Story by Mackenzie Thomas
Photos by Jinrui Liu
Dozens of phone screens go dark as they’re silenced and turned off.
Buckets of warm, golden popcorn are perched atop the laps of people throughout the room, ready to be eaten. The buttery aroma wafting throughout the space makes those who didn’t get snacks second-guess their choice to “save money.”
The curtains on either side of the screen swish to the sides, and a hush falls over the room as the lights dim, and it gets dark. The opening credits appear across the screen.
The movie begins.
“You’re taking on an adventure just with the people around you, just with the community around you, and the people that have shown up to the theater,” said Kerrington Bostick, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill majoring in English and comparative literature with a concentration in film studies.
The Duffer brothers, the world-renowned creators of Stranger Things, are leaving Netflix in April 2026 to make theatrical movies for Paramount among other kinds of projects, though they will continue to work with Netflix on pre-existing projects, according to an announcement in August. And they can’t wait to get started.
The opportunity to bring movies to the big screen is “not just exciting – it’s the fulfillment of a lifelong dream,” the brothers said in their announcement.
Fans are excited about the brothers’ new venture with Paramount, as it shows that movie theaters still have a place in today’s culture of quick hits and quick gratification. Film students and film professors alike believe theaters are forums vital to the art of film and to shared human experience. More than that, they foster connection in a time when people are re-learning how to connect with each other.
The pandemic: when streaming soared and theaters suffered
In the streaming age, users can binge-watch their favorite shows and rent the latest releases with the click of a remote. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was a drastic increase in the use of streaming platforms, with the subscription market in the United States increasing by 35% from 2019 to 2020, according to a 2020 Theme Report from the Motion Picture Association.
While subscriptions for streaming services went up, attendance in theaters dipped significantly due to pandemic-related closures. The Theme Report noted an 81% decrease in movie theater tickets sold for the U.S. and Canada from 2019 to 2020.
Those numbers still haven’t recovered, said Jeremy Welman, an entertainment executive and managing partner of Carolina Cinemas, which owns the Lumina Theater in Chapel Hill.
“We sort of keep saying, well, when will we be back to 2019 pre-pandemic,” Welman said. “To be perfectly frank, I don’t know that we’re ever going to get there. And that’s sort of brutal.”
The box office market for the U.S. and Canada was $11.4 billion in 2019 and dropped to $2.2 billion in 2020, according to the Theme Report.
With businesses and theaters shut down, studios had to find a workaround so they could continue to release movies, Welman said.
“Many of them launched their own streaming platforms out of necessity; they had to get their content out,” Welman said. “They have investors who paid to make a film. They made the film, or nearly made the film, and then they had to play it somewhere. And of course, we weren’t allowed to be open. So that’s sort of how it started.”
Box office earnings have improved since 2020, as last year’s total box office earnings for the U.S. and Canada amounted to $8.56 billion, according to a Statista report from January.
But streaming services have continued to dominate even years after people have come out of isolation and businesses have reopened, with 83% of American respondents reporting they use streaming services in a Pew Research Center study that came out in July. Streaming offers things that movie theaters simply cannot, such as improved accessibility, Bostick said.
“I think it really brings film to an accessible level for anyone and everyone to watch,” Bostick said. “I also think it gives opportunity for more people to make films and have a place to provide them to an audience, instead of always having to be in theaters.”
Aizhu Zhang, a freshman at UNC-Chapel Hill majoring in Asian studies and global cinema, also praised streaming services for their accessibility, noting she will use the translation feature to watch shows or films in Chinese.
“I can translate the kind of different languages into the Chinese versions on the streaming platforms,” Zhang said. “And also, I can do the different pace ranges, so I can get two times faster.”
Zhang said she also appreciates the variety she’s presented with on streaming platforms. The Pew Research study, which had more than 9,000 respondents, shows she’s not alone, showing 4 in 10 users reported being very satisfied with the content, and half of the users reported being somewhat satisfied.
Tensions between streaming and theaters
Filmmakers don’t create films to be viewed on a phone screen, said Martin Johnson, a film historian and associate professor of English and comparative literature at UNC-Chapel Hill. Creators envision their work on the big screen, where its true artistry is captured.
“Teaching film studies, I always tell my students, nothing is there by accident,” Johnson said. “When you’re watching a movie, the smallest piece of the set is there on purpose, the acting style, the music, all those things. If you’re watching it on a phone or a small screen, you’re missing a lot of that detail, a lot of that nuance.”
Bostick believes this is why the Duffer brothers decided to leave Netflix and focus more on theatrical releases.
“I could see them wanting to shift into higher-quality, more artistic cinema, and that’s why they have made this partnership, to now have their things shown in theaters,” Bostick said.
And while streaming can provide improved access and allow people to watch things from the comfort of their own home, it can’t produce that same communal experience that comes with viewing entertainment with others, Bostick said.
“People will laugh at certain times. People will be scared at certain times, maybe even crying,” Bostick said. “But having people around you to experience the same emotions with you automatically changes your experience of viewing the film.”
When the pandemic forced people to stay home and many lost the opportunity to connect with each other, Johnson said, people got a taste of what life was like without movie theaters.
“We had this kind of window during the pandemic to what it would be like without theaters,” Johnson said. “And I think that many people realized that that actually isn’t that good of a world.”
But worsening attention spans have made it harder for people to choose seeing movies in theaters, Bostick said.
“Whenever you ask someone to go see a two-hour long film with you, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a long time. I can’t dedicate that attention level to that,’” Bostick said. “It’s kind of scary too to think about it that people can’t go two and a half hours without checking their phones, and that’s just kind of the day and world we live in right now.”
Another complicating factor is that there are different ways of measuring success in the film industry, especially if a film fails to see a return on the money that went into creating it, Bostick said.
“It can be successful in the art, but it would be unsuccessful for whoever decided to invest in the film,” Bostick said.
Filmmakers often have to decide between releasing their films on a streaming platform versus a movie theater, Johnson said.
“Either you take this check, $10 million right now, but your film might be seen by no one, because Amazon or Netflix or whatever will just bury it, or you take your risk on distribution, you might make a million dollars, you might make 20, but you really don’t know,” Johnson said. “I think that choice is hard for filmmakers, and many of them are in it not only because they want to make money, but also because they want to reach audiences.”
In the case of the Duffer brothers, because they’ve already had so much success with Stranger Things on Netflix, they will likely replicate that success for theatrical releases, Welman said.
“If they’re able to create things for the streaming platforms that are successful, how can they not create something that’s going to catch on, you know, theatrical as well?” Welman said.
The future of theaters
Welman said that while he sees there being fewer movie theaters in the next five to 10 years, he believes there will be higher-quality theaters.
“Less screens, but bigger screens, better sound, cushier seats, service at your seat. Those kind of things, expanded menus, so that it’s more of a dining and drinking experience versus just the movie,” Welman said.
To ensure theaters remain relevant in today’s culture, Welman said, studios need to take more risks and start producing more original content, rather than remakes of the same stories or continuations of already popular films.
“What did we get out of that? Every possible Marvel movie ever made,” Welman said. “It’s like they just felt like that was so easy. But now, everybody’s kind of gotten burnt out on it.”
But Paramount’s addition of the Duffer brothers to their company is a promising and exciting development for theatrical, Welman said.
“I think we’re excited because Paramount had become almost stagnant, which is a shame, because historically, they’re one of the best studios out there,” Welman said. “And so now to see them bringing in new talent and hopefully start creating new, unique stories, I think that’s going to be great for theatrical.”
