The Video Advertising Bureau emailed a 28-page deck to marketers and media contacts on September 16, 2026, setting out to rebut 15 "misconceptions" about cinema, from the belief that young adults cannot put their phones down to the idea that theatrical revenue will never recover from the pandemic. Its most consequential figure for anyone buying cinema advertising sits on page seven: in 2025, the 650 releases that missed the year's 20 biggest hits generated $3.7 billion, 43% of domestic revenue, according to VAB's analysis of Box Office Mojo data.

In Short

A trade group that promotes video advertising sent marketers a slide deck arguing that 15 common beliefs about going to the cinema are wrong, such as the idea that only blockbusters draw crowds or that young people never look up from their phones. It matters to brands deciding whether to pay for the ads shown before films, because the deck describes large, young and early-arriving audiences, although many of its numbers come from surveys and several do not match their own footnotes. What changes is the picture of where cinema money comes from: films beyond the 20 biggest hits earned $3.7 billion in 2025, even though total yearly ticket revenue is still about a quarter below 2019.

What VAB sent

The document, Well Actually: Dispelling 15 Misconceptions About Cinema, is part of VAB's "Fast Facts" series. It reached inboxes under a more assertive subject line, "15 Reasons Why Cinema is Fully Back," with an email stating that "in 2026 cinema is a vibrant business - as evident from record-breaking movies, including the highest grossing domestic movie ever, and the biggest weekend box office of all time!"

Every page is marked as "exclusively provided to VAB members and qualified marketers." Jason Wiese, VAB's executive vice president of strategic insights and measurement, heads a list of four authors that also includes Reed Kiely, Karolina Guillen and Amanda Cashman.

The 15 claims are grouped into three sets of five: The Health of Cinema, Audience Insights and Movie Ratings & Genres. Each page names a misconception and answers it under a "Well Actually" headline. The evidence draws mainly on Box Office Mojo, two MRI-Simmons studies and a Fandango survey, with the most recent data cut dated September 15, 2026.

In March, VAB circulated two earlier cinema reports, Fandom in Focus and Inside Out, which mapped the 2026 theatrical calendar against eight fandoms and made the emotional case for cinema advertising.

Where the money sits

The most useful chart in the deck is the least dramatic one. It splits domestic revenue, which Box Office Mojo counts across the United States and Canada, between each year's top 20 films and everything else. In 2023, the top 20 took 56%, or $5.0 billion, while 573 other films took 44%, or $3.9 billion, out of a total of $8.9 billion. In 2024, the split was 61% ($5.2 billion) against 39% ($3.4 billion) for 657 other films, from $8.6 billion. In 2025, it was 57% ($4.9 billion) against 43% ($3.7 billion) for 650 other films, from $8.7 billion.

The headline on the page says "Nearly 45%." The chart beneath it says 43%, and dividing $3.7 billion by the $8.7 billion total in the footnote gives about 42.5%. The headline's rounding is generous.

Each of 2025's top 20 films grossed about $245 million on average; the other 650 averaged roughly $5.7 million. Nor has the long tail's share grown, falling from 44% to 39% before recovering to 43%, so the deck's point is persistence rather than momentum.

That persistence has commercial weight, because cinema advertising networks sell screens and sessions rather than titles. Revenue share is not audience share, though, and the deck reports no admissions by title group. Disney's autumn slate, with five re-releases or documentaries among seven titles, shows how much of the calendar consists of releases that draw smaller, more concentrated crowds.

A record weekend inside a smaller year

The deck's answer to the first misconception, that the theatrical box office "will never return to pre-pandemic levels," is a single weekend. According to VAB, domestic revenue for July 31 to August 2, 2026 reached $429.0 million, led by Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey. The previous record, $402.1 million, belonged to the Avengers: Endgame weekend of April 26 to 28, 2019. The margin is $26.9 million, or 6.7%.

Three of the ten weekends VAB lists came after the pandemic, and the source note limits the data to 2010 onwards without adjusting for inflation.

PPC Land reported in August that AMC and ODEON drew 10.2 million moviegoers over the five days from July 29 to August 2, with Spider-Man's domestic opening then media-reported at $355 million. Variety later put the three-day figure at $360 million, which would leave roughly $69 million for every other film in release that weekend, The Odyssey's third weekend among them.

A weekend, however, answers a different question. The deck's own footnote puts annual domestic revenue at $8.9 billion for 2023, $8.6 billion for 2024 and $8.7 billion for 2025. Against the $11.4 billion Comscore reported for 2019, 2025 finished about 24% lower. Even the 2026 forecast of $9.8 billion to $9.9 billion, carried in The People Platform's report that counted more than 651 million tickets for 2025 releases, would leave this year 13% to 14% short, despite an August that TheWrap reported as an all-time monthly high of $1.2 billion.

Admissions show a wider gap. The People Platform recorded ticket volume up 9% in 2025 against revenue up 1%, while the National Association of Theatre Owners put 2019 attendance at 1.244 billion, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The counts come from different organisations using different methods, so the comparison is approximate, but it puts 2025 ticket volume at close to half the 2019 level. For advertising sold against people in seats, that is the relevant measure, and the deck does not report it.

The Out of Home Advertising Association of America said in August that theatres were pacing toward their strongest year since 2019, which implies 2026 is ahead of every recent year but not of 2019.

Premium screens, premium tickets

The third misconception, that "watching movies at home is a suitable replacement for the cinema," is answered with format data rather than any measure of home viewing. According to Fandango, 84% of US moviegoers attended at least one film in a premium format such as IMAX, Dolby or 3D in 2025, up from 77% in 2024 and 71% in 2023. VAB labels the change "+18% vs. 2023." In percentage points it is 13.

The headline reads "84% of moviegoers see releases in premium formats," which invites the conclusion that most viewing now happens on large-format screens. The revenue figure on the same page points elsewhere. Premium large formats are expected to account for 16.5% of US box office revenue in 2026, according to a forecast from Omdia and Stat Significant cited to a Stat Significant newsletter dated July 20, 2026. VAB says that is 70% above 2019, a comparison based on Comscore data that implies a share of roughly 9.7% seven years ago.

Most of that growth appears to have happened already. Screen International put premium large format screens at 15.6% of North American box office in 2024, so the 2026 forecast is less than a point higher, on a slightly different geographic basis. Media buyers face a further complication: those auditoriums have historically been carved out of cinema advertising contracts. From July 1, 2025, AMC began carrying up to five minutes of advertising after the published showtime, plus a 30 to 60 second Platinum Spot before the final trailers, a format Regal and Cinemark had run since November 2019.

Seated before the lights go down

The fourth claim is the one most directly tied to advertising revenue. According to VAB's analysis of the MRI-Simmons 2026 Custom Video Study, fielded in March 2026 among adults who had attended a film in the previous 12 months, 96% of moviegoers arrive before show time and 80% arrive at least ten minutes early. VAB defines show time as the published start time.

Respondents could choose several reasons. Visiting the concession stand led at 43%, followed by time to settle in at 40%, finding a seat before the lights go down at 38%, and leaving time for traffic and parking at 31%. Getting there in time for the preshow and trailers came fifth, at 30%.

For sellers of cinema pre-roll, the block of advertising and trailers before the feature, the arrival figures are welcome. PPC Land's analysis of the Disclosure Day release found that a long IMAX screening holds a seated audience for ten to fifteen minutes of pre-show. The reasons are more sobering: seven in ten early arrivals do not cite the pre-show at all, and trailers, which are studio marketing, share an answer with paid brand advertising. Given AMC's post-showtime advertising, even audiences arriving exactly on time sit through some of it. The figures are self-reported, and the deck gives no sample size.

The phone claim follows the same pattern. According to the same MRI-Simmons study, 80% of moviegoers aged 18 to 24 and 82% of those aged 25 to 34 say they typically put their phones away "once the lights in the theater go down." The headline adds that they "keep them away for over two hours." That part was not measured; it rests on a footnote citing an average running time of two hours and six minutes from VAB's own earlier report, At the Movies: 15 Reasons to Include Cinema Within a Video Ad Campaign. Nor does the question cover phone use earlier in the session, before the lights go down.

The audience by generation

Fandango's April 2026 survey supplies the generational data. According to the deck, 87% of Gen Z and 82% of Millennials saw a film in a cinema in 2025, averaging 7.0 and 7.2 films respectively. Among Gen X the figures were 70% and 6.1 films; among Baby Boomers, 58% and 5.7. Across all adults, 76% went at least once and the average was 5.3 films.

Those averages do not reconcile as printed. Every generation shown averages more than the 5.3 figure for all adults, which cannot be true if all five numbers use the same base. The likeliest explanation is that the generational averages count only people who went, while the all-adult average includes those who did not; 5.3 divided by 76% gives roughly seven films per attendee. The deck does not say which base applies, nor how Fandango defines the generations or how many people it surveyed.

The claim that younger adults value "in real life" experiences rests on three sources. VAB's headline says 88% of adults aged 18 to 24 rate such experiences as very important or important, but the footnote shows the base is moviegoers of that age, people who had already chosen to go to the cinema. A second figure, that 72% of young people say seeing a film together in a theatre matters more since the pandemic, comes from UTA IQ's October 2025 Culture IQ report, which PPC Land covered in March. The third is a ranking from UCLA's Get Real: Teens and Screens 2025 study, in which "go see a new movie in theaters" placed first among six hypothetical weekend activities "if money and logistics were not constraints." The deck gives neither the age range nor the sample for that study.

Families and the PG audience

According to Fandango, 78% of parents planned to take their children to the cinema in 2026. VAB pairs that with a comparison of six films against Screendollars forecasts made 12 weeks before release, using the midpoint of each forecast range.

  • Toy Story 5 took $478.8 million against a $407.5 million projection, 17% ahead.
  • Super Mario Galaxy took $429.8 million against $400.0 million, 7% ahead.
  • Zootopia 2 took $428.1 million against $330.0 million, 30% ahead.
  • Project Hail Mary took $344.0 million against $142.5 million, 141% ahead.
  • Hoppers took $166.0 million against $120.0 million, 38% ahead.
  • GOAT took $103.3 million against $37.5 million, 175% ahead.

Together the six grossed $1.95 billion against $1.44 billion forecast, 36% more, and the arithmetic on each bar checks out. The selection is another matter. All six beat their forecasts and none that missed is shown, so the chart cannot establish that family films "regularly overdeliver projections." It includes Zootopia 2, released in November 2025, and Project Hail Mary, a science fiction adaptation whose place in a family category goes unexplained. The Toy Story 5 projection is dated March 20, 2026, 13 weeks before the June 19 opening rather than the stated 12. Disney has said the film passed $1.1 billion globally, while Hoppers opened in March with the biggest domestic debut for an original animated film since Coco.

The PG page carries two 69% figures from two different sources, and they are easy to confuse. The first, that 69% of the audience for PG films are adults, comes from The People Platform's Audience Demographics 2025-2026. The second comes from MRI-Simmons: among adult PG moviegoers, 69% live in households without children under 18. The chart labels those segments "Any Children >18" and "No Children >18" beneath a heading that reads "Household With Children Under 18," so the symbols appear reversed.

Adult PG moviegoers span every age band, with 30% aged 55 or over, and their median age is 42.3 against a US adult median of 47.7.

Horror is not quite evenly split

VAB's horror page states that the genre draws an audience "fairly split across age groups, ethnicities and gender." The gender claim holds: according to the MRI-Simmons Spring 2026 study, 49% of horror moviegoers are women and 51% men. The ethnic mix is 49% non-Hispanic white, 27% Hispanic, 16% non-Hispanic Black and 6% non-Hispanic Asian, which sums to 98%.

The age claim is contradicted by the index figures printed on the same chart. Horror moviegoers aged 25 to 34 make up 25% of the audience with an index of 145, meaning they are 45% over-represented relative to the US adult population. Those aged 18 to 24 index at 131 and those aged 35 to 44 at 116. The 55-plus group accounts for 24% but indexes at 61. Six in ten horror moviegoers are aged between 18 and 44, and the median age is 39.8. That matches VAB's own March finding that adults aged 18 to 24 were 79% more likely than all adults to have watched a horror film in a theatre in the previous six months.

Franchises, creators and the arthouse

Spider-Man: Brand New Day serves as the rebuttal to the idea that superhero films are fading. The headline says the film "broke dozens of records"; the page lists eight as "a sampling," from advance ticket sales to opening week. The cumulative chart runs from $169.8 million on day one to $407.2 million on day four and $928.8 million on day 43.

The headline also states that the film is "At over $930MM domestically" and "now the highest grossing movie ever." The chart's final bar sits below that $930 million, and below the $936.66 million total of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter reported that the Spider-Man film passed that record with $936.773 million after 47 days, which places the milestone on September 15, the date in VAB's source note. The record is domestic and unadjusted for inflation; on the worldwide chart the film ranks third, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The creator page is the most striking in the deck. According to Box Office Mojo data as of August 31, 2026, three horror films made by or with online creators grossed a combined $501.9 million domestically on estimated budgets totalling $14.75 million.

  • Obsession, written, directed and edited by Curry Barker, whose name the deck misspells as "Curry Baker," took $263.5 million on a $750,000 budget, roughly 351 times its cost. Focus Features released it in the United States on May 15, 2026.
  • Backrooms, directed by Kane Parsons, known online as Kane Pixels, took $197.5 million on a $10 million budget. A24 released it on May 29, 2026.
  • Iron Lung, written, directed and edited by Markiplier, with Jacksepticeye, Valkyrae and Ethan Nestor in the cast, took $40.9 million. VAB puts its budget at $4 million; NBC News and Fortune both reported $3 million.

Distribution separates the cases. Two went out through established distributors; Iron Lung was self-financed and self-distributed, according to NBC News, and PPC Land reported that it opened on 3,015 screens in January at number two with $17.8 million. Platforms are chasing the same crossover: YouTube took five creator-led titles to the Venice and Toronto film festivals this month, and VAB reported in August that 52% of creator followers would be more likely to search for a brand advertised in a show featuring a creator they follow.

Specialty cinema closes the section. Citing a survey of more than 27,000 moviegoers run with over 50 art house theatres and independent chains, reported by Variety on June 22, 2026, VAB says 97% of indie moviegoers find their theatre's films unique and high-quality, 88% call it a cultural hub, more than 70% say it is very or extremely valuable to their quality of life, and 43% have joined a membership programme, a figure the headline rounds to "nearly half." Because the survey ran through the theatres themselves, it measures the loyalty of existing patrons rather than the wider public's view of specialty film.

Exhibitor results as headlines

The fifth health-of-cinema claim rests on six press headlines rather than data. They cover AMC's biggest quarter in its 106-year history (July 20, 2026), which PPC Land reported alongside AMC's August attendance record, The Odyssey powering IMAX to $257 million in July, its highest-grossing month, Cinemark's first quarter above $1 billion in worldwide revenue, profit at Marcus Corp more than doubling, and record second-quarter growth at IMAX.

The sixth headline, Cineplex reporting record second-quarter 2026 revenues with 20.4% growth in adjusted EBITDAaL, is dated April 11, 2026 on the slide. The second quarter had not ended by then, so either the date or the quarter is wrong.

Who is making the case

VAB is the New York trade body whose members are premium multiscreen television providers and distributors, companies that sell much of their inventory in the upfront, months before programmes air. Its research this year has repeatedly argued for premium environments over user-generated video, most directly in the February study with TVision that placed premium video ahead of YouTube on every CTV metric it measured. The cinema deck extends that argument to the largest screen available. Its closing takeaways state that "Moviegoing delivers habitual, highly engaged audiences at scale across age groups and life stages," but engagement here is inferred from survey answers rather than measured exposure.

Provenance matters too. Fandango supplied five of the deck's audience data points, including the premium format, generational and parental figures. It sells tickets, and in April it became one of six data partners in Roku Curate, contributing ticketing signals with closed-loop measurement through to ticket purchase. None of the deck's Fandango slides discloses a sample size or method.

Measurement is the part of the proposition the deck leaves alone. TransUnion integrated National CineMedia's cinema exposure data into its attribution product in December 2025. But the deck offers no figures on ad recall, reach, frequency or outcomes. Its case is for the size and composition of the audience, not for what advertising in front of that audience achieves.

What comes next

The deck ends with 16 releases scheduled between Clayface on October 23, 2026 and The Saviors on March 26, 2027, according to IMDb data as of August 26 and subject to change. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is dated November 20, two tentpoles, Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three, share December 18, and Jumanji: Open World arrives on December 25. Greta Gerwig's Narnia, dated February 12, 2027, carries Netflix branding on its poster.

Read against its own footnotes, the deck makes a narrower case than its subject line. The audiences it describes skew younger than the US adult population, arrive early by their own account, and spread a large share of their spending beyond the hits. Several headlines, though, round generously, extrapolate beyond what was asked, or describe a narrower base than they state. And the question that frames the exercise, whether cinema has returned to pre-pandemic levels, is answered with a weekend while the annual totals printed in the same document remain well below 2019.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau, the New York trade body representing premium multiscreen television providers and distributors, with authors Jason Wiese, Reed Kiely, Karolina Guillen and Amanda Cashman. Data come from Box Office Mojo, MRI-Simmons, Fandango, The People Platform, Screendollars, Stat Significant, Omdia, UTA IQ, UCLA's Center for Scholars & Storytellers and a Variety-reported survey of indie moviegoers.

What: A 28-page deck, Well Actually: Dispelling 15 Misconceptions About Cinema, arguing across three categories that cinema is commercially healthy and draws broad audiences. Its figures show films outside each year's top 20 taking 39% to 44% of domestic revenue between 2023 and 2025, a record $429.0 million weekend in 2026, and 80% of moviegoers reporting arrival at least ten minutes before show time. Several headlines do not match their footnotes, including the long-tail share, the Spider-Man total, the horror age split, the 18 to 24 base and the Cineplex date.

When: Emailed on September 16, 2026, under the subject line "15 Reasons Why Cinema is Fully Back," with data cuts running to September 15, 2026.

Where: The domestic box office as Box Office Mojo defines it, covering the United States and Canada, plus survey data drawn from US adults. The deck was distributed to VAB members, qualified marketers and media contacts.

Why: VAB is building a case for cinema as premium video inventory at a time when exhibitors are posting record quarters and single-weekend highs. For advertisers, the deck confirms a large pre-show audience spread well beyond the biggest hits, while leaving annual revenue about 24% below 2019, admissions unreported, and advertising outcomes unmeasured.