, then the pandemic. The cinemas are still here, if with fewer admissions than in their best years.
What has genuinely disappeared is something more specific, and it affects an entire category of film.
The polarisation of the programme
Look at the schedule of an average multiplex and you'll find essentially two kinds of film.
First: very large productions. Franchise sequels, family animation, event cinema with big budgets. Films where the large screen is an argument in itself.
Second: very small productions in the arthouse space, often on few prints and in specialist venues.
What's missing is the middle. The mid-budget film for an adult audience — the drama, the comedy, the thriller without superheroes. That category made up the bulk of cinema programming for decades and has largely vanished.
Why the middle collapsed
Worth noting that this happened faster in some markets than others. Countries with strong local production subsidies and a habit of cinema-going held onto the mid-budget film longer, and a few still have one. Markets that rely heavily on imported product lost it almost entirely, because the decision about what gets made was being taken somewhere else.
That geographic variation is the clearest evidence that this was an economic shift rather than a change in what audiences want. The audience for a well-made adult drama did not evaporate. The financing route to making one simply moved.
Several factors, all pushing the same way.
Marketing costs. A cinema release requires an advertising campaign whose cost scales poorly with production budget. A mid-budget film pays nearly as much marketing as a large one while having smaller revenue potential. The maths works less well.
Risk profile. Big films are risky, but when they work they work enormously. Small films are cheap enough that failure is survivable. The middle has the worst ratio of risk to potential return.
Streaming pays decently for exactly these films. A drama with recognisable actors is attractive to a streaming service because it retains subscribers. The service buys it or produces it, and it never plays in a cinema.
Shortened windows. The gap between cinema release and streaming availability has narrowed considerably. For a film you can watch at home in a few weeks anyway, the incentive to go out declines — unless the film offers something the big screen justifies.
Why this is a problem
You could say the films still get made, just for home viewing. That's partly true and overlooks three things.
The economics differ. A cinema film earns through ticket sales and then subsequent windows. Streaming productions are frequently paid as a flat fee with no participation in later success. For those involved that's a substantial change, and it was central to industry labour disputes.
Visibility is lower. A cinema release generates coverage, reviews, conversation. A film appearing in a catalogue often vanishes from awareness within days. There are now expensive productions with prominent casts that essentially nobody noticed.
New talent loses a rung. The mid-budget film was traditionally the step where directors proved themselves. If only very small and very large exist, the middle rung of the ladder is missing.
What still works in cinemas
It's instructive which films outperform expectations, because it follows a pattern.
Films with event character, where you want to be there while everyone is talking about it. Films with a clearly defined audience you can reach directly. And films where technical presentation — picture, sound, scale — makes a genuine difference.
What those have in common: they're reasons to leave the house. Mere availability of content isn't a reason anymore, because content is abundant.
The cinemas themselves
The economics of the exhibition side are worth stating, because they explain choices that look baffling from outside.
A cinema typically keeps only a portion of ticket revenue, and for major releases in opening weeks the distributor's share is high. Which means the ticket is close to a break-even proposition and the actual margin sits in concessions — the drinks and snacks that everybody complains about.
That single fact explains a great deal. It explains why prices at the counter are what they are. It explains why cinemas fight hard over release windows, since a film exclusive to them is the only period they can rely on. And it explains why the shift towards premium formats and seating has been so rapid, because those carry a higher ticket price with a better retained share.
It also explains why a strong slate matters so much more than in most businesses. A cinema with a good year and a cinema with a bad one have nearly identical fixed costs, and almost no control over which they get.
Venues have responded, partly successfully. Better seating, better sound, food and drink, special events, broadcasts of concerts or sport.
That converts the cinema from a place where you watch films into a place where you have an experience. Economically that's probably correct. Culturally it's a shift whose consequences aren't yet clear.
What I'd miss if it disappears entirely is the casual cinema visit — going in because something happens to be on, without it being an event. That was the foundation of the business for a long time, and it's precisely what streaming has taken over.