Erik Davis, managing editor at Fandango, joins Cheddar News to discuss the company's Second Annual Moviegoer Trends & Insights Survey.

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Diving Into Fangango's Second Annual Moviegoer Trends & Insights Survey

everyone's between 1000 banker Machado in new york between the pandemic and covid variants in numerous health and safety protocols. Well we've learned to appreciate the smaller things in life including activities like going to the movies. But over the last year the theater industry has seen several films across the 200 million in total gross revenue domestically. And that includes films like Spider man, No Way Home and the batman both hitting over 100 and 28 million in their box office debut. A true sign of recovery for the ones failing industry. Now highlighting these trends is Fandango's second annual moviegoer trends and insights survey. So joining us now to discuss is Erik Davis, managing editor over at Fandango. Erik. Oh it's good to see you. So you guys surveyed more than 6000 movie goers over the last year all the sort of better understand these trends. And when I find the most interesting, 99% of movie goers said that they were happy with their movie going experience this year. That's compared to 93% of movie goers the prior year. So what sort of the blame for sort of the bump here? More movies, there's movies and theaters again, you know, I, you know, and the variety of movies I've been speaking to. I'm in Las Vegas right now at the cinemacon convention which is like the Super Bowl for movie theaters. And so I'm talking to a lot of reporters here and you know seeing variety back at the movie theater, especially in between the batman and then doctor strange coming out May 6th a lot of original movies, everything everywhere all at once. The horror movie X, the Northman massive talent you know, so I think that just there's so much more variety. We see families are going back to two weeks in a row, we have two family movies at the top sonic, the hedgehog and the bad guys. And so I think a combination of variety at the theatre, families coming back more family movies are there too and and it's good to see and also you have to think with inflation being so high maybe you would have thought people would have stayed home. That doesn't seem like that's the case because two thirds of those surveyed said that they enjoyed seeing movies in the premium format over the last year, among those 85% said the premium formats make the movie going experience even more enjoyable. So with streaming all of these films for the last two years, did that make us miss the theaters more? Do you think? I think it did, you know, and we are definitely seeing audiences are more attracted to premium large formats. Like an imax Dolby is doing a really great job with their theaters now the sound is incredible you know, and when we did this survey, almost 70% of people said that they feel like movies that play in theaters are are of a better quality than movies that go straight to streaming and so you know, I think audiences know, even though we, we spent two years sort of watching everything at home, you know, we know that movies that are in theaters are special and, and they're there for a reason and sort of they get us out of the house to have a really great experience. And so I think that is uh, is really interesting and also 93% of the people that we surveyed want to see a variety, you know, we keep seeing, we keep hearing, it's just comic book movies, just superhero movies and theaters. But if you talk to actual audiences, everyone wants to see more than just the comic book movies in theaters and such a good point. I mean, and as you correctly mentioned last week, we had the top three movies were all family movies, which we've been wanting to see for a while if families would start to bring back their kids to the theaters and now I feel like we finally have gotten their uh, you know, a lot of these theater companies like AMC are investing back into the product here. Do you almost feel like that is a very smart strategy right now to sort of hit I guess while the iron is hot or whatever the saying is since there's people that now want to go back to the theaters, do everything you can to keep them back in there. Yeah. You know, I at cinemacon actually just this morning, I sat on a panel on theater marketing and like what theaters are doing in order to entice people back and you know, synopsis this theater chain has a self care Sundays where you can go and you know, you've learned to meditate before before a movie and kind of get into like a certain kind of headspace to watch a movie. There was another theater chain that had like margarita Mondays and you know, so theaters are definitely experimenting and trying new things and trying to kind of hone in on the experience of being at a movie. It's not just, you know, seeing it in imax or seeing it in Dolby, but you know, maybe you go see it and you can get a margarita and watch a comedy or, or you know, you learn to meditate. So just really interesting, unique experiences that theaters are experimenting with right now and look the box offices doing substantially better than we had in the last couple of years. And as you mentioned at the top, it's because there's finally some films available for people to watch. But when we look at the summer eric, you've got Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness coming up, you've got a new edition of thor Love and Thunder, you've got the new Jurassic world Dominion coming out this summer as well. Top gun also. Finally, for the first time, it feels like in 10 years that movie coming out. I feel like they filmed that forever ago. Does that give movie theatre goers or at least maybe the theater chains some insight into that. This is going to be a really good year. Just based off of what's coming out this summer. Yeah, it's gonna be a really great summer, you know, and all five of those movies were movies that moved right, they all postponed release dates, not just Top Gun. And so to see those as the top five mean that they've remained, you know, the anticipation for them has remained, you know, in all of this time that they've been delayed marvel studios at the top, which is pretty much expected. They've been at the top of this survey I think almost every year except for the year. That Wonder Woman came out. So, you know, one in to dr strange and thor Love and Thunder probably going to be big ones but that Jurassic movie and that Minions movie to those two movies are going to be Gangbusters for sure. And Top Gun, I'm actually seeing it here in Vegas on thursday. So a little plug if you follow me on twitter, I'll let you know how it is good. Yes, that's good to know. I'm very curious because we also know they're going to unveil that at the Cannes film festival as well. Eric, you know, look, it's gonna be interesting to sort of see if people go back to the movie theaters, you know, for the foreseeable future? Are you concerned at all? You know, if if this was sort of a blip on the radar and people go back to streaming after this is over or do you think movie theaters are going to be here to stay? You know, I think movie theaters are definitely going to be here to stay. And I feel like we even talked during sort of during lockdown when everyone was sort of writing the piece is about the death of the movie theaters. And I said, no, no, no you no, you can't, you can't predict the future when you're living amidst chaos. You know, you have to kind of wait for, you know, it's clear and so I think now that things are clearing up, we're seeing that people still want to go to the movies, people still do want to leave their house, you know, as part of our survey, going to the movies was the most popular activity outside the home, believe it or not, beating sporting events, concerts, even walking in the park was going to the movies at the top. And so you know, it is something that people really do value in their lives. Um and I do not think it's going away anytime. I agree with you. 100% Erik Davis, managing editor over at Fandango and of course, as you mentioned, you can get his review of top gun on his twitter, which is going to be really exciting to read. All right, Good to see you as always.