Cinema is dead.

For many people, the news that Netflix is buying Warner Bros feels like the final chapter for movie theaters. A giant of the streaming era swallowing one of the oldest film studios sounds like a symbolic moment. Some see it as the day cinema died, replaced by algorithms and convenience.

It is an understandable reaction. Digital experiences have been quietly replacing physical ones for decades. Newspapers became apps. Books became screens. Photography turned into infinite scroll. Music went from vinyl to playlists. Broadcast TV turned into on demand streaming. Each of these shifts moved us from the public world into the private one.

And all these forms of media share something in common. They are personal experiences. You can read alone, listen alone, watch alone, scroll alone. They belong to the private space of your couch and your phone.

Cinema is different.

Going to the movies has never been only about watching a film. It has never been about snacks with absurd prices. Cinema is a collective experience. You can go by yourself, but you are not alone. The moment you decide to leave your home and step into the world, something changes. You interact with people. You deal with traffic. You talk to your driver. You walk through the mall. You stand in line for popcorn and a soda. You sit in a room with strangers who laugh, gasp or whisper at the wrong time. All of this is part of the ritual. It is messy, imperfect and deeply human.

That ritual is what makes cinema impossible to replace. A giant TV and a perfect soundbar can give you quality, but not presence. They can reproduce the movie, but not the moment. What you experience in a theater only exists because you share it with others. Collective emotion is the real product.

So if movie theaters ever disappear, it will not be because of Netflix, overpriced snacks or affordable home setups. It will be because we chose isolation over connection. Because we preferred private comfort over the small frictions that make us feel part of something larger than ourselves.

Cinema is not dying. What is dying is our ability to show up for shared experiences. And that is on us.

Cinema is dead. Long live cinema.