Cinemas have survived existential threats from television, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, home cinema systems (no, they aren't as good as cinemas and here's why), streaming, and recently the pandemic.

Just because the video games industry and television drama is flourishing doesn't mean cinema will die. Also, whilst I agree mainstream Hollywood has been decidedly tepid of late (though both Barbie and Oppenheimer were of value), it is important to remember that cinema elsewhere remains as creative, challenging, innovative, and incisive as ever - Korean cinema, Japanese cinema, films from the Middle-East, from Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, and even in the US independent scene. These films are all doing well and making good returns on investment.

As someone who goes to the cinema at least two or three times per week (minimum), I can tell you I often see crowded or sold out independent cinemas - or at least, I do here in the UK (in the rural southwest). It was particularly gratifying to see the weird and esoteric Enys Men do better at the box office in this area of the UK than Avatar: The Way of Water at one point during its blockbusting run.

On the multiplex end of things, I know various staff at my local Cineworld (I have one of those £10.99 per month for unlimited films card, which keeps the costs down for those concerned about prices) and they tell me that in the UK at least, we are very much out the other end of the financial crisis for the chain, having just had a record breaking summer. I should add that if you compare UK box office figures from forty years ago to today, not withstanding the pandemic blip, they are far, far higher today. People thought cinemas were doomed forty years ago, and they weren't.

Why? Because the novelty of things like VHS, streaming, and so forth always wears off. Cinema has always been the superior experience. It's a ritual. An occasion. I think general audiences (as opposed to dyed-in-the-wool cineastes like me) are starting to realise this again.