New Morning Consult polling shows there is some enthusiasm for patronizing drive-in theaters: 55 percent said they’d be interested in visiting one of the outdoor theaters, including 66 percent of Gen Z adults. Adding to the potential draw of the drive-in is that audiences are 12 percentage points more likely to be comfortable with watching a film outdoors than inside, according to separate Morning Consult polling.
Mark and Jennifer Frank, owners of the Raleigh Road Outdoor Theatre, said they’ve also seen an increase in business -- a rise of about 10 percent year over year for the first half of 2020, even after needing to close for the month of April due to the pandemic. Since reopening, they’ve seen a year-over-year increase of almost 50 percent for the months of May and June.
But just 6 percent of U.S. adults have gone to a drive-in since the pandemic started, and Chip Sawyer, whose Lakeland, Fla.-based Silver Moon Drive-In Theatre has seen business fall by the single digits year over year after a month-long closure, said one problem for drive-ins is a lack of new content.
“Big first-run summer movies, especially family-friendly movies, do really well at the drive-in,” he said. “This year, we are not getting those big blockbusters, which makes big nights hard to come by.” Major, Sawyer and the Franks said they have not raised prices for regular screenings at their establishments this summer.
While a number of 2020 releases, including “Trolls: World Tour” and “Palm Springs,” are available for drive-in theaters to screen, only 28 films premiered between June 1 and July 17, compared to the 99 that debuted throughout June and July of last year.
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