Could be a mix things from attention spans changing in various demographics to economics to increased spending in travel to other things.
I'm open to attention spans changing. Or demographics changing. Or both. My money, though, is pandemic hangover. I'm struggling to see how anything else comes even close in explanation power to, "we were in a pandemic."
Also Youtube is the most used streaming app followed by TikTok ... how many are watching for free? See Google results for this data https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=are%20people%20using%2...
My thoughts are based on the data above, other similar data Ive seen, my own shortening attention span and these years lackluster box-office compared to 2022 (movies from 2022 that opened above and or well above 100 million https://www.boxofficepro.com/the-top-10-movies-of-2022-at-th...)
To me Hollywood needs to worry even more so the writers, actors and etc ... a younger demographic the future's attention span looks to be elsewhere and they aren't paying to watch their media.
This will be true for basically all markets. There was an obvious shock during the past few years that is already explanatory for so many problems. No need to hunt for others.
But, even the article you linked is about how the market "continued its recovery in 2022." By the accounting, with the record breaking weekends we just had, this year seems set to be larger than last. Sure, it isn't larger than the past two combined, but that is hardly damning.
