I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. I think a lot of people haven’t got back into going to the cinema since COVID which adds to the problem of not having the energy to see everything. My inertia for getting out to the cinema is much worse than it used to be, which seems to be the same with my social group. Collectively that makes it much more likely that as a group someone will be the voice of “anyone fancy a cinema trip”.
Yep, that’s definitely a factor. If people are going to the cinema less, then they’re going to prioritise films that they really, really want to see, rather than just anything that looks like it might be fun. The economic issues contribute to this too, because who’s going to spend money they don’t have on a film that might be good but is also likely to be extremely mediocre? And there’s also the fact that behaviour in cinemas is… not great these days, which creates an incentive for people who want to enjoy a film instead of, you know, throwing crap and screaming and assaulting the staff, to just stay home.
And when you add onto that the issue I identified with the quantity of content, if you’re a couple of years behind on the franchise, but a TV series you haven’t got around to yet is required viewing for a film in the cinema, then you’re not going to rush to go see it the very first weekend. What you might do instead is stream it or buy the Blu-ray a couple of years from now, when you’ve caught up on X, Y, and Z you need to watch first so the film makes sense, but then your purchase doesn’t show up in the sales figures until 2-3 years in the future. And by that point, Disney have already decided the film was a failure.
