The Future of Moviegoing Is the Youth. Same As It Ever Was

The 2011 GQ piece “The Day the Movies Died” is an exemplary piece of writing from Mark Harris about the failures of the American film industry that’s tragically all too relevant even today. The only element of it that’s slightly out of date is one trend Harris couldn’t have predicted in all the bizarre turns the film industry has taken over 15 years. The film industry’s contempt for women moviegoers and original ideas still stands resolute. However, the industry’s hatred of anyone over 30 is gone. On the contrary, the 2020s American film industry has been about appealing to the older generation while leaving teenagers out in the cold.

A Minecraft Movie coming out of nowhere to score one of the biggest opening weekends in history reminds Hollywood that theatrical exhibition’s future lies not in those yearning for the days of Kevin Costner Westerns. It’s in the youth, the same market that propelled the biggest box office hits of 1975-2019. As David Byrne would put it, “same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

Hollywood’s 2020s skewing towards 35+ year old moviegoers didn’t suddenly mean the industry embraced making only Michael Mann’s The Insider or Steve McQueen’s Widows (I wish). Instead, the rampant sequels and toy adaptations Harris was espousing the very real dangers about circa. 2011 are still here. Their target demo, though, is now older folks craving nostalgia. A 2023 Flash movie starring a younger Barry Allen/The Flash had its entire marketing campaign focused on Michael Keaton’s Batman. An upcoming Karate Kid legacy sequel has trailers focusing on the older mentor figures, not the titular kid. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was all about getting old and being mortal. The list goes on and on.

It’s the inevitable result of Hollywood becoming a franchise-only town. As these brands get older and older, their target demo also gets older and older. Even the Fast & Furious movies, once the symbols of youthful drag racing rebellion, now star 55+ year olds. Then there are the handful of major studio non-tentpoles. These features, like Ticket to Paradise, star icons first established in the 90s. Meanwhile, the marketplace is entirely devoid of teenage-skewing romance titles, PG-13 comedies, or YA novel adaptations. No Maze Runner or Fault in Our Stars knock-offs here. Amsterdam is what will truly reaffirm the film industry’s relevance, surely.

2025’s initial three months of box office really suffered from this skew towards older moviegoers with a marketplace almost exclusively reliant on R-rated action and horror movies. If you wanted endless Deadpool/John Wick/Scream clones like Novocaine, Love Hurts, or Heart Eyes, you were in luck. Anyone under 18 who just wanted to go the movies with their friends unaccompanied by their parents was out of luck. Meanwhile, the movies for “grown-ups” were full of snarky wit, youthful wish-fulfillment fantasies, and very simplistic moral shadings. Instead of creating a theatrical landscape where at least smart adult-skewing features were prominent, theaters are flooded with underwhelming motion pictures that didn’t appeal to anyone.

Balance has always been hard for Hollywood. Just look at the post-Avatar digital 3D revolution. That format was slathered on every film instead of just the ones that would’ve benefited from the medium. In the 2020s, major studios have clearly struggled with this proposition again when it comes to crafting movies for all moviegoers. Rather than making an array of features, each aimed at different demographics, the marketplace is flooded with features straining to recapture moviegoers from the 90s. It’s like studio executives believe leaning on Kevin Costner, Mark Wahlberg, and other hot faces from more lucrative past decades of theatrical exhibition will automatically make 2002 attendance numbers materialize. The fact that the leadership at the biggest studios hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years (former 20th Century Fox head Tom Rothman, for instance, has led Sony/Columbia Pictures for ten years now) and the dearth of opportunities for directors under 35 has also led to a steep decline in youth-skewing movies. If younger people aren’t calling any of the creative shots, how can movies relevant to this demo get made?

Like it or not, though, teenagers have always been a major and critical part of the theatrical industry. The 50s and 60s saw an explosion in movies aimed at this demographic. Both the New Hollywood movement and the post-Jaws blockbuster boon thrived on moviegoers under 35. In the 21st century, books like Nicole LaPorte’s The Men Who Would Be King and countless news reports in the media industry have constantly espoused worries that the youth will be too busy on their Game Boy Advances/iPods/iPhones/TikTok apps to go to the movies. Yet in 2019, numbers emerged revealing 18 to 24-year-olds made up the biggest portion of moviegoers. More recent data, meanwhile, from 2022 and 2024 have unveiled facts like Gen Z adults being among the most ardent moviegoers out there.

Making so many movies that ignore these demographics is insane, yet major and even bigger indie labels/distributors seem more content to try and remake The Crow or deliver the umpteenth Book Club knock-off than appealing to this crucial market. A Minecraft Movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, Barbie, Wicked, they all soared thanks to appealing to folks under 25. These titles and the stories they told belonged to this current generation of moviegoers. Meanwhile, in the arthouse scene, even more youth-skewing R-rated titles like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Longlegs delivered singular experiences that were now core memories for the Letterboxd crowd in the same way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Clerks were for past generations.

Hollywood and its fascination with milking every last drop of tired brands like Karate Kid, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Tron are ignoring these younger people at their own peril. Instead of assuming cell phones and short-form video apps ruin all sense of “tension” or “drama” in young people’s lives, how about even TRYING to make an equivalent to Twilight or The Fault in Our Stars for this demo? This doesn’t mean ignoring adult moviegoers, by the way.

Harris’s original point about Hollywood being uninterested in experiences of folks over 35 still stands in how R-rated films (particularly the ones dominating 2025’s first three months) are all zippy quippy Deadpool clones. They’re titles with all the substance of Big Fat Liar, yet everyone says F-words and graphically kills people. How about some motion pictures aimed at the 35+ set that are actually conscious of real-world problems? Or a greater variety of older-skewing features, like an erotic thriller resurgence?

R-rated comedy One of Them Days did a great job with that, thanks to its sharp jokes about matters like how costly ambulance rides are. Come to think of it, sleeper hit One of Them Days (still the fifth-biggest movie of 2025 domestically!) is a great microcosm of the kinds of movies Hollywood should make more. Films about ordinary working-class people that aren’t tentpoles or franchise retreads. Oh, and it struck a profound chord with women under 25, a criminally underserved demographic in modern Hollywood. The film industry’s outright contempt for younger moviegoers in the 2020s is a major departure from the last 70 years of theatrical moviegoing. Make more features actually interesting to younger folks, though, and they’ll show up to theaters in droves with all the vigor of a “chicken jockey.”