After highly anticipated films like The Scapegoat And Furiosa failed to get “Barbenheimer” to a high level of box office success, but what did impress audiences was an animated sequel that mixed nostalgia with a good dose of emotion. Inside out 2 followed up his beloved 2015 original and topped the charts, almost certainly earning the album a billion-dollar success.
Who was responsible for making it a mega hit? Families with children, of course, but the box office – and Disney Pixar – can also thank Gen Z.
“According to general exit polls of the audience conducted by PostTrak over the weekend of June 22-24, nearly 40 percent of ticket buyers were between the ages of 18 and 24,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote of the film. “Teenagers, or people between the ages of 13 and 17, represented 23 percent of the audience.”
Especially for Gen Z audiences — who generally make less money than older generations and grew up with access to tons of TV shows, movies and more on a variety of devices — getting this generation to the cinema takes a lot. For moviegoers in their 20s and younger, it’s worth spending some of their pocket money.
“It’s clear they’re not a generation that lacks home entertainment,” says Walt Hickey, author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Influence EverythingYahoo Entertainment told me. “They have streaming services at their fingertips that millennials could only dream of in the past.”
When it comes to the choice between going to the cinema and watching at home, which costs significantly less money and effort, it has to be something you don’t want to miss.
Mia Lima, a rising senior at the University of Southern California who is also co-president of the Trojan Filmmakers Club, told Yahoo, “There has been an increase in the importance of the movie in the theater as an event.”
Otherwise, if you can wait “and watch it on streaming,” Lima said, you might as well. Audiences, she added, are waiting for “something that feels like a must-see.”
While FOMO is one of the factors bringing Gen Z to the cinema, it’s not the only one.
According to UCLA’s October 2023 Teens and screens A survey of 1,500 people aged 10 to 24 found that Gen Z also wants content that “revolves around friendships and platonic relationships” rather than “forced” romance, and storylines that reflect “real life” rather than unrealistic life, yet are still hopeful, uplifting and authentic.
“Adolescents view media as a ‘third place’ where they can connect and feel a sense of belonging,” Stephanie Rivas-Lara, first author of the UCLA study, said in a statement. That combination appeared in Barbie last summer and undoubtedly contributed to the can’t-miss factor of Inside out 2.
Social media campaigns have played a huge role in creating excitement around a film’s release, driving younger audiences – and audiences in general – to films like the one-two punch of 2023. Barbie And Oppenheimerboth of which received awards and accolades, along with box office hauls.
For Christophe Merriam, 19, who co-chairs the USC film club with Lima, seeing a film in a theater means being part of an inside joke or a larger cultural phenomenon.
According to him, “Barbenheimer” succeeded in this.
“Are you going to wear pink? Are you going to wear all black to the screening? And then you’re going to watch the movies back to back because that was culturally cool,” he said. “People were excited to go do that or share their experiences with them [being] willing to do that or take pictures and post them on social media.”
The effect was also visible in ticket sales. Forty percent of the general public saw the “Barbenheimer” double bill the same day in theaters, according to a 2024 Fandango survey of more than 6,000 people. That number jumped to 60% for the 18-34 crowd.
A more recent example is Everyone but youstarring Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. The film, set for release in December 2023, gained traction thanks to a highly coordinated social media campaign that Sweeney was heavily involved in. After seeing moviegoers posting TikToks of themselves lip-syncing and dancing to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten,” which is featured in the film, the actress shared the posts with her roughly 20 million Instagram followers. And with more than 24 million views, the co-stars showed off their chemistry to promote the film.
The mid-budget film went from a “meh” response on its opening weekend to a bona fide blockbuster after giving audiences a chance to join in on the film’s jokes.
“You saw that in IMAX, right?”
For some so-called Gen Z movie nerds, seeing a movie in the theater comes with high expectations when it comes to screen size and sound quality.
The Fandango survey found that 71% of general ticket buyers said they had seen at least one premium-format movie in the past year. That number rose to 79% among moviegoers ages 18 to 34.
“There’s a nostalgic feeling when you go to the movies. And so when you’re in there, you can see it on IMAX, you can have everything, like this huge surround sound system,” Maddi Koch, a 23-year-old TikTok creator who posts about movies, told Yahoo Entertainment. “Nobody can recreate that in their home to the extent that IMAX can.”
Koch, who lives in South Carolina, added: “All my friends, at least my age … always say, ‘You saw that in IMAX, right?'”
IMAX has been on a boom lately, with net profit up 33% from the previous year and installations of new systems up 67% from the previous year, according to the company’s earnings report company of April 25.
Don Savant, CEO of CJ 4DPlex Americas, told NBC News that 4DX theaters, with moving seats and other in-the-theater effects, attract younger audiences “in the 10 to 30 age range who are looking for more experiential viewing experiences.”
“I recently went to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in 4DX,” Merriam said. “I want to see the movie in its absolute maximum quality. I want to hear it with Dolby Sound. I want to see it in IMAX. I want to see it in 4DX.”
Turn-offs
When it comes to storylines that some Gen Z moviegoers are skeptical about, “gratuitous” sex, where skin is more important than story, is one they don’t show up for.
In the UCLA survey, 51% of respondents wanted to see more platonic relationships on screen, while just under half said sex is “not necessary” for most films.
Merriam, Lima and Koch all cited examples where sex in films felt “forced,” “gratuitous,” and “not necessary.”
“I feel like there are movies that do a much better job of dealing with sex, that actually have an impact on the story of the movie and how the sex actually evolves it,” Merriam said. “For example, even in Salt fireThere are some really lewd scenes. … But I think it does contribute to the overall story, in my opinion. I think it has a lot to say about painting who the characters are, whereas I think in previous generations maybe it was more traditional, it was more like, ‘Yeah, sex is in there.’ It is what it is. But for us, it’s just kind of like, why is this here?”
Gen Zers also see the way social media use among their age group is depicted on screen as a turn-off, with current films not telling the whole story.
“It’s very social media intensive, the way Gen Z is portrayed, which I don’t necessarily disagree with,” Bailey Vought, 23, who works at the Cherokee Film Commission, told Yahoo Entertainment. “There’s a kind of focus and obsession with those images, and that’s all they care about.”
However, she noted that it has also “flattened” the portrayal of a generation and “doesn’t necessarily give credit where it’s due, and especially not in a lot of the Gen Z activism you see today, in real life and on social media.”
Koch has indicated a sequence in the film A man named Otto in which an elderly man falls onto the train tracks and instead of helping, a Gen Z bystander shouts ‘take video’.
“No one in their right mind would watch an old man fall on the tracks and not help him,” she said.
Hickey agrees with the characterization.
“Welcome to the club. I’m a millennial, and for an entire decade, millennials were painted with an extremely flat brush: They went around killing industries and basically walking around because they were too broke to function, but they also spent too much on other things,” he said.
As for Gen Z telling their own stories, Hickey said, “It’s just a matter of time.”
