A current awareness resource for students & faculty members in Business & Economics

Going to the movies? Researching a strategy shift for a theatre chain

Published May 19, 2025 by Mark Bodnar

Context: Students in BUS 360W (Business Communication) are often asked to pretend they are external consultants and recommend solutions to a hypothetical (though realistic) problem faced by a real organisation. The students must find, evaluate, and justify sufficient evidence to back up their recommendations, and they are only allowed to do secondary research.

This post is meant to help those students get through the research phase a bit faster so they can spend their time evaluating and communicating the facts they've found. Some of the sources and search strategies may be useful to others here at SFU who are working on similar projects/topics in other courses.

Tips

This topic involves looking forward in a time of unprecedented upheaval in the movie industry overall, particularly in theatres/cinemas. What will the future look like? No one has a perfect crystal ball, yet many people have opinions!

Watch for any evidence that such opinions are based on known trends and research, and for any indication that the people making the forecasts have deep experience and expertise in the area... and even then you should remember that they are still only opinions and could be wrong.

Can you find multiple, high-quality opinions that seem to be saying roughly the same thing?
Can you find details on underlying trends and make your own forecasts, perhaps backed-up with the highest quality forecasts by others?
Can you find examples of actions other companies in the industry have taken and learn from their successes and failures?

The following resources are meant to help you spot trends, forecasts, issues, and new experiments with operating models. These resources are only a start -- read widely, and ask for help if you get stuck. Also: These resources are also in random order... try them all!

Industry associations

A relevant industry association will often have briefs, reports, and news on major issues facing the entire industry. Here are a few to start you off, including examples of the information they provide. Search for more associations, including ones in other countries, if you think you can argue for the relevance of non-Canadian information in this case.

View/hide examples of industry associations and their reports/data

News

Given the fast-changing nature of this topic, news sources are especially valuable. Start with these databases:

Factiva is one of your best sources for business & industry news in general and should be one of your main tools for this topic. Be sure to search for news about other movie theatre companies, about the industry overall, and about related industries — articles about solutions and trends seen elsewhere may be relevant to the situation described in your case. Here are some samples of articles I found using Factiva:

Here are some samples of articles I found using Factiva:

Canadian Newsstream provides a more Canada-focused news search covering such papers as the Vancouver Sun and the Globe & Mail.

Here are a few examples of the sorts of articles available in Newsstream:

Industry news — sources focused on the movie/entertainment industry — can often provide deeper details and analysis than you might get from the general news. Factiva (above) covers many key industry magazines, and many industry associations (also above) publish magazines or newsletters.

Also see these sources, then search broadly for other industry magazines/blogs, etc.

Here's an example of how regularly reading the news may help you spot new developments and issues that could be relevant: the Globe & Mail published an article about Taylor Swift's concert tour movie and its potential impact on movie theatres, including some interesting comments on how she has bypassed the normal process in having her movie shown in thousands of theatres: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is saving movie theatres, and infuriating Hollywood studios.

Another example of a news story that may give you some ideas: the Daily Hive reports (based on Cineplex press releases) that Cineplex is offering cheap tickets on Tuesdays, a throwback to the $2 Tuesdays from when I was in university: Cineplex is offering $5 tickets and $5 popcorn. Maybe there are other "old" ideas that could be brought back?

Statista

Statista has statistics on almost any topic, including this one! Always follow any links to the original sources of statistics that seem relevant, both to see if there is added context that will help you evaluate the fact, and to see if the same source offers other useful information.

Here are a few examples of the sorts of stats and reports I found after a quick search in Statista:

Preference for watching a movie for the first time at a theater instead of via a streaming service in the United States from November 2018 to June 2020, sourced via this report
Movie theater attendance in the last twelve months in Canada as of June 2021, by generation sourced via Vividata's proprietary database, which at SFU is available as Vivintel
Sales revenue of movie theaters in Canada in 2018, 2020 and 2022 , by source, sourced via Statistics Canada
Genres of movies preferred to be viewed in theaters in Canada as of October 2023, sourced via a Telefilm Canada report
Sample infographic: Film industry faces existential crisis in face of COVID-19, based on the Telefilm Canada report above
Sample topic page: Film industry in the United States and Canada - statistics & facts
Sample statistics dossier: Cinema in Canada - statistics & facts
Also search for cinemas or movie theaters
Note: If you don't see "Simon Fraser University" at the top of the Statista page after clicking on these links, try returning to this page and clicking on them again. If the issue persists, you'll need to clear your browser's cache & cookies before trying the links again.

About Cineplex & its industry

Start with the Cineplex site, especially its Corporate Information, Investor Relations, and Press Room pages.
Statista (mentioned earlier) offers some charts of Cineplex financial and customer data found mostly in its annual reports. You might also want to scan some of Statista's Outlook Reports for different industries and markets. Sample: Digital Media Report, 2023.
MarketLine profile of Cineplex from Business Source Complete.
Check IBISWorld for current overviews of industries in Canada, the US, China, and globally. For instance, IBISWorld has recent reports on... Movie Theaters in Canada and Movie Theaters in the USA.
Also check out the resources on our Industry Surveys, Market Research, Company Information, and Company Strategies research guides for additional resources.
And consider researching specific major theatre chains in other countries to learn about their initiatives and issues. E.g., AMC Theatres.

Public opinion polling resources

Polling firms sometimes have relevant survey results, although you do need to to consider if what people say in a survey is also what they actually do in practice.

Here are a few key polling firms and samples of the topics they've covered, but (again) search more widely than this short list:

Consulting & research firms

Many consulting & research firms offer insights on trends in many industries.

Here are a few examples of consulting firms and their reports to get you started:

Miscellaneous

Our Business Source Complete database contains many industry publications and academic journals that touch on this sort of topic. Start with this rough exploratory search.
Our Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text database is also worth a look. It overlaps a bit with Business Source Complete, but also offers many film-industry publications that aren't in other databases.
And for a very broad coverage of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles as well as books & ebooks, try this rough SFU Library Catalogue search.
Statistics Canada offers industry data on "Motion Picture Theatres." Most of it is only updated biannually, and the most recent data is from 2022 (released 2023). It's still worth checking their site, though, for more recent analysis such as this brief report released in late August, 2023: Return to life after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic: A look at culture, arts, entertainment and recreation services in 2022 I also found similar reports at the Quebec provincial statistics site... so maybe it's worth checking the stats agencies of other governments and governmental levels?
Our Vivintel database contains data on the Canadians who have gone to the movies recently, including generational breakdowns by frequency of attendance. It also contains lots of additional information on the leisure activities and interests of Gen Zs. However, Vivintel is not a simple database to learn! Check the User Guide, then contact the library if you need further help. Some Vivintel content also can also be found in this report series.