Sometime after Jack Black hollered “chicken jockey” in 2025’s A Minecraft Movie, and before The Odyssey drove the masses mad with aspect-ratio anxiety, Hollywood finally felt seen—and saved—by Gen Z. Over the past year, trade publications and mainstream outlets alike celebrated the news: Zoomers were coming of age and coming to the rescue of American cinema. Their theater attendance purportedly outstripped that of their elders; their tastes in video-game franchises and low-budget horror undeniably carried the day. These cheery headlines largely traced back to a single report by Fandango conducted in January. In a survey of 7,000 adults in the United States, the Gen Z responses were eye-popping: 87 percent had watched at least one film in theaters in the previous 12 months; the average Zoomer had seen seven movies in that period. Compare this with Gen X at 70 percent and 6.1 movies, respectively. (It should be noted, though, that Fandango’s survey pool drew disproportionately from movie enthusiasts: 5,091 of the respondents had gone out to see at least one film in the previous …