As the Academy Awards draw near, celebrating cinematic achievements, new survey data presents a stark reality regarding moviegoing habits among Americans.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in the summer of 2025 revealed that just over half of U.S. adults, specifically 53%, reported having visited a movie theater in the preceding 12 months.

Notably, a small but significant 7% of respondents stated they had never experienced a movie in a theater at all.

These findings underscore a domestic box office that continues to strive for recovery following the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to widespread theater closures in 2020, causing ticket sales to plummet by an alarming 81%.

Data from Nash Information Services indicates that in 2025, moviegoers across the U.S. and Canada purchased 769.2 million tickets, which is less than half of the all-time peak of approximately 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002.

Box office revenue, adjusted for inflation, also peaked in 2002 at $16.4 billion, maintaining relative stability through the 2000s and 2010s before dropping below $3 billion in 2020.

Despite this, industry reports indicate that, according to media analytics firm Comscore, U.S. theaters sold just over $9 billion in tickets last year.

While this signifies a recovery, it remains incomplete, with ticket sales still lagging approximately 20% below pre-pandemic levels.

Interestingly, an August 2025 study by NRG/National Research Group presented a more optimistic picture, showing that 77% of Americans aged 12-74 had seen at least one movie in a theater in the previous 12 months, highlighting a potential discrepancy or difference in survey methodologies or target demographics.

The data also illuminated significant generational and economic disparities in movie attendance.

Two-thirds (67%) of adults aged 18 to 29 reported attending a movie in theaters in the past year, a stark contrast to only 39% of those aged 65 and older.

Income level presented a similar trend, with upper-income Americans demonstrating the highest rate of moviegoing at 64%, followed by middle-income at 57%, and lower-income adults at 43%.

Variations in attendance were also observed across racial and ethnic groups: Hispanic adults were the most likely to attend at 59%, followed by white adults at 53%, and Black adults at 49%.

In contrast, gender did not emerge as a significant differentiating factor, with the survey showing near parity (53% of men and 54% of women) in movie theater attendance.

Political affiliation exhibited a slightly wider, though still modest, gap; Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents reported attending at a higher rate of 58%, compared to 50% for Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents.