The Screens family is three-for-three on event movies this summer: Toy Story 5 (loved it), Minions with the kids next, and I'm holding out for The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX. Notice the pattern: every trip is an event.

Hollywood is on pace for its first $10B box office year since 2019. A year ago, Netflix's Ted Sarandos called theaters an "outmoded idea for most people." Now the town gets to say he was wrong. But the recovery is thinner than the headline.

Why it matters: Hollywood isn't recovering to 2019; it's resizing. Fewer movies, fewer trips, bigger events, and now smaller budgets.

Let's break it down into 4 big questions:
1) How has the box office performed so far this year?
2) Has box office revenue returned to pre-pandemic levels?
3) What is driving the decline in box office revenue?
4) What are the most expensive movies ever made?

Previous movie biz breakdowns: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019

Quick answer: Up 15% vs. last year, the best start of the decade, but still 18% below 2019.

U.S. box office revenue through June (Box Office Mojo):
1) 2019 - $5.7B
2) 2020 - $1.8B (↓ 68%)
3) 2021 - $1.0B (↓ 42%)
4) 2022 - $3.7B (↑ 250%)
5) 2023 - $4.4B (↑ 20%)
6) 2024 - $3.6B (↓ 19%)
7) 2025 - $4.1B (↑ 15%)
8) 2026 - $4.7B (↑ 15%)

What's driving it: Franchises and family films. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is the year's first billion-dollar hit, Toy Story 5 is closing in on $900M and will pass Toy Story 4 as the biggest in the series, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 outgrossed the original in a few weeks on its way to $688M.

What it means: The recovery is real, but it's narrow. People aren't going to the movies. They're going to a movie a few times a year.

Quick answer: About 77% of the way back. Before inflation.

U.S. box office revenue (Box Office Mojo):
1) 2016 - $11.4B  (↑ 2%)
2) 2017 - $11.1B  (↓ 3%)
3) 2018 - $11.9B  (↑ 7%)
4) 2019 - $11.3B  (↓ 5%)
5) 2020 - $2.1B (↓ 81%)
6) 2021 - $4.5B (↑ 113%)
7) 2022 - $7.4B (↑ 64%)
8) 2023 - $8.9B (↑ 21%)
9) 2024 - $8.6B (↓ 4%)
10) 2025 - $8.7B (↑ 1%)

The good news: Without adjusting for inflation, the movie business has recovered to 77% of its pre-pandemic level, and 2026 should be the first $10B year in seven years.

The bad news: Inflation has made each dollar 26% less valuable.  Once adjusted for inflation, the box office is down 39% from 2019.

Zoom out first: The average American goes to 2 movies per year.  Back in 1929, it was 46. Television did most of that damage long before Netflix existed. Every new screen since, from cable to the phone, took another bite. The moviegoing habit has been shrinking for almost a century; the pandemic just finished the job.

Fewer tickets sold. A lot fewer.

U.S. movie tickets sold (The Numbers):
1) 1995 - 1.2B
2) 2005 - 1.4B  (↑ 12%)
3) 2015 - 1.3B  (↓ 3%)
4) 2025 - 769M  (↓ 42%)

The surprise: Everyone blames ticket prices. The data says otherwise.

Increase between 2019-25:
1) Inflation - ↑ 26%
2) Movie ticket prices - ↑ 23%

Movies got cheaper in real terms, and attendance fell anyway. This is a demand problem, not a pricing problem.

Smart move: So theaters stopped chasing lost visitors and started mining the ones who still come. Three years ago, AMC sold zero movie-themed popcorn buckets. This year, it's a $100M+ business at $20 to $80 each (a Trojan horse for The Odyssey, a handbag for Prada 2). More revenue per visitor, not more visitors.

Who still goes to the movies (Pew):
1) Ages 18-29 - 67%
2) Upper income - 64%
3) 30-49 - 60%
4) Hispanic - 59%
5) Middle income - 57%
6) Women - 54%
7) Total - 53%
8) Men - 53%
9) White - 53%
10) Asian - 53%

Bottom line: If 53% go to the movies at least once a year, then 47% don't. Non-attendance peaked at 64% in 2021 but remains well above the 2019 level (31%). It's hard to grow a market after losing 23% of your customers (from 69% to 53%).

Share of adults who never attend movies in a theatre (Kagan):
1) 2018 - 34%
2) 2019 - 31%
3) 2020 - 33%
4) 2021 - 64%
5) 2022 - 46%

Most expensive movies in 2025 dollars (Newsweek):
1) Cleopatra (1963) - $490M
2) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) - $490M
3) John Carter (2012) - $480M
4) Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) - $478M
5) Avengers: Endgame (2019) - $460M
6) Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - $445M
7) Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) - $440M
8) Justice League (2017) - $423M
9) Fast X (2023) - $392M
10) Titanic (1997) - $390M

The bridge: Look at the dates. No film since 2023 would crack this list. Even The Odyssey, at a reported $250M, the most expensive R-rated movie ever, and Christopher Nolan's biggest swing, comes in at roughly half of Cleopatra. The demand side resized, and now the supply side is resizing to match.

Hollywood isn't rebuilding the old business; it's rightsizing into a new one. Demand resized: 2 trips a year, not a habit. Pricing resized: premium formats and $80 buckets for event-goers. Costs resized: no top-10 budget in three years. The 400M+ annual tickets lost since 2019 went home to streaming and YouTube, the screens where ad dollars follow.

What's next: The Odyssey opens this month in 70mm IMAX. If a $250M swing on Homer fills theaters, the event model works. The Screens family will be doing its part from row F.

The bottom line: The movie business didn't recover. It resized: fewer movies, fewer trips, bigger events, smaller bets.