In 2018, the number of digital cinema screens worldwide amounted to over 182 thousand – a figure which includes both digital 3D and digital non-3D formats. This is a significant increase from the 169.2 thousand recorded in the previous year and continues the upward trend which has been ongoing since 2006. The number of screens globally has increased by almost twenty times in the past decade, and with digital formats becoming more and more commonplace in the movie industry, it is expected that this growth will continue.

Digital cinema

The region with the most digital 3D cinema screens in the world is Asia Pacific, with over 62 thousand screens in this format in 2018, more than 180 times the number recorded in 2008 where there were just 344 screens of this kind in the whole region. The U.S. and Canada have the third most digital 3D screens worldwide, but still lag behind EMEA countries.

Despite the resurgence of 3D at the beginning of the 21st century, global box office revenue for 3D movies amounted to just 6.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, more than 1.5 billion less than the previous year. By comparison, for 2D the figure was 34.4 billion. Despite the 3D craze which saw the release of ‘The Final Destination’ and ‘Avatar’ in 2009, the novelty has somewhat worn off among moviegoers and among the 871 movies released in the U.S. and Canada that year, just 42 were 3D features.