The Catholic Church may seem like an unlikely consultant for Hollywood, an industry far more inclined to cut seven-figure checks to McKinsey in search of “revenue optimization” or “growth strategies.” But when even a Sydney Sweeney film can’t fill seats at the theater, you start to wonder if it’s time for divine intervention.
Pope Leo XIV recently met with a slew of Hollywood stars and made a heartfelt case for the future of cinema. As reported by America magazine, the American-born pope waxed lyrically about theaters, calling them “the beating hearts of our communities” and describing them as “a threshold where the heart opens up and the mind becomes receptive to things not yet imagined.”
Though his pleas were in regard to local legislation in Rome that would redevelop scores of cherished theaters into shopping centers and hotels, the pontiff’s sentiments resonate worldwide. Movie theaters and the cinematic experience are at a dire crossroads. This past summer saw some of the weakest box office returns in recent memory, and studios are scrambling to get audiences back into theaters.
The causes are, of course, multifaceted. Ticket prices have steadily risen, more than doubling since the early 2000s, while televisions have become absurdly large and cheap; you can buy an 85-inch 4K TV for $800 at Costco, a reality that would have read like science fiction 25 years ago. Once you factor in the fact that most movies arrive on streaming mere weeks after their theatrical debut, the cinema’s value proposition is effectively dead for all but the most ardent cinephiles.
Moreover, in his address, Pope Leo underscores the erosion of shared cultural experiences, noting that theaters remain one of the last places where strangers sit together and hear the same story at the same time — rather than doom-scrolling through personalized feeds in isolation. That cultural fragmentation is a major driver of theatrical decline. Hollywood keeps trying to lure audiences back with the same franchises yet does almost nothing to restore the communal experience that made movies worth leaving the house for in the first place.
But box office anomalies and cultural phenomena such as “Barbenheimer” are proof that great, original films can both draw large audiences and cut across these digital borders. Movie studios would be wise to widen their risk tolerance when it comes to producing new ideas. We are a far cry from the days of double features and the sort of films the pope cited as among his favorites, including It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and The Sound of Music (1965).
Few movies today, as the pope romantically describes it, “ignite the eyes of the soul.” Instead, most movies are predictable, clinging to formulas and franchises. “The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what ‘works,’” he warned, “but art opens up what is possible,” adding that “not everything has to be immediate or predictable.”
POPE LEO XIV CELEBRATES CINEMA WITH HOLLYWOOD STARS AND URGES INCLUSION OF MARGINAL VOICES
As if its conveyor belt of Marvel movies was insufficiently banal and predictable, Disney has already announced plans to stream AI-generated content on its platform. This is the dystopia we are slowly creeping toward, where you can listen to AI-generated music on Spotify and stream AI-generated movies on your TV, a bleak artistic landscape devoid of human creativity or imagination.
In the 14th century, the Catholic Church helped fund and usher in the Renaissance, elevating art from stagnation and mere decoration to a defining human pursuit. Pope John Paul II was also an ardent advocate for the arts, writing in a 1999 letter to artists that society needs them; they “enrich the cultural heritage of all humanity.” In that light, it is fitting that, in an age ruled by generative AI and algorithmic churn, the Church is once again reminding us of the distinction between art and content.
Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.
