The Brief

California counties are reporting decreases in homelessness, suggesting the state is finally making progress in solving one of its most difficult and persistent problems.

But even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials are celebrating, the money that made those wins possible is at risk of evaporating.

President Donald Trump’s administration this month tried to block organizations that don’t support its social agenda from accessing federal homeless housing funds — causing experts in the field to worry that politically liberal California could find itself blacklisted from crucial dollars.

Cuts to state homelessness funding are also on the horizon, and some local jurisdictions are pulling back funds as they struggle with their own budget deficits. That has counties, nonprofits and industry experts worried California’s homeless counts will soon go right back up.

“I do think that we’re doing something right,” Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, said of the recent decreases. “That all may come to a crashing end with a lot of concerns with what’s happening at the federal level, federal policy changing and funding cuts happening.”

Of the 29 places in California that reported an official homeless census this year, more than half saw a decrease compared to 2024, according to an analysis of point-in-time counts by the Hub for Urban Initiatives. That includes drops of about a quarter in Contra Costa and Sonoma counties, 20% in Santa Cruz County, 16% in Ventura County and 14% in Merced County.

San Diego and Los Angeles counties each saw a decrease of less than 10%. For LA County, this marks the second year in a row that homelessness is down.

But funding worries loom like a black cloud over those promising results. As purse strings tighten, service providers will have to cut staff, programs and bed capacity, meaning they can help fewer homeless people. For years, California cities, counties and nonprofits have been pushing the Newsom administration to provide an ongoing source of homeless funding, so service providers can plan ahead without worrying each year about how much money they’ll get.

Some organizations already are feeling the squeeze.

From December through July, Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County turned away 700 families who needed housing, said CEO Katie Hill.

“We just don’t have anything available for them,” Hill said.

The county cut housing vouchers as the city and county struggled with financial fallout from recent wildfires, falling property tax revenues and increasing legal payouts.

Other organizations are closing their doors for good. Downtown Streets Team, which helps unhoused residents in 16 California cities find housing while earning money cleaning up local streets, plans to close next month after two decades of service.

“The financial and political environment we operate in has shifted dramatically in recent months,” CEO Julie Gardner said in an emailed statement. “During this time, (Downtown Streets Team) lost several significant contracts and grants, creating a multi-million-dollar loss in overall funding. When combined with other factors, including rapidly rising operational costs, these losses made it impossible to continue running the organization in a financially sustainable way.”

‘I just don’t think we’re going to see that funding’

Congress in 2023 appropriated $75 million for something called the Continuum of Care Builds grant, which was supposed to help support the construction of new homeless housing. Former President Joe Biden’s administration started the application process for those grants in 2024. When Trump took the helm in 2025, his administration re-started the process with new criteria, making applicants apply again.

Then, at the start of September, the Trump administration made everyone apply a third time — with a very different set of criteria seeming to disqualify organizations that support trans clients, use “harm reduction” strategies to prevent drug overdose deaths or operate in a “sanctuary city.”

Applicants had to attest that they don’t deny the “sex binary in humans or promote the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic.” They had to promise not to distribute drug paraphernalia or allow the use of drugs on their property.

Applicants also had to attest that they operate in a city, county or state that cooperates with federal immigration enforcement. Newsom has resisted Trump’s immigration crackdown at a state level, and recently signed a set of bills intended to further check ICE.

And applicants were required to operate in a city, county or state that prohibits public camping and enforces that rule. That one could be an easier lift: Arrests and citations for camping-related activities have soared in some California cities over the past year, after the U.S. Supreme Court gave cities more leeway to crack down, and Newsom encouraged cities to ban camping. But two recent statewide attempts to ban homeless camps from near schools and other areas fell flat.

The new funding rules were a major blow to Contra Costa County-based Hope Solutions, which was initially selected to receive $5.5 million to build 15 tiny homes for homeless 18-24-year-olds in Pittsburg. After staff spent at least 100 hours completing the project proposal, they learned this month that they’d no longer qualify because of the new criteria. The Pittsburg Police Department says it does not participate in immigration enforcement. In addition, the new program rules specify the money must go to buildings that serve elderly residents — an about-face that takes Hope Solutions’ youth project out of the running.

“It felt like a gut punch,” said CEO Deanne Pearn, “and really disheartening to know that we had spent so much time and asked so much of our county partners and others, and that that time could have been spent elsewhere.”

The camp where a person experiencing homelessness lives on a hillside above U.S. Route 50 in Sacramento, on Oct. 25, 2024.

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Fred Greaves

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CalMatters

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Hope Solutions is still moving forward with the project, which Pearn hopes the organization can fund with its own financial reserves. But that means the nonprofit won’t have that money for its next project.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently sued the Trump administration over the new grant conditions, claiming that all projects in California and three dozen other states would be ineligible for funds. Earlier this month, a federal judge sided with the Alliance, and temporarily barred the federal government from distributing those funds.

Now, that $75 million is frozen as the case moves forward.

While the new conditions at issue in the lawsuit apply only to one specific federal homelessness grant, experts worry it’s an ominous sign for California. Service providers expect applications to open this fall for the main source of federal homelessness funding — the Continuum of Care Program — which funneled about $600 million to California counties in 2023.

If that application poses similar requirements, California could be in trouble.

“Personally, I just don’t think we’re going to see that funding,” said Hill, of Union Station Homeless Services in Los Angeles County.

In a separate lawsuit, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties sued the Trump administration over contracts that prevented recipients of federal homeless funds from using the money to promote “gender ideology,” “elective abortions” and “illegal immigration.” The counties won an early victory last month, when a judge temporarily blocked the administration from imposing those conditions.

Other federal cuts are looming, too. The Emergency Housing Vouchers program, which launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and now helps more than 15,000 Californians pay their rent, is expected to run out of money next year.

That’s not even counting the cuts to housing vouchers and other federal housing and homelessness programs Trump proposed in May, which are still being negotiated in Congress.

California turning a corner on homelessness

California appears to be decreasing its homeless population, according to the Hub for Urban Initiatives, a California organization that helps local communities shape their homelessness policy, apply for grants and survey their homeless populations.

The 29 California communities that counted and reported their homeless populations this year tallied a total of 131,209 people — a 4% decrease from what those same communities reported last year. That’s a significant step for a state where the homeless population has been stubbornly rising for years.

That data comes from the federally mandated homeless point-in-time count, where teams of volunteers count the unhoused people they see on the street on one night in January. The counts are imperfect, as volunteers can overlook people sleeping in out-of-the-way places, and different counties use different methods — while some places count every year, others count every other. Of the 44 “continuums of care” required to count in California (some small, rural communities combine multiple counties into one continuum of care), 14 didn’t count this year.

The federal housing department will release an official total for the state later this year.

Newsom trumpeted the initial decreases, taking credit for pouring money into homeless housing and other services. He’s not wrong.

Contra Costa County, which saw the state’s biggest drop in homelessness this year, attributes its success largely to the recent boost in state funding, said Christy Saxton, director of Health, Housing and Homeless Services for Contra Costa County. Over the past two years, the county increased its homeless shelter and housing capacity by more than a third.

A big piece of that was the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, which Newsom launched in the 2019-20 budget year to fill what until then had been a void of state homelessness funds. For the past few years, that program gave cities and counties $1 billion each year.

Those funds support programs such as Contra Costa County’s Delta Landing temporary housing site in Pittsburg, which opened 172 units in 2021. Until then, that part of the county had about 20 beds for its unhoused residents, Saxton said.

But instead of making that state funding ongoing, Newsom’s administration opted to dole it out in one-time grants each year, leaving cities and counties continually guessing what next year’s budget will bring.

This year, that state program will get no new funding (because of the glacial pace at which the state distributes these funds, cities and counties have yet to receive money from the last round). Next year, the amount is set to shrink to $500 million.

“We are significantly concerned about the cuts that are coming,” Saxton said, “because it has taken an influx of money in order to see those decreases, and we need that to continue on now more than ever.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Orcas, the lovable black and white marine predators, have taken over 10,000 square feet of the Natural History Museum of L.A. County.

Orcas: Our Shared Future, which opened Sunday, includes floor to ceiling screens that play orcas swimming in the wild and a life-size replica of Ruffles.

He was one of the first orcas Alisa Schulman-Janiger, lead research biologist for the California Killer Whale Project, saw in the wild back in the 80s.

“It’s not him but it represents him. And I can actually go back in time and replay: I was standing here and my boyfriend who became my husband was standing next to me... seeing them under us foraging for fish,” she said.

Schulman-Janiger, who is also a research associate for the museum, said there was a sighting of these giants – the largest members of the dolphin family – in our local waters just this month.

“In the Channel Islands,” she said. “I just looked at some photos today sent to me by one of the naturalists... and she saw at least 16 different orcas.”

There are 140 original artifacts and specimens to see and experience at the immersive show, including sculptures and masks by Indigenous artists of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Fred DeNisco, an orca expert from British Columbia who goes by ‘The Orca Man’ on social media, said he fell in love with orcas at the age of three, while watching 1993’s Free Willy in the back of a mini-van.

An original 'Free Willy' VHS clamshell on display at the Natural History Museum of LA County

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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He’s followed the exhibition all over the U.S. and Canada.

“It is just so unique in the breadth of topics that it covers, both in indigenous relationships with orcas, the research and more particularly our human relationship and the tumultuous relationship that has in media and captivity and even whale watching,” DeNisco told LAist.

And in case you’re wondering, the exhibition does include an original clamshell for a VHS copy of Free Willy, the film that inspired a generation of orca-lovers like DeNisco.

You can check out Orcas: Our Shared Future through April 25, 2027.

Ticket info is at the Natural History Museum website.

LAist is one of the Natural History Museum’s media partners for the exhibition, Orcas: Our Shared Future.

I’ve loved reading your reactions to the new LACMA David Geffen Galleries. Here are just a few of the many responses we received; most were positive, but there were some smart criticisms as well:

“The architecture by Peter Zumthor and the uniquely designed way of displaying the collection across time and place was brilliant! The joy is in finding the connections.” —Marlan

“Time and place braid together in a continuum unleashed from the strictly defined spaces typical of an encyclopedic museum. Truly radical in the best way possible.” —Bianca

“The art seemed to be presented in an almost random order, as if they took LACMA's collection like a deck of cards, shuffled them twice, and then just hung everything in the resulting order.” —Steve

Licorice Pizza has your music picks for the week, including post-hardcore band La Dispute at the Belasco, indie-folk star Cut Worms at Pacific Electric and rock en español sensation Julieta Venegas at the Grammy Museum — all on Tuesday. Wednesday, Charlie Puth is at the Forum, dream-pop trio Sunday (1994) is at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, singer-songwriter and breakout The Voice contestant Carol Ades plays the Troubadour and Latin rock band Zoé plays the first of two nights at the YouTube Theater. Thursday, Chet Faker plays the Novo, Maro is at the Fonda, King Tuff plays Sid The Cat Auditorium and a cappella legends Take 6 begin their four-night residency at the Blue Note.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can get a first look at the new Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, find out more about this King Taco’s historic designation, and grab your tickets for Wild Card with NPR’s Rachel Martin Live at the Crawford on May 2.

Events

Enormous Things

Tuesday and Wednesday, April 28 and 29
Elysian Theater
1944 Riverside Drive, Elysian Valley
COST: $25; MORE INFO

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Courtesy The Elysian

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A more up-my-alley musical has never before landed in my Instagram feed. Do you, like me, enjoy modern art and showtunes more than almost anything else? Enormous Things — a musical about Claes Oldenburg where Jeff Koons is the villain — might also be for you.

Just Sing 

Thursday, April 30, 7:30 p.m. 
Laemmle NoHo 7
5240 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
COST: $14.50; MORE INFO

Fans of Pitch Perfect will want to check out this local real-life story. Just Sing follows the USC a cappella group SoCal VoCals as they make their way to the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella in New York City. Co-directors and cinematographers Angelique Molina and Abraham Troen will host a Q&A following the screening.

Japanese Heritage Night at Dodger Stadium

Monday, April 27, 7:10 p.m.
Dodger Stadium 
1000 Vin Scully Ave., Elysian Park 
COST: FROM $70; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Los Angeles Dodgers

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Japanese superstar Yoshiki will perform at the Dodgers vs. Marlins game ahead of his headliner performance at Disney Hall in July, marking Japanese Heritage Night at the stadium. Get there early to hear the music, enjoy Japanese food specials and grab your special game jersey.

Old Woman Naked

Wednesday and Thursday, April 29 and 30, 7:30 p.m. 
The Broadwater Second Stage
6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood 
COST: $45; MORE INFO 

Acclaimed author Pamela Redmond is no stranger to using her own life for inspiration for her beloved fiction, like Younger (which later became the hit Freeform show) and Older. But baring all — emotionally and physically — onstage? That’s new territory for the 72-year-old. First performed in New York to a sold-out one-night-only crowd, Old Woman Naked digs into the truth about aging, sexuality, feminism, motherhood and coming into your own. An additional date of May 17 has just been added.

Comedy, at Night 

Tuesday, April 28, 8:30 p.m. 
UCB Franklin 
5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood
COST: $20; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy UCB Comedy

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Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Silverman and many more bold-faced comedy names join this showcase at UCB Franklin, hosted by Nate Odenkirk and Ari Mostow.

Double Chin pop-up 

Monday, April 27, 9 a.m. until sold out 
Petitgrain Boulangerie 
1209 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica 
COST: VARIES; MORE INFO

Double chin? More like double yum. Get in line early for this pop-up at Petitgrain, featuring Leah Chin-Katz’s popular pastries and jams.

Glowworm Full Moon Night Hike 

Thursday, April 30, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.  
Gabrielino Trail, Western Trailhead
915 Ventura Street, Altadena
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Jason Journeyman

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Eventbrite

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Rattlesnakes sleep at night (right?), so head out for a late-night hike to see the rare California pink glowworms that come out this time of year in the Altadena foothills. Intrepid hiker Jason Wise (Journeyman) leads this nature-filled evening with L.A. Rises.

Screening: Dead City Punx 

Thursday, April 30, 7:30 p.m.
Brain Dead Studios
611 N. Fairfax Ave., Melrose 
COST: $18; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Gold Atlas

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Dead City Punx exhibit 

Through Saturday, May 30
Beyond the Streets 
434 N. La Brea Ave., Mid-City
COST: FREE, MORE INFO 

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yubo dong

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studio photography

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Punk in Los Angeles is far from dead. Dead City Punx, whose shows have shut down streets and seen fans start fires, are the focus of a new documentary and gallery show at Beyond the Streets. Dead City Punx (trailer here) tells the story of the band that built a following through “chaotic, illegal outdoor shows during the pandemic — complete with bonfires, fireworks, graffiti and clashes with law enforcement — ultimately sparking a movement that challenged what DIY and punk culture mean today.” Produced by Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, the film and gallery show are out now.

Los Angeles County is home to the largest homeless population in the U.S. — more than 72,000 people, according to official estimates.

In 2024, county voters approved Measure A, a half-percent sales tax increase aimed at raising $1 billion a year for homeless services and affordable housing.

Its backers promised voters more transparency, accountability and results.

As new revenue flows in, questions about how L.A. County spends homelessness dollars aren’t going away.

How Measure A came to be 

Homeless service providers and advocates wrote and campaigned for Measure A in 2024. Their goal was for it to replace a smaller, temporary county sales tax for homeless services known as Measure H, which was set to expire in 2027.

That quarter-percent sales tax, approved by voters in 2017, delivered about $500 million a year.

That new funding helped move more people into shelter beds, and the number of unhoused people in shelters in L.A. County increased from about 15,000 in 2017 to about 23,000 in 2024, according to official estimates.

But the county's overall unhoused population — which includes people staying in shelters as well as those living on the streets —- grew by 37%, from about 55,000 in 2017 to more than 75,000 in 2024.

Measure A’s solution was to double the special sales tax for homelessness, make it permanent and use the extra revenue to help build more affordable housing in addition to homeless services.

A majority of county voters agreed. The county enacted the “Affordable Housing, Homelessness Solutions, and Prevention Now Transactions and Use Tax Ordinance” — and then started collecting the Measure A tax in April 2025.

Elise Buik, President and CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles presents an award to Peter Laugharn, President and CEO of Conrad N. Hilton Foundation at the United Way "Annual HomeWalk To End Homelessness" in 2017. Both organizations were major backers of Measure A, along with the California Community Foundation and others.

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Greg Doherty

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Getty Images

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Measure A’s promises

Voters approved Measure A amid increasing concerns about the regional agency long tasked with managing public homelessness dollars by the county and city of L.A.

A county audit in late 2024 found that the Los Angeles Regional Homelessness Authority, or LAHSA, had regularly paid service providers late and failed to properly monitor contracts. A separate court-ordered report found L.A. city officials had made it impossible to accurately track homelessness spending, largely by outsourcing to LAHSA.

Measure A proposed a new approach to the region’s homeless services system, which many have described as “dysfunctional.” Written into the ordinance were clearer systemwide goals, increased accountability over spending and consequences for programs that fail to perform.

Unlike Measure H, which focused on getting people off the street, Measure A was written to also focus on preventing people from falling into homelessness. It directs more than 35% of its roughly $1 billion in yearly revenue to a new county affordable housing agency. Supporters estimated it could produce 18,000 new affordable units in L.A. County over 10 years.

It directs 60% or revenues towards homeless services — and dedicates a portion of that funding to be split directly among L.A. County’s 88 cities.

Measure A delegated oversight responsibilities for the spending to the county Board of Supervisors and two governance bodies the board had established in 2023 to coordinate regional planning on homelessness.

The first is an advisory group called the Leadership Table for Regional Homelessness Alignment. It includes nonprofit service providers and experts who meet regularly and inform policy decisions.

That group advises a more powerful one called the Executive Committee for Regional Homelessness Alignment, which sets Measure A’s goals and makes plans and funding recommendations.

Its nine members include two county supervisors (currently Kathryn Barger and Lindsey Horvath), the L.A. mayor (currently Karen Bass), an L.A. City Council member (currently Nithya Raman), a representative from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and four officials from cities across the county.

The committee’s recommendations go to the county Board of Supervisors, which has the final say.

Last March, the supervisors formally adopted five-year Measure A goals with 2030 deadlines. They include: reducing unsheltered homelessness in the county by 30%, moving twice as many people annually into permanent housing and boosting affordable housing production by about 50%.

Measure A’s effects

One of the early after effects of passing Measure A has been a reorganization of who controls the growing pot of county homelessness dollars.

In April 2025, the Board of Supervisors voted to divert more than $300 million from LAHSA and create a new county department, the Department of Homeless Services and Housing, to manage homelessness funding directly.

Supporters of the move said it was necessary because Measure A voters were demanding accountability that LAHSA wasn’t delivering. The new county department formally launched in January.

The full transition of LAHSA programs to the county is planned in July. The Board of Supervisors recently directed the new department to create strict oversight procedures for all homeless service contracts.

Last March, L.A. County approved its first annual budget that included projected allocations from Measure A, totaling about $1 billion. The county had twice as much funding at its disposal but still cut tens of millions of dollars in programs and services for unhoused people, citing a strategic shift.

Now, the county is finalizing the budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. It again includes $1 billion for homeless services and affordable housing because of Measure A, but the homelessness spending plan includes nearly $200 million in program reductions.

County officials said those reductions were necessary to cover rising shelter costs and the loss of pandemic-era state and federal funding.

Measure A has allocated about $100 million annually, or roughly 9% of all Measure A revenues, directly to the 88 cities within L.A. County to address homelessness in what’s known as the Local Solutions Fund. The county publishes a regional plan showing how that money is used.

The funding is awarded based primarily on a city’s recent unhoused population numbers, using estimates from the official annual homeless count.

Some city leaders complain that their residents are paying way more into the Measure A tax than they are getting out of it.

Torrance mayor George Chen says his city will generate about $26 million annually for the county through the Measure A sales tax, and it will receive about $559,000 in local funding through the measure.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath supported the Measure A sales tax, and also championed the effort to break from LAHSA and form a new county homelessness department.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Affordable housing focus 

The major structural difference between Measure A and its predecessor is that it earmarks roughly 36% of its proceeds — about $363 million a year — for affordable housing development. Those funds flow through a new independent regional agency called the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, or LACAHSA.

The agency’s mandate is to create new affordable homes, preserve lower-rent housing and prevent displacement. It is still in its early stages.

As of March, the agency had received $275 million from Measure A and distributed $25 million to recipients, according to its Measure A Funds Tracker. Most of what had been awarded was emergency rental assistance.

On April 15, the agency’s board conditionally approved its first major round of housing production funding, approximately $102 million for 10 projects that will add 566 units of affordable housing, according to a recent report.

Projects are required to break ground within one year of receiving awards. A second round of awards is scheduled for the board's May 13 meeting.

Demand for funding far outpaced what was available: LACAHSA received 242 applications for 127 projects totaling $1.56 billion and representing 11,484 units.

What’s next?

The goals Measure A set are ambitious, and the deadline is 2030. A county dashboard tracking progress shows the region gaining ground reducing unsheltered homelessness while falling behind on other targets.

The county hasn’t made any progress decreasing the number of people falling into homelessness or decreasing homelessness among people with mental health or substance use disorders. The dashboard does not yet include affordable housing production metrics.

The transition from the regional Homeless Services Authority to the new county Department of Homeless Services and Housing is still underway, with a full handoff of staff and programs targeted for July 2026.

LAHSA recently announced it will lay off 284 employees at the end of June.

Federal cuts and changes to funding from Medicaid and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development — flagged as “threats to recent progress” in the county's recent budget documents — loom over the entire system.

According to new data from TikTok and theater trade group Cinema United fan-made TikToks can now do what big marketing campaigns couldn't always achieve: keep a movie thriving after opening weekend.

At this year's CinemaCon, the annual convention for movie theater owners, director Denis Villeneuve showed the first seven minutes of his third Dune film. He told the crowd he made his latest installment of the science fiction saga for the fans. And long before the December opening, fans have been posting their own reactions on TikTok.

"There's this incredible chant in Dune 3 that's in the trailer and what we've seen is it's a soundbite that users on TikTok have embraced and made their own content with," says Cameron Curtis, executive vice president of global digital marketing for Warner Bros.

He says TikTok is a tremendous platform for reaching new audiences.

"We often see that the creator content on [the] platform outperforms our traditional advertising content by 3-to-1. It's become just critical to our strategy and everything that we do," says Curtis.

He says Warner Bros. and other studios have been partnering with TikTok creators to market their films. According to TikTok executives, that's for good reason. "We really saw that the buzz doesn't stop with the opening weekend," says Dennis Papirowski, TikTok's global head of Entertainment and News.

He says every day, the platform's users create 6.5 million posts related to content from new and classic films and TV shows. According to TikTok, half of their users say they discovered a new movie through the platform. And of those, more than a third looked up showtimes and purchased a movie ticket.

Dawn Yang, the company's global head of entertainment partnerships and business development, says studios tend to do a lot of marketing for the first weekend a film opens.

"But on TikTok, it really takes off after the first weekend," she says, "because people have seen the entire movie and they want to talk about it."

TikTokers post enthusiastic movie reviews, they cosplay and reenact scenes, and some create new edits from the official trailers and footage. For instance, 24-year-old college student Josiah Pilet remixed Spider-Man clips set to music.

Fan edits would have been no-nos in the old Hollywood strategy of protecting intellectual property, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, which analyzes the box office.

"There was a time when studios did not want marketing messaging going out that wasn't from them," he says. Now, he says even negative responses to movies are welcome "as long as it's not something horrible, that can boost the profile of a movie and excitement around it, because sometimes people want to see what the fuss is all about."

Dergarabedian says studios are increasingly embracing and harnessing the power of short TikToks made by the key Gen Z audience.

"You have some movies that open huge, have a huge opening weekend, then drop by 70% or more in their second weekend," he says. "But the way you keep people coming back is that you not only have a great movie, but the social media engagement continues, amplifies and creates that excitement and the FOMO factor among potential moviegoers."

Take last year's box office hit Sinners. Cinema United and TikTok's report found that buzz about the film surged on the platform during its opening week — and ticket sales barely dipped the following week.

But social media platforms, including TikTok, have also sometimes caused minor headaches for theaters. Last year, fan-made posts chronicled the mayhem sparked by a line spoken by Jack Black's character in The Minecraft Movie.

Audiences shouted "chicken jockey" along with him and tossed popcorn in theaters. The ruckus was so chaotic that one fan even carried a live chicken into the movie, as shown by one viral video.

At CinemaCon, Warner Bros. executives offered a good-natured apology to theater owners for the mess.

But it's not just fans posting TikToks. As executive director of communications and content for B&B Theatres, Paul Farnsworth makes funny TikToks, starring himself and the staff — often in the lobby, playing around with the latest movies.

"It's like a little wink-wink joke, nothing that you're going to like, pay money to go see a stand-up comedian say," he says. "But I think for us, it indicates to our guests a sensibility of like the playfulness of the movies, the magic of the experience, the shared communal thing that we're all trying to achieve with them."

Farnsworth says he asks the studios for guidance on the material — hoping his viral TikToks get people into movie theaters.