New Poll: Gen Z Goes to the Movies Most

As Sony dominates the late-August box office thanks to the continued success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the studio’s latest horror entry, Insidious: Out of the Further, a new YouGov poll of 5,000 people published by Semafor this weekend has shown just who’s actually going to the movies.

Spoiler: It’s young people.

Among adults aged 18-29, 20 percent of respondents said they went to a movie theater in the past week; for those in the 30-44 age range, it was 15 percent; every other demo was well below 10 percent, including Gen X.

“So who’s starring in our September movies?” asks Sean McNulty. “Gen X stars Mark Wahlberg, Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Which September movie’s tracking the highest? Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil.”

The upcoming Sony release is an IP adaptation (based on a popular video game) and falls within the horror genre, which is typically reliable at the box office. But it also stars 29-year-old Austin Abrams and comes from Cregger, 45, a millennial filmmaker who broke out last year with Weapons. 

“Horror movies star young people,” Sean adds. “There’s something in that DNA that’s not talked about.” So, yes — it’s fun to see scares with groups of people, but movies like Obsession, Backrooms and Resident Evil are made by and/or starring people under 35. “This is who your core demo is. This is who you should be servicing with your movies,” Sean says. “And I don’t know that that message gets through a lot, or at least not enough — as evident in the movies that Hollywood is making.”

It’s the lingering question left hanging over the industry following this summer’s big success — a total box office that could set a new record. After Obsession and Backrooms, plus Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey (two movies that prominently featured young A-list stars Zendaya and Tom Holland), how much longer will Hollywood prioritize the past generation, when that generation is content to stay home and watch streaming? (You gotta check out those poll numbers, it’s rough.)

You could see it this weekend with poor showings from new releases like Mutiny with Jason Statham and Spa Weekend with Leslie Mann and Anna Faris — while A24’s Tony with Gen Z stars Dominic Sessa and Leo Woodall showed some early promise, with a higher per-screen average than both.

“It feels like the movies have stayed static,” says Christopher Rosen. “Spa Weekend and Mutiny are movies with older stars that could have been made 10 years ago with the same stars.”

Still, the generational stress tests won’t stop with one poll or even one summer. In fact, there’s a looming use case in the fall — with Digger featuring 64-year-old Tom Cruise opening against Colleen Hoover’s Verity, a young-skewing thriller with millennial stars Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway.

“I’d be curious to see how that showdown goes,” says Sean.