DALLAS — Let’s talk about some movie magic. Not the magical moments from the big screen, though, this is about the money-making kind of magic.
For many years the box office churned out bigger blockbuster results decade after decade. According to statistics from Box Office Mojo by IMDbPro, theater receipts went from $1,642,400,771 from 1980 to 1990. The from $4,326,824,577 in 1990 -- to $7,476,224,972 in 2000 and then to $10,585,388,159 in 2010.
But then a huge plot twist…followed by another one
That steep upward trend in movie watchers heading to theaters topped out in 2018 and 2019 when box office totals surpassed $11 million. Then, in 2020, the pandemic shuttered theaters and obliterated revenue, knocking it down to $2,113,386,800 in 2020. The box office total hasn’t been near that level since the early 1980s.
In the years following the pandemic-low in 2020, audiences started returning, helping movie ticket sales to rebound to a total of $8,908,297,471 in 2023.
But then, the plot thickened again just as things were looking up. Extended strikes in 2023 by writers and actors led to a long halt in production. So, there were fewer big releases and fewer people in theater seats this year.
A star of the show
Somehow, Plano-based Cinemark has become a relative superstar. To be clear, the company has been hit by the industry’s challenges this year. Last month, Cinemark revealed its revenue for admissions and concessions in the first half of 2024 had fallen almost $240 million from the same time period in 2023. But Cinemark boasts it has outperformed its peers by 4%.
Part of the magic may be attracting audiences with lower ticket prices. On average, in the first half of 2024, a Cinemark seat in the U.S. has cost about $9.85 compared to $12.09 for one at AMC. That’s a 22.74% difference in ticket prices in a year when people have been looking for value.
Also, as I explained earlier this year, Cinemark is enticing some moviegoers to spend extra for premium experiences like haptic seats that interact with what’s happening on screen, their ScreenX wraparound theaters, and the especially big money maker: The huge XD screens with immersive audio. Earlier this year, when we met Cinemark’s SVP of Technology Operations & Presentation, Adilson De Andrade, we went over the numbers– that the XD screen was making up about five percent of the chain’s screens but was responsible for 14 percent of the screens Cinemark moviegoers were watching. He confirmed, “It is very popular…this has worked”.
Those upgraded experiences are part of how Cinemark is trying to convince us that the big screen is so much better than our sad smaller screen and couch at home. But to keep us coming back to the theater, De Andrade says they have to focus heavily on consistency in the theater experience. And the company is not just leaving that to all of its individual theaters across the country.
At a flagship theater near their Plano headquarters, I found out they’re now keeping up with what is happening on every one of those screens in real-time, all from Cinemark’s central hub, “We have a control center where we monitor close to 6,000 screens worldwide. We pay attention to every single showtime. We had over 9.7 million showtimes last year, which is about 26,000 showtimes every day to make sure each one of those showtimes meets Cinemark’s standards of quality of presentation.”
From the box office to Wall Street
In the first week of September, AMC, the largest theater chain in the U.S., saw its stock down more than 20 percent this year. Cinemark, the third largest chain in the U.S. had a stock price in the first week of September that was more than 100% higher than it was at the start of 2024.