National Cinema Day should come back...but tied to the Oscar nominations

How do you get people back into the theatrical moviegoing habit after all the chaos of 2020 and 2021? Non-profit organization Cinema Foundation came up with a holiday to accomplish just that: National Cinema Day. Held in 2022 and 2023, this event (occurring at the very end of the summer) allowed audiences to see theatrical releases for severely discounted prices. For $3 and $4 (in 2022 and 2023, respectively), you could check out anything from Barbie to Oppenheimer to Nope (among many others) in any format you wanted. The two National Cinema Days have proven to be a rousing success. $34 million was generated from 8.5 million admissions alone from its 2023 incarnation.

Once the final weeks of summer 2024 rolled around, though. National Cinema Day was MIA. On August 29, 2024, IndieWire published a piece outlining the internal struggles behind launching another National Cinema Day iteration. Movie theaters and entities like the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) are unsure of resurrecting this day in 2024. Concerns over unruly excessive crowds, lost revenue for movies during this celebration, figuring out when to schedule this event, and more have made National Cinema Day a difficult concept to execute in 2024.

Here's my two cents on the matter: bring back National Cinema Day. Make it an annual fixture of the moviegoing scene. However, take it out of late summer. Let’s move this thing to a Sunday shortly after the announcement of the Oscar nominations.

Arthouse cinema has begun to come back in the theatrical space. However, it’s still nowhere near where it was in pre-COVID times. To date, no limited-release movie in 2024 (meaning a film that began its run in under 600 theaters) has cracked $10+ million. The highest-grossing limited-release title of the year is the $7 million haul of Love Lies Bleeding. For comparison’s sake, 2019 had three limited releases that exceeded $10 million domestically at the same point in the year (plus three other limited releases that outgrossed Love Lies Bleeding). By mid-August 2018, that year had scored four $10+ movies that started in limited release. The contrast here is stark.

In one note of genuine fairness to 2024, the year has seen several solid performers made outside the studio system like Thelma, Late Night with the Devil, and Kalki 2898 A.D. Such titles would've almost certainly started their runs in limited release before the pandemic. That health crisis inspired studios to put more and more of their titles immediately into wide release. Still, the relative lull for limited releases is still concerning. General audiences are having a tough time seeing lower-key arthouse fare like Ghostlight or Sing Sing as the must-see big-screen events they are. With working-class wages remaining stagnant and several major U.S. cities now devoid of movie theaters, accessibility to a wide range of theatrical moviegoing options is urgently needed.

A National Cinema Day tied to the Oscar nominations wouldn’t solve this problem in one fell swoop. However, it could get some people to realize the value of seeing smaller-scale movies on the big screen again. The combination of $4 tickets and the uber-relevant development of “this is a Best Picture nominee!!” could get people to check out movies they’d otherwise never see. The Fabelmans, Women Talking, Past Lives, the mind reels at the recent Best Picture nominees that people could’ve been exposed to with the power of National Cinema Day.

These challenging titles would inevitably disappear in the streaming algorithm prioritizing sitcom episodes you’ve seen dozens of times. Theatrical showtimes, which are only around for a short period of time, have a sense of urgency (compounded in this case by National Cinema Day being only one day) that drives people, forces them to pay attention. Making those prices cheaper even for a single 24-hour period could be a great reminder of that truth to people.

Plus, the extraordinary word-of-mouth buoying these titles to their Best Picture nominations could spread like wildfire after folks experience them on National Cinema Day. Perhaps they’ll even encourage friends and family to check out smaller-scale titles theatrically at normal ticket prices. It’s a hypothetical scenario, sure. However, there’s a chance theaters could get a “short-term loss, long-term gain” outcome here.

Now, of course, some moviegoers inevitably will choose splashier escapist blockbusters over newly minted Best Picture nominees. Even back in late 1999, audiences chose to see Big Daddy far more than they saw Michael Mann’s The Insider. Lighter entertainment has always defined the cinematic landscape. However, that’s where the mid-January timing of this potential new National Cinema Day would come into play. Some December blockbusters linger in the marketplace even in late January. However, there's a good chance audiences will have seen them multiple times before.

Meanwhile, fewers big blockbusters launch in January compared to even August (the previous home of National Cinema Day). January 2025 currently houses Mickey17, some horror movies (like Blumhouse’s The Wolfman), and Den of Thieves 2: The Secret of the Ooze. That's not a daunting slate of newcomers for a slate of newly minted Oscar nominees to face off against. The 97th Academy Awards nominations are set to be announced on January 17. If you wanted to do National Cinema Day on Sunday, January 26 (just so you don't dilute the box office grosses of the three-day weekend occurring over January 17-20), the marketplace would be just vacant enough for the various Best Picture and acting Oscar nominees to stand out as must-see attractions.

Speaking of that, placing National Cinema Da yin late January would solve a box office problem that’s plagued the marketplace even in pre-COVID times. Late January is often a financial dead zone. Those final two weeks of January and Super Bowl weekend are often the lowest grossing frames of any year. The final weekend of January 2015, for instance, only grossed $80 million. 2019's last January frame only amassed $73.8 million. Getting the attendance numbers defining previous National Cinema Days could spike an otherwise flat-line portion of the annual box office.

Who knows, perhaps even timing National Cinema Day around Oscar nominations could bolster Oscar viewership. More people could tune into your program if they’ve viewed the various Best Picture nominees. Trust me, people are not going to see great movies like Tar, Nomadland, or Anatomy of a Fall on streaming. That's no reflection on those movies and their artistic merits. It's just that those aren’t the kind of productions people consume through Hulu or Max. If you want more Oscar viewers, creating greater accessibility for theatrical screenings, not putting everything on streaming, is key.

People have constantly shown over the last few years that they love going to the movies. You just need to give them a reason to go to their local theaters. National Cinema Day may no longer close out the summertime box office. However, it could have real value if placed in another corridor of the year…specifically one already home to lots of award season ceremonies…