Stephen King Thinks He Knows Why People Prefer Streaming Movies Over Watching in Theaters
The theatrical box office just hasn’t bounced back the way Hollywood hoped. The first quarter of 2025 was sluggish, and even the summer blockbuster season didn’t deliver the kind of record-breaking numbers that used to be the norm.
James Gunn’s Superman launched DC’s new cinematic universe and pulled in around $600 million worldwide. That’s solid, but not on the same level as the mega-hits of the pre-2019 era.
Marvel didn’t fare much better with its three films this year, all landing in that same $600 million range. Even F1, a massive car racing spectacle with a massive budget, barely crossed that line.
It’s sad, but people just aren’t showing up to theaters like they used to, and there are plenty of reasons why. Complaints about crowded auditoriums, rising ticket and concession prices, and the annoyance of glowing phones in the dark haven’t helped.
Add in the fact that movie theater pre-shows now stretch past 30 minutes, and you start to see why staying home sounds like the better option. Especially when new releases hit streaming just a few months later, giving audiences a much more convenient way to watch from the couch.
But Stephen King thinks there’s another reason behind the shift, and it has nothing to do with long trailers or overpriced popcorn. For him, the key factor is subtitles.
King shared his theory on Threads, pointing out that home viewers now have an advantage that theaters can’t offer… the ability to turn on subtitles when dialogue gets hard to hear. He wrote:
"The obvious advantage of streaming over movie theater movies is you can watch them at home. The secret weapon of the streamers, particularly when it comes to movies where the characters have strong accents: subtitles. [...] Young actors in particular don't seem to understand projection. Possibly because they work in TV and films without any stage experience."
He’s not wrong about the popularity of subtitles. According to IndieWire, about half of all at-home viewers now watch movies with subtitles turned on. That’s partly because of audio issues, action scenes tend to blast at full volume while dialogue gets swallowed up at a whisper.
Much of this comes from the way films are mixed for big theater sound systems, which doesn’t always translate well to a living room TV. Subtitles, for many, solve that problem and even help with focus when phones and other distractions are just a reach away.
King also points a finger at modern acting. Today’s performers often favor a more naturalistic, intimate style of delivery, one that can come across as mumbling instead of projecting. Unlike stage actors trained to fill an entire hall with their voice, many younger actors have spent their whole careers in front of cameras and microphones. The result is a lot of dialogue that just doesn’t carry.
Whether it’s poor sound mixing, shifting acting styles, or just the ease of having subtitles at your fingertips, King’s point highlights that the home viewing experience has simp;y become more appealing than the theatrical one.