Editorial: Applause for Gen Z and their love of the moviegoing experience

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Aug 12, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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Movies are back! (Again.)

We’ve seen stories in the recent past about how going to the movies was becoming a thing again — see “Barbenheimer” in 2023 — only to see consumers retreat to their in-home streaming lives. But 2026 may actually be different.

If so, we’ll have Generation Z — the first generation to grow up entirely in the smartphone age — to thank for preserving a longtime, irreplaceable pillar of American entertainment and culture. And to strike a much-needed blow for collective experience.

Last year, 39% of moviegoers were Zoomers, according to Comscore, topping millennials who made up 32% of the overall audience. We’ll guess Gen Z’s share will rise once the numbers are in for 2026.

It helps to have buzzy Hollywood offerings, and Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” as well as a well-reviewed addition to the Spider-Man franchise in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are exemplars. But even before their July openings, Zoomers flocked to see supernatural horror film “Obsession.”

We attended a late-afternoon showing last month of Nolan’s spectacle at the Music Box Theatre and noted the multi-generational composition of the audience. Gen Z was there in force, yes, but there were plenty of senior citizens there, too. Had the Gen Zers been tasked with reading Homer’s epic in school the way most of the older attendees at that showing undoubtedly had? In many cases, assuredly not, yet there they were.

It was heartening to see people of all ages sitting quietly together for nearly three hours and absorbing this ancient yet familiar saga.

The long lines along Southport Avenue outside the venerable theater of “Odyssey” viewers angling for good seats reminded us, again, of what a Chicago treasure the Music Box is. We rhapsodized earlier this summer as we celebrated the movie house’s addition of a third screen.

Yes, some things remain timeless, as Greek sagas remind us, including the human need to gather and witness together. How would the ancient Greeks have reacted to our atomized, individually curated culture? Sounds like a tragedy in the making to us.

So we raise a bag of popcorn to the up-and-coming generation and feel confident that a night (or day) out at the movies isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

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