Among the many unknowns for the film industry in Canada next year is what will happen to Cineplex as its longtime chief executive retires.Maria Collins/The Globe and Mail
Is everyone ready for one last go-round for the greatest show on Earth? Because the next 12 months might usher in a certain kind of last act when it comes to life on the big screen, or at least what we talk about when we talk about moviegoing.
It is easy to slip into doomsaying when discussing the state of the film industry – I spent a good chunk of 2025 doing exactly that. But when you begin to add up all the evidence that is being compiled against the future of cinema – specifically, the century-plus-old ritual of leaving your home to enjoy the communal experience of the movies – it is exceedingly hard to remain an optimist.
And if we want to preserve the art form, if there are enough passionate and committed filmgoers out there who do not want to relegate themselves to a future of streaming-first slop, then we need to get real. We need to fight for a culture that we believe in, for a culture that so many people in positions of power seem to be either indifferent or directly opposed toward. It’s showtime, folks, now or never.
Let’s tally up the crises that 2026 is poised to unleash.
There is the overarching problem of the box office: 2025’s North American tally notched US$8.87-billion in ticket sales, which is only a 1.5 per cent increase from 2024, and too short of the US$9-billion that analysts hoped the industry would bring at the start of last year. We may never again see the days of $11-billion-plus years, as was typical leading up to the pandemic.
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Are there enough high-profile 2026 titles to push that number up, and give everyone in the theatrical ecosystem – from studios to theatre owners – some breathing room? Potentially, but the red flags are everywhere. The ongoing atmosphere of superhero fatigue might lessen the expectations of the appropriately titled Avengers: Doomsday. Will last year’s hostile reaction to Disney’s “live-action” reimagining of Snow White be repeated with the studio’s seemingly way-too-soon re-visitation of Moana? Do we need more Super Mario Bros., more Ice Age, more Angry Birds, more Toy Story, more Scream? If they bring audiences inside the multiplex, sure, but what else is there on offer – and are there the marketing dollars to support anything with a wisp of originality?
Complaining about sequels and reboots and re-whatevers is as tiring an experience, though, as watching the films themselves. More concerning is the sense inside Hollywood that the only way to survive is to conglomerate. To become immeasurably larger, yet deliver something inherently smaller.
So much ink has already been spilled on what may or may not happen to Warner Bros. Discovery – will Netflix succeed and then start punting all the studio’s films to streaming way quicker than usual? What if Paramount Skydance takes it all? – but it feels safe to say that whatever the outcome, the culture of moviegoing will suffer. Mergers ultimately mean less competition. Less competition means fewer films, less choice. Hollywood has always been a business, certainly, but it’s been a business largely built on a love of the arts. That increasingly no longer feels to be the case.
The word I keep coming back to when I start thinking about the next era of the industry is “devaluation.” The back catalogue of Warner Bros. Discovery is an opportunity to exploit intellectual property, not a canon to be treasured and protected. The essential bulwark of the theatrical window (meaning the amount of time it takes for a film to go from theatrical exclusivity to the home entertainment market) is an annoying impediment to pumping up streaming subscriptions, so those companies can make more movies that disappear into the algorithmic vortex, never to be seen or talked about again. Movies are not movies, but “content.” Audiences are not to be respected and served, but prevented from becoming part of subscriber “churn.” The Academy Awards are going to be on YouTube in a few short years, for crying out loud.
Closer to home, the clouds seem even darker.
What will become of Cineplex as its longtime chief executive Ellis Jacob retires at the end of this year? The exhibition giant, which has come to define moviegoing in Canada for better or worse, has been shedding assets, seemingly in a bid to lean itself up to attract a willing buyer. But who would want it – and if some entity does snap it up, what would become of Canada’s key-market multiplexes?
Meanwhile, the promises of the Online Streaming Act, designed to support the homegrown screen sector by forcing U.S.-owned streamers to pay into the system that they’re benefiting from like every other Canadian broadcaster, seem to be evaporating before the industry’s eyes. Perhaps, the mood seems to be, it is simply easier to let global tech giants roll over us.
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That same sense of apathy – as if we’re all collectively saying, “well, we tried” – seems to be infecting everything from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s lackadaisical support of Telefilm and the overall Heritage file to the flailing energy of the Canadian Screen Awards.
At least the Toronto International Film Festival is trying something new and genuinely ambitious this September by launching its official content market, which organizers hope might turn TIFF into a global hub of powerful deal-making. (It must also be noted that TIFF is only able to pursue such an initiative thanks to the financial support of Ottawa, albeit with funds promised under Justin Trudeau, not Carney.)
Yet TIFF’s project is also such a huge bet – and one that seems constructed so far on somewhat rickety grounds – that it could also magnificently backfire, adding one more insult to a year that portends a high risk of injury.
All this, and we haven’t even touched upon the potential dangers of tariffs, labour issues (the Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild of America all have deals with Hollywood producers and studios that expire this spring and summer), recessionary economics, the rise of artificial intelligence (including Disney’s embarrassing capitulation to such slop-clogged technology), and more and more and more.
There is a chance we will meet again in a year’s time to marvel over just how the global film industry came back from the brink. But it is unfortunately far more likely that we’ll all instead be shell-shocked over a brutal twist that not even the most cynical among us film fans saw coming. The only thing to do in the meantime, then, is to keep going to the movies. I’ll see you there.