Something interesting is happening at the movies this summer. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has become a box-office phenomenon, but the numbers only tell part of the story. What interests me more is what those numbers might tell us about why people are still willing to leave home and go to a theater.

According to The Numbers, Spider-Man opened with more than $360 million domestically. It accomplished that while Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey controlled much of the IMAX footprint, forcing Spider-Man to rely heavily on traditional theaters and other premium large-format screens. That makes the opening even more interesting because audiences didn’t wait for IMAX to become available before showing up.

The Odyssey had already demonstrated just how valuable premium presentation has become. Nolan didn’t simply make another movie and release it in theaters; IMAX was part of the experience being sold to the audience. People weren’t only buying a ticket to see The Odyssey. They were choosing where and how they wanted to experience it.

Then Spider-Man came along and created a different kind of theatrical event. It dominated its opening weekend without widespread IMAX availability, while premium formats such as Dolby Cinema helped handle the demand. After that enormous opening, Spider-Man expanded onto hundreds of North American IMAX screens, giving audiences even more premium options during its second weekend.

That doesn’t prove IMAX caused Spider-Man to continue dominating the box office. There are too many variables involved to make that claim, and the demand for the movie was obviously already enormous. What we can say is that premium screens gave theaters another way to serve that demand while charging more for an experience audiences considered worth the additional cost.

I think that distinction matters because we’ve spent years hearing about the decline of movie theaters. Streaming has certainly changed our habits, and most of us now have access to more movies at home than we could possibly watch. Yet when the right movie arrives and the experience feels special enough, audiences continue to show up.

Maybe people haven’t stopped loving movie theaters. Maybe they’ve simply become more selective about what deserves the trip, the ticket price and a couple of hours away from everything available at home. If that’s true, the challenge facing theaters isn’t simply convincing people to watch movies again; it’s giving them an experience they can’t completely duplicate from the couch.

A large television can give us a beautiful picture, and a good home sound system can be impressive. Streaming gives us convenience, choice and the ability to pause whenever we want. What home still can’t completely reproduce is sitting in a dark theater with a room full of people and feeling everyone react to the same moment at the same time.

There’s a modest Utah connection to all of this, and I don’t think we need to make more of it than it is. Utah moviegoers have access to many of the same premium theatrical choices driving this larger conversation, including IMAX and other PLF presentations. The national debate over whether audiences still value theatrical experiences is playing out in our theaters, too.

That’s one reason I’m excited about September. Summer gave us a chance to experiment, listen and learn more about what brings people together around movies. September gives us the opportunity to take those lessons and start making the experience better.

For me, the lesson from Spider-Man and The Odyssey isn’t that every movie needs an enormous screen or a superhero to get people out of the house. The lesson is that the experience surrounding a movie matters, perhaps more now than it has in years. People have too many alternatives for us to assume that simply putting something on a screen is enough.

That applies to independent films, film festivals and local movie communities just as much as it applies to Hollywood blockbusters. We have to think beyond what people are watching and start thinking more seriously about what they experience while they’re watching it. We also have to give them something worth talking about when the credits are over.

As September approaches, that’s what I’m thinking about most. Not simply how we get more people into a room, but how we make the experience meaningful enough that they want to return. If this summer at the box office has taught us anything, it may be that audiences will still show up when we give them a compelling reason.

And maybe that’s the future of going to the movies. It isn’t about competing with the television in our living room or pretending streaming never happened. It’s about creating an experience worth leaving the house for, sharing it with other people and remembering why we fell in love with going to the movies in the first place.

See you at the movies.