Movie tickets vanish fast in UAE as younger audiences flock back to cinemas

Cinema tickets in the UAE are harder to come by these days, and the reasons run deeper than simply having more people wanting to go to the movies.

A constellation of cultural and technological shifts has converged to make the cinema experience feel newly essential to audiences, particularly younger ones. Gen-Z moviegoing in the United States rose sharply last year and has now passed pre-pandemic levels among 18 to 24-year-olds. For a generation supposedly tethered to short-form video, they are increasingly willing to spend several hours in a darkened theater with their phones put away. That shift appears to be reshaping how people think about cinema itself, transforming it from a passive entertainment option into something that requires intention, choice and collective presence.

The summer of 2025 has certainly tested that appetite. The Odyssey has made more than 9.3 million dollars in the UAE since opening on July 16, according to Box Office Mojo. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has already crossed 7.2 million dollars, while Toy Story 5, Obsession and The Devil Wears Prada 2 have all become substantial hits. Taken together, this summer’s biggest films have already edged ahead of last summer’s successes, which were led by F1 with 10.4 million dollars and Lilo and Stitch with 7.8 million dollars.

The ticket shortage reflects something more specific than strong box office numbers. Director Christopher Nolan has spent years convincing audiences that his films should be seen on the biggest screen possible, and with The Odyssey, that philosophy has reached another level. Shot entirely using Imax film cameras, it has surpassed Avatar to become the highest-grossing Imax release ever, taking 289 million dollars from the format worldwide. That demand concentrates itself unevenly. A standard showing of The Odyssey may still have seats while the Imax screening beside it is booked out. The UAE does not have the rare 70mm Imax presentation, but in London the BFI Imax has extended its run well beyond the summer due to unprecedented demand.

Nolan has made format an integral part of the experience. Terms such as 70mm, aspect ratio and Imax film, once largely the preserve of projectionists and dedicated film fans, are now part of the conversation around one of the world’s biggest movies. That shift in how audiences talk about cinema reflects a broader change in how they approach the medium itself. Streaming removed most of the friction from watching a film; social media removed even the need to decide what comes next. Going to the cinema means choosing something, booking it, leaving the house and giving it your full attention. It feels more like a collective pastime than another passive stream of content.

The internet has not necessarily worked against that impulse. Platforms like Letterboxd, TikTok and YouTube have created a highly active film culture among younger viewers and are now producing filmmakers of their own. Curry Barker went from YouTube Shorts to Obsession, one of the year’s biggest word-of-mouth hits, a horror film made for 750,000 dollars that has earned more than 6 million dollars in the UAE and 7 million dollars in Saudi Arabia. Kane Parsons turned his teenage Backrooms videos into a theatrical film whose audience was overwhelmingly under 35.

The blockbuster itself has not fallen out of favor, as Spider-Man: Brand New Day demonstrates. What many audiences seem to have tired of is a certain kind of blockbuster: films weighed down by franchise maintenance, digital environments, cameos and promises about whatever comes next. Brand New Day includes plenty of that, but ties it together with something far more real and human. It brings Spider-Man back down to earth, with physical stunts filmed in actual locations. More importantly, it remembers that endless sequels mean nothing if audiences do not get to see how people grow and change. Its strongest thread is simply whether Peter can find his way back to the people he lost.

The Odyssey reaches something similar. It is enormous, but it also feels deeply personal. Its scale always feels intentional rather than simply a reason to sell a more expensive ticket, with all that spectacle and technical invention directly serving a story about damaged people trying to find their way home. That sense of human intention also feels increasingly valuable amid the rise of artificial intelligence. As generative images, writing, music and video become ordinary online, research suggests knowing a person made something affects how highly people value it. The less heart and personal vision there is in something, the easier it becomes to imagine an algorithm could have made it.

The UAE has had another advantage this summer. The Iran war disrupted the international concert calendar, pushing a number of major touring shows later into the year. Arabic and South Asian performers have continued to fill venues, but anyone looking for the succession of major global touring acts that has become normal here had fewer options this summer. The movies, meanwhile, kept arriving.

Whether this surge in cinema attendance lasts will become clearer towards the end of the year, when the UAE’s concert calendar is revived and Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday arrive on the same day in December. Each offers very different ideas of what a modern blockbuster can be. Denis Villeneuve has made the Abu Dhabi-shot Dune franchise increasingly synonymous with his own filmmaking and the premium cinema experience. Doomsday, by contrast, is Marvel assembling some of the biggest characters in its history for another enormous crossover event.

The shift towards cinema-going appears far more foundational and generational than a momentary response to this summer’s circumstances. For now, the safest lesson is simply to book earlier, unless you particularly enjoy the front row.