In the DVD era most people didn't buy expensive DVDs - they rented them from Blockbuster (then later Netflix) just as they had done before on VHS.
In the post-DVD era there is still plenty of money coming after the theatrical release in the form of money from streaming services. How does this source of revenue compare to that of the DVD era, and, if it's significantly different, then why?
One thing that's different nowadays is how quickly movies go from theatre to streaming, but that's under control of the movie studio - presumably they expect to make more money this way.
Perhaps the real problem is the cost of producing, and marketing, these Hollywood movies in the first place, making it necessary for everything to be a mega-hit to be successful.
If the studio makes more money from ticket sale revenue sharing, than from streaming (or previously DVD rental), then why are they now rushing to streaming so quickly?
To speculate:
Blockbuster used to be utterly dominant in the VHS/DVD rental era, and there would be prominently displayed in-store advertising of what in-theatre movies were coming to DVD/Rental soon, as well as the new releases getting their own section in the store. Perhaps in-store DVD rental therefore created it's own marketing and extended shelf life, as opposed to online streaming rental where the customer likely already knows what they are looking for a opposed to being influenced by "coming-soon and newly-released" in-store marketing.
The lack of variety of movies in the US, to which Damon is responding, is also at least in part because there is, for whatever reason, no culture of arts cinemas here. The whole industry is geared up for the economics of large budget movies and the de-risking that involves.
It's not like we went from theaters + DVDs to just threaters.