Nearly half of Americans have not gone to the movies in 2025

Attendance at cinemas today is still a long way from the pre-Covid period.

Despite the return of blockbusters and a regular flow of theatrical releases, cinema attendance in the United States remains mixed. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and published just before the Oscars, indicates that 53% of American adults have seen at least one film at the cinema in the last twelve months. Which means that practically one in two Americans did not go to theaters. Worse still: 7% have never been to the cinema in their entire life!

The study was carried out during the summer of 2025 and therefore covered a rolling year.

Variety qualifies and cites another study conducted by NRG/National Research Group in August 2025 which puts forward a higher figure: 77% of Americans aged 12 to 74 attended at least one session over the same period according to this survey. This discrepancy underlines that the counting method and the age groups studied can strongly influence the statistics.

In any case, the American box office experienced its historic peak in 2002, with $16.4 billion adjusted for inflation. Revenues remained stable throughout the 2000s and 2010s before collapsing in 2020, when cinemas were closed for several months: a drop of 81% compared to 2019! In 2025, according to Comscore, U.S. theaters generated just over $9 billion, reflecting a significant recovery but still about 20% below pre-pandemic levels. Ticket sales totaled 769.2 million across North America, a notable improvement from the pandemic years, but still far from the 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002 or the 1.2 billion in 2019.

In the details of the study carried out by the Pew Research Center, cinema attendance varies greatly according to age, income, and to a lesser extent, political affiliation.

Age: around two thirds of 18-29 year olds have gone to the cinema, compared to only 39% of those aged 65 and over.
Income: Americans with high incomes go to the cinema at 64%, compared to 57% for middle incomes and 43% for low incomes.
Political affiliation: 58% of Democrats and Democratic independents attended a session, compared to 50% of Republicans and Republican independents.