8.1 Million People Headed to the Movies for the First-Ever National Cinema Day

September 3rd marked the first annual Cinema Day, an initiative created by the NATO’s non-profit Cinema Foundation to boost moviegoing with $3 tickets. More than 3,000 locations—boasting more than 30,000 screens—participated in the one-day event, which per NATO drew in approximately 8.1 million moviegoers across the United States.

Per preliminary box office data collected by Comscore, total returns for the day totaled $24.3 million, a figure nine percent ahead of the previous Saturday, even with the discounted admissions. The top 10 performing titles for the day, in order, were: Top Gun: Maverick, DC League of Super-Pets, Bullet Train, Spider-man: No Way Home, The Invitation, Beast, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Thor: Love and Thunder, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, and Jaws.

National Cinema Day celebrated a summer of record-breaking moviegoing with movies and a special sneak peek of upcoming titles from A24, Amazon Studios, Disney, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Neon, Paramount, Sony Pictures Classics, Sony, United Artists Releasing, Universal, and Warner Bros., only on September 3.

“With National Cinema Day, we wanted to do something to celebrate moviegoing,” said Cinema Foundation president Jackie Brenneman. “This event outstripped our biggest expectations. The idea of the day was to thank moviegoers for an amazing summer, and now we have to thank them for this amazing day.”

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