Can google for "statista Number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada from 1980 to 2018" and you'll find a graph showing movie ticket sales smoothly grew

Can google for "statista Number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada from 1980 to 2018" and you'll find a graph showing movie ticket sales smoothly grew and peaked around the turn of the century and have declined about 20% since the turn of the century. Revenue is an entirely different graph, where revenue increased in an exponential curve in the 90s, but around the turn of the century has gone to a very slow linear increase, also about 20% since the turn of the century. Note that US population went up about 15%, I would assume entirely due to immigration, from 282M to 327M. Annual average CPI from bls.gov shows 172 in 2000 and 255 in 2019, so figure somewhat above 33% inflation since 2000. So, since the turn of the century, sale quantities are falling about 40% behind population based estimates, whereas revenue is increasing slightly faster than population but vastly slower than inflation. It would seem casuals and the general public are no longer going to the movies, its the kind of thing you see in extracting maximum revenue from superfans type of thing. Trying and failing to keep up with inflation by appealing more so to an ever shrinking audience of the most motivated fans. This would fit in with anecdotal "common sense" reports of the product being very formulaic and ever more narrowly targeted. In the end, markets with shrinking mindshare and shrinking revenue relative to inflation, are usually doomed. Either things will get shaken up and all the trend lines will change or the entrenched legacy players will eventually financialize themselves out of business sooner or later.