By Brandon Katz

For more than a decade, the United States box office has been a massive $10 billion-plus industry, including a record $11.8 billion in 2018. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic torpedoed that momentum with the box office sinking to historic lows last year. As we celebrate recent theatrical rebounds, it’s important to remember we’re still not remotely close to any sense of financial normalcy.

Despite the inflated box office numbers of the last ten years, domestic movie theater ticket sales have actually declined since a new century high of nearly 1.6 million in 2002. Getting people into movie theaters become more difficult with the rise of at-home entertainment in the early and mid-aughts and has now been compounded by the pandemic and all the resulting shifts in film distribution. Yet Marvel’s Black Widow appears to be the top film viewers are willing to venture back into theaters for—though that enthusiasm may not last for other features.

Surveys are always an elastic set of representative data, subject to the whims of respondents presented with somewhat hypothetical scenarios. They should not be treated as hard science and fact capable of predicting market trends. But as we continue to find ourselves in unprecedented circumstances that force us to reevaluate and reimagine our standard metrics and benchmarks with which we examine the industry, we must be willing to expand our purviews to better assess the near-term future.

In 2021, 24% of respondents plan to go to the theater less often, versus 12% in 2020.

TV Time, a Whip Media company, conducted a survey to gauge how consumers feel about the summer movie experience. The findings are based on a survey of 1,904 consumers from April 28-29, 2021.

With a handful of summer movies arriving in a crowded and compressed schedule boasting same-day premieres in theaters and streaming platforms such as Disney+ Premier Access or HBO Max, TV Time asked consumers (who said they are interested in seeing the movie) where they preferred to watch it. The survey found:

• Marvel’s Black Widow is the movie that viewers most want to see in the theater. 68% said they would prefer to watch Black Widow in the theater versus 32% who plan to watch it at home. It is followed by fellow Marvel blockbusters Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (64%), F9 (63%), The Suicide Squad (58%), and A Quiet Place II (55%) as the movies viewers most want to see in theaters.
• The top titles that consumers said they plan to watch at home are family-oriented ones with Space Jam: A New Legacy (69%), Cruella (64%), and Jungle Cruise (61%) topping the list.

According to box office firm The Numbers, Black Widow is projected to score a $63 million opening and a final domestic haul of $170 million. Meanwhile, fellow firm Box Office Pro believed Black Widow stood a chance at a domestic total of $125 million or more in its original May 7 release. With a day-and-date PVOD release for the MCU’s first film in two years and greater competition, projections aren’t as confident.

Overall 90% of TV Time’s survey respondents said they plan to return to the movies. 28% are already going or ready to go as soon as theaters nearby open. However, overall sentiment for a return to exhibition is far lower than it was at the same time last year. This raises the question of how sustainable enthusiasm may be after consumers have become accustomed to even greater instant gratification throughout the pandemic.