Is it Hollywood or Audience’s Job to Keep Movie Theaters Alive? My Thoughts on Ryan Gosling’s Comments!

With the release of Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling has been doing press and surprise screenings. In one of them he mentioned the ways in which he believes movie theaters should be kept alive. Is he right? Does he have a point? Let’s talk about it!

Ryan Gosling’s Quote: “…Here we are, we’re all back in theaters. It’s not your job to keep them open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.”

My Thoughts

I’ll just start off by saying that I believe Ryan Gosling to be 100% right with these comments. Audiences are of course pivotal and key in keeping movie theaters open. If audiences don’t show up to the theater to buy tickets it’s hard to keep movie theaters open. But the other piece that Gosiling is referring to is that Hollywood needs to make more movies that are worth the audience's time.

In the 2010s, almost every franchise was teetering off with a big hit, but you also had genres that were just knocking it out of the park. The big example of this would of course be the MCU and comic book movies. Especially in phase 3, you would have every film be a big money maker. The lowest grossing MCU film of phase 3 with Ant-Man and the Wasp, but that one still made over $600 million. $600 million in 2018 was the MCU disappointing financially. Most of the other films grossed over $800 million, some of them even making $1 billion. Black Panther and Captain Marvel both grossed over $1 billion because they were the final films before the big events films in Infinity War and Endgame. The MCU was this cultural event that made people so excited to go to the theater and see the next MCU film opening weekend. It wasn’t just the MCU, every comic book movie was also doing very well at the box office. Even the DCEU still had box office hits after box office hits. The Rotten Tomato scores for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad aren’t very good, they’re both under 30%. Both of those films made over $750 million, because they were comic book movies that were released when the genre got people excited. The 2020s have had great wins at the box office for comic book movies but they’re few and far between. Only two comic book movies this decade have made $1 billion, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine. There’s one commonality between those films, they were multiverse nostalgia films that starred actors of the past when the comic book movie genre was much better. They can now put out great movies like Thunderbolts* and it’ll underperform because the excitement for comic book movies and the MCU is largely gone. The MCU is putting out two films this year, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, those are safe bets for $1 billion. But if any other MCU film was coming out like Doctor Strange 3 or Black Panther 3, I don’t think they’ll make $1 billion even if they get great reviews.

I think with the 2020s whether that’s comic book movies or not, Hollywood needs to make a harder sell to get people to show up. The past couple of years have shown that audiences won’t show up just because it’s the next film in the franchise they love. Hollywood needs to market their films to let people know that this is worth seeing on the big screen. In order for audiences to show up to the movies, there’s so many things they need to do. Audiences need to spend $15, drive to the theater, spend a few hours of their time, and then drive back. Just seeing a movie could be a 4-5 hour long process depending on the amount of the trailers, the runtime, and the drive back home. But other people might also have to deal with finding babysitters, paying for multiple tickets, and buying snacks. Instead of just spending $15 on one ticket, some people might have to spend $60 on five tickets plus another $30-$40 on snacks. Because of all of that and ticket prices going up and up, it takes more convincing for general audiences to show up to the movies.

This decade, we’ve only gotten 12 movies that have reached $1 billion. Might seem like a lot but you look at the number of movies that have been released from January 1st, 2020 to March 28th, 2026 and that’s not a lot. As a point of reference, we had NINE movies make $1 billion in 2019 alone. 2019 almost had the same number of $1 billion that the 2020s have had in six years.

You look at the films that have made $1 billion and they’re all event films. None of them are original movies. They’re either sequels, remakes, or first films in established IPs, like The Super Mario Bros Movie and Barbie. To an extent, all of this film and this event feel about them. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine were these event films that got people excited because they brought back familiar faces that people loved. Barbie was of course part of the Barbenheimer event, where Barbie made $1.3 billion and Oppenheimer made almost $1 billion. You can go through the rest of the films and figure out what the “event” that made people go to the theater to see them and not wait till streaming.

What I think Hollywood needs to do is do a better job of making great films that attract audiences. Project Hail Mary for example is based on a book but it’s not an event film like Spider-Man: No Way Home or Barbie. Lord & Miller and Ryan Gosling just made a great movie that has great word of mouth and visually is designed to be seen on the big screen. That’s what I’m thinking Gosling is referring to when he says that Hollywood needs to make more films that are worth people’s time. They should allow more creative voices to make original films. I think you look at last year and the success of Sinners and see what happens when they let a great story teller like Ryan Coogler do whatever he wants. Sinners of course look really good with very cool imagery. But the reason why people rushed out to see that film was because word of mouth was fantastic and it was a communal film that people wanted to see so they could be a part of the conversation. I think original movies and the success of Sinners is proof that audiences will go out and see a movie if it’s not an event film but it’s actually a great movie that lives up to the hype and word of mouth.