By David Walker
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
As Americans spend less time at movie theaters each year and large streaming services like Netflix make it easier to be entertained at home, some film buffs are reminding consumers that there is nothing like seeing a picture at the cinema.
Taz Wooten is one of them.
At 24 years old, Wooten has worked at five different movie theaters across the country and is a big advocate for what the theater experience can bring.
“When you come to the movie theater, you meet people that you probably would have never met,” said Wooten, a self-proclaimed cinephile and employee at AFI Silver Theatre in downtown Silver Spring. “You don’t get the gasps or the laughs in the audience if you are sitting at home watching a film.”
Theater culture has seen some unique changes in the last few years, especially since the drop in attendance and box office sales that occurred in 2020 due to Covid-19. While attendance has been creeping up since the pandemic, it is still below 2019 levels, according to The Numbers.
Corporate mergers are also having an impact on theaters. Thursday’s announcement that Netflix plans to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, for example, has created anxiety in a theater industry already worried about the direct-to-streaming practices used by video-on-demand companies to circumvent movie houses altogether.
“I don’t think movie culture is as ubiquitous as it was 20 years ago,” said Pablo Gardea, a frequent patron of Silver Theatre, along with his fiancé Mary Lane. “I had a conversation at work this week where someone was like, ‘How often you do you go [to the movie theater]?’ I said, ‘About once a week,’ and they were incredulous.”
Gardea and Lane got engaged in January, right after seeing a showing of Nickel Boys in theaters. For them, going to the cinema is a routine, but they think it takes a unique combination of marketing and interest to get the average consumer out of the house and into the theater seats.
“I don’t necessarily think that folks coming in for a showing of Wicked will translate over to an audience member of a smaller movie, if they’re just coming in for the event,” Lane said. “But I think it’s a good thing overall, helps to keep the theater open, certainly brings people in.”
Event-type marketing has become as prominent as ever since the Covid shutdown. Films like Barbie and Oppenheimer opting for joint promotion as they both released on July 21, 2023, spawning the moniker “Barbenheimer,” is a significant example since 2020.
The recent releases of the two Wicked films have also seen unique marketing in the form of promotional items at Target and Chilis, such as pajamas and margaritas, or even screening “sing-along” versions of the film at theaters.
These “event-type” films have existed since the release of Jaws in 1975, followed by Star Wars in 1977. Jaws seen as the first summer blockbuster and Star Wars as a science-fiction epic, moviegoers would line up around the block to get to see these screenings.
While there are some similarities between these releases and some of the modern epics, theaters in the 70s would only be showing two or three films at a time, meaning patrons had limited options. In 2025, some theaters are showing up to 20 different films a day, requiring a more focused marketing campaign from distributors to get people to watch their movie instead of the other options.
With the prominence of streaming sites such as Netflix and HBO Max offering new movies just weeks after their theater release, these event type releases have become almost necessary in bringing people out of their homes and into the theater seats.
“I honestly hope that streaming services realize that if they keep putting their movies directly on their sites, it’s going to kill not only their own movies, but movies that they want to make,” Wooten said about the state of straight-to-streaming releases.
“I believe streaming is powerful and convenient, much like early network TV was,” said Lorrie Palmer, a Towson University professor of film history. “But I believe that the communal nature of the theatrical movie-going experience of public screens is what keeps people coming back.”
For theater regular Jeff Hughes, what the movie theater can bring to a film experience is irreplaceable.
“It is always so much better to see movies the way they are supposed to be seen,” said Hughes. “On a gigantic screen with everything projected, the way it should be.”
While some may opt for their 50-inch television screens and surround sound systems in their home theater, the scale and weight of a film projected on a 100-foot screen cannot be matched at home.
“The 50th anniversary showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, seeing that in person was magical,” Hughes said of a significant moviegoing memory. “Seeing it on that big screen, how it was meant to be seen, big projection, big themes, and Stanley Kubrick is one of my favorite directors.”
Despite the challenges the theater industry has experienced, people like Wooten still have faith. He said movie theaters are about more than the film. They are also about community.
“The community is kind of what keeps movie theaters alive in the first place,” he said. “A place where you can meet friends that share the same interest. I remember a guy telling me about the first time he saw Apocalypse Now; he just realized that cinema is amazing.”