If we divide that average ticket price by the $10 billion target number, it means 927,643,785 tickets would need to be sold in a given year. If we divide that number by the number of eligible moviegoers in the U.S., that brings us to 3.44 tickets per year, per person. Now, since a person can’t buy half of a ticket, we can make this easy and say that the average person would need to see three or four movies in theaters per year to get us to a healthy place.

Again, this is very rough math, but it does give us some sense of where the goalposts are. Yes, this counts children, but they are important members of the moviegoing public. They may not buy tickets, but their parents sure do. That’s why “Kung Fu Panda 4” is one of the biggest movies of 2024 so far, and why John Krasinski’s “IF” topped the box office this past weekend despite so-so reviews from critics. Hollywood has to play to everyone.

What’s sobering looking over these numbers is that for voracious moviegoers such as myself, three to four movies per year feels like next to nothing. And even just a handful of years ago, that number wasn’t difficult to achieve. Moviegoing was a more regular habit for the average person. Unfortunately, the advent of streaming and VOD allowing for new movies to be available from the comfort of home mere weeks after they first hit theaters has changed that dramatically.