A 25-year-old trilogy just made $11 million at the global box office this weekend, and every streaming executive should be paying attention.
The Lord of the Rings 25th anniversary theatrical event - all three extended editions, back-to-back - pulled audiences away from their 4K home theaters and into multiplexes worldwide. That's not nostalgia. That's proof.
Let me be clear: you can watch these movies at home. You probably own these movies at home, possibly in multiple formats because Peter Jackson keeps releasing new editions and we keep buying them. The extended editions run nearly 12 hours total. You could pause for bathroom breaks, order pizza, fall asleep on your couch.
And yet thousands of people chose to sit in a theater instead.
Because some films demand the big screen. The charge of the Rohirrim. The Battle of Helm's Deep. Gollum's fingers slipping on Mount Doom. These moments were designed for theatrical exhibition, and they lose something fundamental when you shrink them to TV size, no matter how good your home setup is.
The streaming wars have convinced studios that theatrical is dying, that audiences just want content delivered to their living rooms. But $11 million for a 25-year-old movie suggests otherwise.
This isn't about technical superiority - though IMAX and Dolby Atmos matter. It's about experience. Communal reaction. Shared cultural moments. The thing you can't replicate at home, no matter how big your TV gets.
Hollywood keeps trying to kill theatrical because it's expensive and risky. Meanwhile, audiences keep showing up for experiences worth having. Maybe the industry should start listening.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything - except that some magic only works in the dark, with strangers, on a screen four stories tall.
