At 10:41 a.m. on December 6, a middle-aged woman stopped in front of the Lincoln Square AMC Theater in New York City in front of a man holding a sign that read “2 FREE TICKETS INTERSTELLAR NOW.”

“Right now?” she said.

“Right now!” he replied before revealing a hidden prize on the back of the sign: “1 HUGE.”

She happily paid his price for the rare commodity: a matinee seat for a film released a decade ago. On secondary online markets, tickets for Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space epic were listed for as high as $215 for weeks after all 166 Imax screens sold out for the duration of the re-release. Last weekend, “Interstellar” grossed $4.57 million domestically, more than any new film and, at $27,500 per theater, a higher average than top-grossers “Moana 2” and “Wicked.” In fact, demand is so great that Imax is expanding the number of cinemas for the coming weekend.

The achievement is the latest example of how old films have become fashionable again in theaters, as studios look to capitalize on their library titles and cinema owners face a post-pandemic and strike Hollywood with fewer tentpole films per year. Excluding small programming runs at boutique theaters (often comprising just one or two screenings), at least 27 old films were re-released in more than 100 domestic theaters – in many cases more than 1,000 – in 2024, grossing a total of more than $90 million -dollars.

Chief among them: Laika’s 2009 stop-motion animated film “Coraline,” which grossed an impressive $33.6 million domestically when it returned to theaters in August via Fathom Events. Fathom is a joint venture between AMC, Regal and Cinemark and has specialized in targeted repertoire releases since 2005. “Coraline,” its highest-grossing film to date, caps a winning streak for the company, with its previous releases grossing a total of $74 million in 2024, a 311% increase from 2022.

“It’s a very, very good business,” says Ray Nutt, Fathom’s CEO. He cites the pandemic — when Fathom was able to supply old films to theaters starved for content — as a catalyst for audiences’ renewed interest in revivals. “It reunited people with the cinema that had been stuck in their house for a year,” he says. “We want butts on the seats. We want eyeballs on this screen. It’s just good for the whole industry.” This year was different, however; The week after “Coraline” opened with $12.7 million, Nutt met with several studio executives and he said they kept asking their repertory department heads, “Why don’t we do this with our films?”

That’s a good question: If studios can scoop up library titles every few months for a bag of money, why doesn’t it exist in the first place? more New releases?

“It’s harder than it looks to gain an audience,” says one sales manager. Big titles alone may not be enough to fill spots. And while digital prints have little cost, bringing a title back in 70mm or 35mm format means sourcing prints and projectors and sometimes hiring projectionists, putting even more pressure on marketing to get attention excite. In this regard, anniversaries are the easiest integrated marketing tool. Studios can use a new theatrical release to promote a special Blu-ray edition – “and then we join forces to promote it together,” says Nutt. A reboot of a franchise can also be a good excuse for a new release; 2009’s “Avatar” grossed $24.7 million three months before “Avatar: The Way of Water” debuted. And A24 has created hype around its new releases by using its monthly Imax screening series as a promotional tool, such as when the studio released a reboot of “Ex Machina” ahead of director Alex Garland’s 2024 blockbuster “Civil War.”

Even more important, however, is giving audiences a reason to go to the cinema that goes beyond the mere opportunity to see the film, be it the Imax-only release of “Interstellar”, the re-release of “Coraline” in 3D or the adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings”. ” trilogy on seat-shaking 4DX technology.

“All of our content has value,” says Nutt. “You get something more special than just watching it on TV at home.”

However, the record-breaking re-release of “Coraline,” which grossed $75.3 million domestically in its original run, required a sustained effort over several years. David Burke, Laika’s head of marketing, says that after joining the company in 2019, he and his team noticed an organic following for the film on social media. “It didn’t immediately seem like people wanted to see it on the big screen,” he says. Instead, the studio “intentionally fostered this sense of community” by creating “Coraline” content specifically for TikTok and hosting special exhibitions of the film’s artwork.

“We concluded there was demand, particularly from fans who might have discovered it on home media,” Burke says. In collaboration with Fathom, a small re-release of “Coraline” in 2022 grossed $805,000 in one day; The following year, another re-release grossed $7.1 million in four days. In other words, the audience was there, and while Burke declines to give a specific number, he says the studio’s marketing costs for the title’s much larger release this year – including international distribution via Trafalgar Releasing, were the additional grossed $18.7 million – was in the “low seven figures.”

A24 experienced a similar effect in 2023 with the re-release of the Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense”. The indie studio turned the experience into an event by partnering with Imax, bringing the film to the Toronto Film Festival, putting together a tribute album and even (briefly) getting the band back together. The film grossed more than $5 million domestically in 2023, surpassing its original box office gross; According to A24, when “Stop Making Sense” first aired in 1984, 60% of viewers were not yet born and 75% were seeing the film for the first time in cinemas.

“You don’t have to be an expert to figure out that there is demand for these films across the calendar,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. While the 2025 release calendar has recovered from the strike-related decline, “there are still some weekends that could use a boost,” he says. To that end, Imax will re-release “Se7en” in theaters in January to mark its 30th anniversary, while Fathom will re-release “The Goonies” in theaters to mark its 40th anniversary.

“Moviegoers want to see films outside of their homes,” says Bock. “This is the future bloodline of the industry.”