Shrinking cinema landscape due to streaming and changing viewing habits — continuous decline in screen count and attendance since 2010s across major markets.
Since the mid-2010s, we have observed a continuous decline in cinema attendance and screen availability in most Western markets – a phenomenon that goes beyond mere cyclical fluctuations. While the multiplexes of the 1990s and 2000s were still considered the gold standard, the classic cinema ecosystem is now structurally shrinking. Streaming platforms have not only kept audiences away from the red seats but have also put pressure on the economic viability of entire art-house cinemas. Medium-sized and smaller venues are disappearing first – the large multiplex chains are holding on, but with declining occupancy rates and longer gaps between blockbusters.
For us as filmmakers, this has direct consequences: distributors hesitate with medium budgets, art-house films land in streaming catalogs faster than in cinemas, and the theatrical premiere loses prestige. Cinema as a cultural space for collective experience – with its darkness, loudness, and lack of distractions – now competes against the couch, against mobile viewing, against zero-latency expectations. Film education also suffers: generations of critics and artists grew up with cinema as a reference medium; that is changing now.
The pandemic of 2020–2021 accelerated this trend rather than interrupting it. Some venues did not reopen. At the same time, new niches are emerging – premium formats like IMAX or DCI projections for event films are holding their own, and in some metropolises, we are seeing a renaissance of smaller art-house cinemas. But this does not compensate for the overall numbers. In practice, this means for the cinematographer: you still shoot for cinema – sometimes – but much more often for the smaller screen. This changes the choice of motifs, depth of field, even color grading (because streaming codecs saturate differently than DCP). The cinema decline is therefore not only economically and sociologically relevant – it also shapes how we still work.