The numbers for movies took an obvious hit during the pandemic. There could be other explanations, of course; but it will be hard to avoid the elephant in the room that is the pandemic.
This will be true for basically all markets. There was an obvious shock during the past few years that is already explanatory for so many problems. No need to hunt for others.
But, even the article you linked is about how the market "continued its recovery in 2022." By the accounting, with the record breaking weekends we just had, this year seems set to be larger than last. Sure, it isn't larger than the past two combined, but that is hardly damning.
