Laura Carollo
Research expert covering cinema and film
Cinema chains in the United States and Canada - statistics & facts
Movie exhibition corporations are struggling to stay afloat despite a general rebound of the movie industry. In 2022, the box office gross in the U.S. and Canada amounted to 7.5 billion U.S. dollars, making it the biggest market on the international scale. Meanwhile, among companies that disclose their financials regularly, the combined global revenue of the top six cinema chains operating in both nations surpassed seven billion dollars that same year. Out of that total, around 3.66 billion dollars came exclusively from movie ticket sales worldwide. And most of those corporations have in North America their largest, if not only, consumer market.
Key players
The American-based cinema chain AMC Theatres is the leading cinema chain in the world. Despite being active all around the world, the American market remains its highest-grossing segment with a revenue of almost 3.7 billion U.S. dollars in the United States in 2023. As of March 2023, AMC was the first cinema chain in the United States and in Canada with almost 600 sites and over 7,700 sceeens, surpassing competitors such as Regal Cinemas and Cinemark. London-based Cineworld is the second-largest chain on the global scale, while Cinemark Theatres is mostly present in the United States as well as Latin America.Under pressure
The pandemic and its fallouts have left few unscathed, and that much is true for cinema chains. Despite their positions as leaders of the market, AMC Theatres and Cinemark had to reduce the number of theatres they operated in order to stay afloat. As of September 2022, Cineworld filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a court in the state of Texas. That move, coming from the sector's second-largest corporation, became emblematic of the pandemic's long-lasting impact on the moviegoing experience altogether. Similarly, AMC Theatres only managed to stave off bankruptcy by raising capital in September 2023.Redefining the movie experience
Cinema chains are looking into new strategies to lure cinemagoers back after several years plagued by the pandemic and strikes. At the end of 2023, AMC and Taylor Swift closed a deal on the distribution of a concert film of her new “ERAS Tour”, which broke AMC’s previous pre-sale records. The movie quickly became the highest-grossing concert film ever released and could potentially launch a new trend of movie experiences.
