For countless Canadians, a hot summer night has often meant a trip to the local theatre—both to escape the heat and catch the latest blockbuster release.
We’ve been going to the movies for almost as long as this country has been around. Next week marks 130 years since the first known public screening of a movie in Canada, on June 28, 1896, in Montréal.
Though Canadians have long had the option of watching a movie on their home TV or on their computers and mobile devices, many people still opt to go out for the big-screen experience. And you know that we’ve got the data (and the popcorn)!
Industry yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic
As of December 2025, there were just over 700 locations nationwide in the motion picture and video exhibition industry, which includes cinemas, indoor theatres and drive-ins.
Every two years, we release detailed operating statistics for this industry. In 2024, it recorded $1.6 billion in operating revenue—up 12.0% from 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still affecting operations.
Canada’s movie theatres had 2,740 screens showing movies in 2024, the highest count in the history of the data series (dating back to 2014) and edging out 2020 (2,720 screens).
The industry has yet to exceed the $1.9 billion in revenue recorded in 2018, which was the highest amount since the start of the data series. Theatre attendance in 2024 reached two-thirds of what it was in 2018.
Households spending less at cinemas
The average movie ticket price in 2024 was $12.57, up from $9.53 in 2020. Admission receipts made up more than half (53.8%) of industry sales in 2024, while food and beverage sales made up 38.0%.
Canadian households spent over $1.2 billion at cinemas (including movie theatres) in 2012—the highest amount since we started tracking this data in 1981—before dropping to $917 million in 2025. On a quarterly basis, household spending at cinemas (seasonally unadjusted) peaked in the third quarter of 2012 ($324 million).
The $295 million Canadian households spent at cinemas in the third quarter of 2023 remains the highest quarterly amount recorded during the post-pandemic period.
Film and video jobs and their economic contribution
The film and video subdomain contributed over $4.4 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) to the Canadian economy in 2024, down 2.9% from 2023 and accounting for 6.6% of total cultural GDP in 2024.
However, jobs attributable to the subdomain—which includes motion picture and video production and distribution—increased by 564 jobs to 82,569 over the same period.
Getting to the theatre
In 2021, most Canadians could get to a cultural or arts venue, including a movie theatre, in 15 minutes or less using active or public transportation. About 85% could do so by bike, 65% could do so by public transit and 60% could do so by walking.
For moviegoers with a disability, there can be barriers to accessing a theatre. The 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability found that more than one in four Canadians aged 15 years and older (27%), or 8.0 million people, had one or more disabilities that limited them in their daily activities. This rate was up by 5 percentage points from 2017 (22%).
When looking at disability types, in 2022, a high proportion of persons with a mobility- (29.2%), dexterity- (28.7%) or flexibility- (26.0%) related disability sometimes encountered barriers to accessing entrances and exits to buildings.
Note to readers
The count of movie theatres cited in this article is a sum of the two Canadian business counts tables (businesses reporting employees and those that did not report employees). A business that does not report staff numbers could either be a sole proprietorship or have any number of employees, so long as it is an active business that filed with the Canada Revenue Agency and reported an annual income of at least $30,000.
Contact information
For more information, contact the Statistical Information Service (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).