Can Gen Z Save Movie Theaters?

Few could have predicted Disney’s Zootopia 2 would become the top-grossing 2025 film ahead of Avatar: Fire and Ash, collecting $1.86 billion in worldwide ticket sales, or that Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch would place among the three movies to cross $1 billion. This year brought more surprises: Iron Lung, a tiny asteroid of a movie self-released by YouTube star Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) that stunned with $40 million, and Paramount’s panned Scream 7, which defied logic in opening to $64 million, a franchise best and $20 million ahead of expectations. On the specialty side, there’s Neon’s foreign-language films A Sentimental Value and A Secret Agent, which are both competing in the Oscar best picture race and are hovering in the $4 million to $6 million range.

The common denominator? Zoomers, aka Gen Zers, whom some had written off as anti-moviegoing, since they were the first generation to bond 24/7 with an iPhone or other device. Yes, social media has them craving a collective experience, resulting in a rise in theatergoing among those born between 1997 and 2012. “Generation Z is ironically drawn to the classic analog experience of going to the movie theater,” says Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian. “They are able to blend this traditional activity with their digital lives, using theater outings as fodder for social engagement.”

Gen Zers are becoming a larger share of the total moviegoing crowd. In 2025, they represented 39 percent of the audience in North America, up from 34 percent in 2019, per Comscore PostTrak exit polling data shared with The Hollywood Reporter. And leading theater trade organization Cinema United touted that Zoomer theater attendance grew by 25 percent the past 12 months. 

Last year, Gen Zers ranged in age from 13 to 28; this year, they will hold even more clout by occupying an even larger share of the two most coveted age brackets in the film business: 18-24 and 25-34. And with Zoomers now occupying the 13-17 age bracket, PG-rated movies are back and studios are reconsidering the hard-won knowledge that PG films repelled millennials when they were 13- to 17-years-old. Gen Zers don’t feel that way, helping to explain why four of last year’s top movies were all rated PG (Zootopia 2, Lilo & Stitch, A Minecraft Movie and How to Train Your Dragon). And ticket purchases are pre-planned: 40 percent of Gen Z says they bought tickets in advance “within the last week,” up from 25 percent pre-pandemic, per PostTrak polling.

“There’s no question about it — Gen Z likes going to the movies, and they do so more often than older audiences,” says Ray Subers, head of film at leading research firm NRG, citing the demo’s trend toward IP like video game, anime and YouTuber brands as well as major animated movies they grew up on. “It’s critical to the industry’s future that studios prioritize these 21st century brands over older IP that mainly resonates with the 35-plus and 45-plus crowd. Gen Zers don’t want their parents’ franchises.” 

Disney’s chief brand officer Asad Ayaz had a front-row seat to the revolution when helping 2019’s live-action Aladdin transform into a $1 billion hit, thanks to the usual squadron of families combined with a general audience contingent made up of older millennials and the youngest Gen Xers, a subset referred to “Zillennial,” a subset also given credit for the success of last year’s live-action update of Lilo & Stitch.

The Millennial-Gen Z combo his team eyed was even stronger than expected, providing invaluable insight into the nostalgia factor at play as both demos got a chance to see an updated version of the 1992 animated film they grew up with. By the time Zootopia 2 came along, Gen Zers were even more important and the sky was the limit, with the pic become the highest-grossing animated film of all time. “It’s done great with families, but it’s also done really well with people who don’t have kids and general audiences all over the world,” Ayaz says.

Or take Marty Supreme, the Timothée Chalamet caper film. The film became A24’s highest-grossing feature (a worldwide tally of over $274 million) and the majority of those Supreme moviegoers were below the age of 35. The ping-pong film proved especially popular to users of Letterboxd, a social network founded in 2011 for young people who have an opinion on art. The platform, whose staff is now a fixture on the red carpet — where they wield a mic and ask “Four Favorites?” to celebrity passersby — grew by 9 million users in the past year alone. For context, at the end of January, Letterboxd’s user numbers were more than 27 million.

“We do know that distributors are looking at what is happening on Letterboxd to gauge how their films are resonating,” Letterboxd CEO Matthew Buchanan says about the app’s impact on getting movies to a younger audience. The exec references Charli xcx, a self-proclaimed movie buff and Letterboxd user and star of A24’s The Moment. “She uses the platform exactly how she wants to, which is what we encourage for everyone. The community’s embrace of The Moment,” he adds, “may have something to do with that.”

A24 rival Neon, run by Tom Quinn, also pays attention to Letterbox. But far more important to Neon is reaching an audience by platforming the title slowly in theaters, such as the outfit did with Sentimental Value or The Secret Agent. Elissa Federoff, head of distribution at Neon, notes Gen Zers are turning out to watch their Oscar nominees. That helps lift all boats. The combined market share of specialty distributors Neon, A24, Focus Features and Searchlight was 7 percent of the domestic box office in 2025, compared with 4 percent the year before.

Or take perhaps Hollywood’s most reliable genre: the mainstream horror pic. Paramount’s Scream 7 benefited by relocating to a weekend where it could play in Imax, where spectacle was the draw. The movie centers on Neve Campbell’s character as the mother of an older teenager played by Isabel May. “We also wanted to grow the international market, and the mother-daughter aspect of it is universally relatable and a storyline we thought could connect,” says Paramount marketing and distribution chief Josh Goldstine. 

The demographic shift in theatergoing rise isn’t confined to the U.S. “What we’re seeing right now,” adds Tim Richards, founder and CEO of the U.K. cinema chain Vue, “and certainly it backs up all of the market analysis that’s been done across Europe and even in North America, is that [young people] have returned.”

“Gen Z is slowly growing to be a safe bet,” says Fatima Djoumer, CEO of Europa Cinemas, the largest network of cinema exhibitors dedicated to promoting European films. “For years, Gen Z was seen by many film professionals or observers as the ‘streaming and short-form content generation,’” she continues, “[but] within Europa Cinemas’ network, cinemas are regaining audiences, in particular young people — not only through targeted school screenings but also through specific film events. For Gen Z,” she adds, “moviegoing is increasingly becoming a new kind of night out.”

A “night out” may have a new definition to a younger generation. It’s not news that younger people are drinking and clubbing less than their parents and grandparents. A 2023 survey from global research company Gallup found that the share of adults under 35 who say they ever drink dropped ten percentage points in two decades, to 62 percent in 2021-2023 from 72 percent in 2001-2003.

Experts are split on why the drop-off has been so sharp from generation to generation, but Michael Kill, CEO of the U.K.’s Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), says that while the main proponents are financial limitations, safety, and health concerns, it’s certainly not for lack of interest: “This whole false economy around, ‘Oh, [young] people don’t go out because alcohol is not available or it’s not in their interest,’” he says. “It doesn’t stop them socializing. The social and cultural economy is still really important to them.”

And while there is an element of social anxiety after so many kids grew up in lockdown, that urge to connect, to feel immersed in an experience, is stronger than ever. “For young viewers, the cinema experience is an affordable, collective night out,” says Djoumer, lauding discounted tickets and regular deals from big theater chains. “They return to cinemas when seeing that a specific film is not only an event, but also means participating in a wider cultural conversation.”

This Fear Of Missing Out — aka FOMO — could be another major catalyst in younger people’s mass return to theaters. “There’s that feeling of fandom, of being involved in film culture and not wanting to miss the conversation,” James Connor of the U.K. Cinema Association says. “Barbie and Oppenheimer did a lot of work in event-izing cinema and the enjoyment of film outside of franchises like Marvel and Star Wars. It brought people together that may not ordinarily want to come together because they didn’t want to miss out on the moment.”

The generation that grew up perpetually dialed into culture can’t handle not understanding what the internet’s obsessed with. Memes, gossip, the latest celebrity beef — the business of being in the know is more lucrative than ever before, and the film industry is capitalizing.

“Social media is inescapable, and the conversation is inescapable,” says Hannah Stokes, social media executive for Massive, a U.K.-based initiative designed to connect people aged 16-30 with independent and British film through early previews, exclusive merchandise, and social, community-driven experiences. “People want to see [films] early so they can lead the conversation,” she continues, adding that our being easily spooked by spoilers only adds to the urgency of getting to the theater.

There was a whole lot of noise online about Letterboxd’s Wuthering Heights ratings, with a host of both zero and five-star ratings logged on Emerald Fennell’s third feature on the day of its Feb. 13 release. Stokes, by the way, noticed an uptick in young fans sporting “Get Wet” merch and making Jacob Elordi fancams (fan-made edits of films or TV shows that go bananas on social media) around the time Wuthering Heights dominated our feeds. Just last month, a 25-year-old X user went viral after telling people she’d been hired by HBO to cut trailers and promo videos. She purportedly got their attention after making a Heated Rivalry fancam that accrued over 78,000 likes and 4.4 million views.