Confidence among US adults in returning to movie theatres is at its highest level since the pandemic began when polling company Morning Consult began tracking how safe consumers feel in participating in out-of-home entertainment activities. Confidence with the progress being made in vaccine distribution has increased, with an average of 25% of respondents to a poll conducted last week indicating that they are now comfortable going to a movie theater.
According to the poll, 40% of Millennials and Republicans were comfortable returning to the cinema, whereas only 17% of Baby Boomers and Democrats indicated that they were ready to return. Across all demographics, only 36% of respondents indicated that they expected to go back to theatres in the next 6 months. This reluctance among many consumers must be influencing studios in their decisions about when to release films from their backlog, especially big-budget productions whose financial return depends on a successful theatrical release.