Cinema Vs Streaming, who will come out on top?

With streaming services dominating the movie scene, less people are heading to the cinema.

2024 has been a big year for movies of all levels of success, from huge releases hitting the box office and shattering records to multimillion dollar budget films performing rather poorly upon release.

Movie culture has never been more popular, but where are all these new movies being watched? The Cinema has been the main way to watch the latest hits for years, but since the pandemic, the return of cinema goers has been rather slow.

Cinema costs have increased greatly over the years, with the average ticket price in 2023 costing almost £8.

Audiences now see the monthly subscriptions to streaming platforms as the more logical option to watch the newest films, with two in three adults claiming they would rather wait for the films to be released on streaming than watch it in cinemas.

This has resulted in low to mid-budget films missing out on theatrical releases and heading straight to streaming instead.

Huge names this year such as Dune II, Deadpool and Wolverine, Wicked, and Gladiator II still had big opening releases, bringing people out of their homes to watch them in theatres, emphasising that a film may need to have a mutimillion budget to bring them to the cinema seats.

Streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime have held their own movie releases on their platforms, skipping the cinema process and bringing the film straight to homes.

The sudden shift in dynamic between streaming platforms and cinemas has left a rather big divide in movie watchers, with some film fanatics still at the front lines at the theatres, but how long will it be until streaming takes over?