Disruption always works this way.

VHS let people watch a movie at home, whenever they wanted, but they had to buy that specific movie and put up with their dinky 20" TV. If you wanted serious sound or scale, you either paid five whole bucks at the local theater, or left your whole wallet at Circuit City. And even the best home experiences were standard-def. Film was not threatened by mere video.

DVDs made buying movies a lot cheaper, largely because they cost a penny to make, so studios could print a million copies just in case and shrug off any losses. If you wanted to see this year's releases, this year, you went to the big theater at the mall. It still beat your enormous 32" plasma in glorious 720p. Theaters got to be fancy and focus on the popular hits.

Streaming was like-- you want me to buy a subscription to watch an old movie? If I'm gonna use the internet, Kazaa is right there. Okay fine, adapting VGA to component video sucks, and this 40" set finally has more pixels than my monitor. Oh wow, that cartoon's on here? I haven't seen this in a decade. And movies wait like three months. I can watch The Office again until that's available. Driving outside town to pay thirty bucks a head at the megagigadodecaplex is only worthwhile for hot new things, like superhero movies. Theaters better step up their game to beat my couch and a stiff drink.

There was a moment.

There was a moment, where they might've turned this around. As Netflix was being cannibalized by assholes splintering off their little fiefdoms, the major competing theater companies could have seen the pattern. Disruption always works this way. Your low end slips away, letting you focus on better quality with higher margins. Then your midrange slips away, and you're a luxury! Then your whole industry dies. What might've saved it was pushing back toward small local theaters. You only have to beat 70" screens and decent stereo. People still don't bother with surround sound, and even a modest projection screen beats the most obscenely large television.

The global respiratory plague put a hard cutoff on how late that might've worked. It was probably screwed, long beforehand. Theaters are over. Move on.