Movies & Cinema during the Pandemic? Catch-all Discussion (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

Exclusive theatrical windows are the backbone of this industry. The theaters need that In order to continue to exist because if they don't have it, there is an incentive to stay home. I don't foresee this changing as a result of the virus, because if it does then it becomes just that much harder to convince people to leave their homes. The theatrical window at about 90-ish days is already as short as it's ever been. It doesn't seem feasible for the theaters to operate with it any shorter. I think if they are going to continue to partner with studios and show their movies, they have a right to an exclusive window, and I'm happy about that because I love going to the theater. I plan to do so as soon as it is safe to do so.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It makes zero sense that this industry should be forever frozen in practices that date back over a hundred years.

Businesses change, technology changes, what audiences want changes.

Movie theaters and studios cannot indefinitely continue a business model that is based on the idea that a movie theater is the only way or even the best way to view content. They just can’t.

Even before the pandemic, more people than ever were questioning why they should go to the theater to see something. They may not have specifically thought about it in those terms, but it’s certainly come up as we’ve seen lower and midbudget film revenues dry up. The massive success of Disney tentpoles that corresponded with the decline of everything else has shown that in general, audiences are not satisfied with paying top dollar to see something in a theater that they believe will play the same at home. It’s the reason we have an entire new genre of prestige television producing theatrical quality entertainment for at home distribution.

Repertory theater is dead. Low and mid budget releases are almost dead except for the one or two yearly exceptions that prove the rule. Tentpoles for entertainment that the audience doesn’t have a pre-established relationship with are getting harder and harder to come by. The only area that is consistently viable for theatrical are large films that don’t play the same at home filled with characters and storylines that the audience is already invested in. That’s not sustainable indefinitely.

So now, enter an equation where people feel their lives are at risk going out. Add to that equation that reduced capacity restrictions will mean that sell outs will gross a quarter of what they once did. Your $300 million opening weekend for Avengers is now at best $100 million. Add also the equation that the audience isn’t interested in a longer theatrical window. Throw in the possibility that we could have massive rolling openings and closures over the next year or two where parts of the country and world shut down and then reopen again and again.

It is very possible that the only way to make the math work is to go day and date with higher priced movie tickets for those few that do go out, and higher priced PPV rentals for those who stay in. Look to sports, that’s your model for how this works in the future. The number of people who attend the Super Bowl is minuscule in comparison to the number of people who see it. Or maybe WWE will be a better example, since they keep their most prominent events behind a PPV paywall. WrestleMania doesn’t make the majority of its money on ticket sales from the thousands that attend; it makes it from the millions who stay at home and spend $50 to watch the match because they don’t want to wait to see the recap for free the next day.

It’s either that, or they stop making movies that cost $200+ million to make and twice that to market.

 

[TravisR]

Whenever the studios can figure out how to make as much or more from movies as they currently do from playing them in theaters, they'll consider stopping playing their movies in theaters. Until then, movie theaters are not going anywhere.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think there possibly comes a point where studios have no cash flow, are sitting on several films that cost hundreds of millions each to make, and need some revenue because they’ve run out of the ability to give IOUs to their creditors, and something will have to give.

Or, what do you do if the theater business reopens in the summer worldwide, but then half the world shuts down in the fall? Do you push everything another year and leave theaters in unaffected areas with nothing, which could be the death of them? Or do you grudgingly go day-and-date because maybe the west coast can go out and the east coast can’t? Or maybe it’s just that theaters can only serve one quarter of the audience they used to, so studios can try to get something from the lost three quarters of the audience from digital revenue to add in with the diminished theatrical?

If you’re Disney, movie revenue isn’t even the most important part of your business. Live experiences are. And what’s not happening now? Live experiences. Disney has furloughed most of the company but is still paying benefits and health insurance for those workers, which isn’t cheap. At a certain point, if Black Widow brings you $200 million in digital revenue that doesn’t have to be split with a theater chain, you need that money. Or, if you’re AMC, maybe you’re only legally allowed to open half your theaters worldwide but you need revenue, and studios can’t just get by with half the theaters, so you’re faced with a choice of “you can have product on a non-exclusive basis or you can have nothing, we can’t have a major film release unless there is some way for worldwide audiences to have the chance to see it around the same time.”

I don’t think this will be about finding the perfect solution. This will be about survival and about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and none of the posturing being done this week will matter one iota.

 

[Wayne_j]

I definitely think the time of $200 million budgets need to end, there will probably be a sizable drop in theater attendance and studios probably won't make their money back or come close to what they made from the box office with streaming.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Trolls, the one that got a $20 rental price, just brought in $100 million in rentals. I gotta believe that a Black Widow could do twice that. Is it ideal? No. But if it’s the choice between sitting on it forever and waiting for a time when it might have an opening weekend that big, or trying to get some cash coming in, at some point I think they’re gonna have to make those decisions. I agree this will also change the calculation of what gets made in the future but I think at some point there will be a wider conversation about what to do with the stuff that’s already done.

Marvel is gonna have a particularly interesting and unique issue in that each of their films sequentially follows the last. So until Black Widow is out, none of the other films can come out either, and theres a limit to how close together they can be. Whereas a studio like Universal can move stuff around to whatever times and platforms seem best at the moment.

Disney might end up having to be forced to sacrifice the full theatrical potential of Black Widow to both keep the Marvel franchise active with audience engagement and to simply keep the line moving so they can try again with their next film. If there’s a scenario where studios can resume production but distribution isn’t guaranteed, that’s going to cause for a lot of discussions at the studio.

Epidemiologists say that this will be part of our lives in some form or another through late 2022. If that’s the case, there won’t be normal attendance for two years. Product often devaluates sitting on the shelf, and that’s a lot of cash tied up that the studio can’t do a thing about while it’s on hold. I don’t think holding everything made now for 2-3 years is feasible. I don’t think 100% pre-pandemic theater attendance is remotely possible for the next two years. So what do you do if those are the harsh facts confronting you?

 

[Jake Lipson]

Marvel is gonna have a particularly interesting and unique issue in that each of their films sequentially follows the last. So until Black Widow is out, none of the other films can come out either, and theres a limit to how close together they can be. Whereas a studio like Universal can move stuff around to whatever times and platforms seem best at the moment. Disney might end up having to be forced to sacrifice the full theatrical potential of Black Widow to both keep the Marvel franchise active with audience engagement and to simply keep the line moving so they can try again with their next film.

Granted, we don't know how Black Widow ends, but we do know that at least the majority of it is a prequel set prior to the events of Infinity War and Endgame in which the title character died. So actually, I'm not sure that it would impact the rest of the slate that much if it were to come out in a different order. Their recent release date reshuffling also suggests that there is some flexibility here. Doctor Strange was going to come out in November 2021, followed by Thor in February 2022. Now, Spider-Man is going in the November slot and Doctor Strange is going to March 2022, but Thor is staying in February 2022. So the two properties have switched places in the sequencing of Marvel releases. Thor is now coming out before the movie that was originally slated to come after it. Of course, whether they keep these dates is entirely dependent upon when production is able to resume, but my point is they announced one schedule where Doctor Strange was first and now they have one where Thor is first. So the anticipated content of those films must not be such that it doesn't matter which one is seen first.

Because Black Widow is a prequel and is the kickoff to their next phase of films, Marvel is in a much better position having to sit on that film than they are if the pandemic had happened last year and delayed the release of Endgame, which would have been much more problematic because Endgame was the capstone for their storytelling to date. None of the films that they have currently scheduled feel like that, which is a good thing for the present moment.

The MCU has now been going for 12 years and 23 films to date -- 24, if you were to count Black Widow which should have come out this weekend if not for the virus. I think their audience is very committed at this point to the stories they are telling. We don't usually have to wait very long for the next installment, but given the consistency of success up to this point, I think Marvel will have an easier time if they have to go into.a longer hiatus than other studios and series might In which audiences have been not quite so invested. We'll see what happens.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Granted, we don't know how Black Widow ends, but we do know that at least the majority of it is a prequel set prior to the events of Infinity War and Endgame in which the title character died. So actually, I'm not sure that it would impact the rest of the slate that much if it were to come out in a different order. Their recent release date reshuffling also suggests that there is some flexibility here. Doctor Strange was going to come out in November 2021, followed by Thor in February 2022. Now, Spider-Man is going in the November slot and Doctor Strange is going to March 2022, but Thor is staying in February 2022. So the two properties have switched places in the sequencing of Marvel releases. Thor is now coming out before the movie that was originally slated to come after it. Of course, whether they keep these dates is entirely dependent upon when production is able to resume, but my point is they announced one schedule where Doctor Strange was first and now they have one where Thor is first. So the anticipated content of those films must not be such that it doesn't matter which one is seen first.

Because Black Widow is a prequel and is the kickoff to their next phase of films, Marvel is in a much better position having to sit on that film than they are if the pandemic had happened last year and delayed the release of Endgame, which would have been much more problematic because Endgame was the capstone for their storytelling to date. None of the films that they have currently scheduled feel like that, which is a good thing for the present moment.

The MCU has now been going for 12 years and 23 films to date -- 24, if you were to count Black Widow which should have come out this weekend if not for the virus. I think their audience is very committed at this point to the stories they are telling. We don't usually have to wait very long for the next installment, but given the consistency of success up to this point, I think Marvel will have an easier time if they have to go into.a longer hiatus than other studios and series might In which audiences have been not quite so invested. We'll see what happens.

Is there any confirmation that the post-"Endgame" movies are going to pursue any kind of overall arc ala the first series?

I think we all assume that they'll structure the 2nd series that way, but that doesn't mean they will - they could decide to simply make largely unconnected movies from now on.

After all, where do you go from the 1st series? Kinda feels like any other "big narrative arc" will feel anticlimactic.

Anyway, I've not paid much attention to discussions of the new MCU so they may have indicated they will pursue another big arc and I missed it!

 

[TravisR]

After all, where do you go from the 1st series? Kinda feels like any other "big narrative arc" will feel anticlimactic.

I think fans comparing the first arc (if you want to call a decade and dozens of movies one arc) and the second one will bring about the first major backlash from hardcore fans against Marvel movies.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I think fans comparing the first arc (if you want to call a decade and dozens of movies one arc) and the second one will bring about the first major backlash from hardcore fans against Marvel movies.

I know "arc" wasn't the best term, but you know what I meant: a large series of movies that progressed toward a unified climax.

Still unclear if the post-"Endgame" MCU will pursue that again...

 

[TravisR]

Still unclear if the post-"Endgame" MCU will pursue that again...

While I haven't seen anything saying one way or the other, I'd feel very secure in betting my left nut that it will do what the previous movies did where they're basically self contained but certain elements & characters carry over into other movies. I'd say the shared universe where things carry over from one movie to the next is one of the things that people enjoy the most about Marvel movies. Plus, on a more crass level, the shared universe helps create the idea in the general public that they have to see them all.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I would be surprised if we didn't see some form of crossover storytelling going forward. We know for certain that there will be crossover storytelling between the MCU Disney+ shows and the films. They've already said that WandaVision leads into Elizabeth Olsen's role in Doctor Strange.

But I also think that it will probably be several years before they try to do something quite as large-scale Infinity War and Endgame again. It was called Endgame for a reason and that has to stand for a while. It's important to have the newer sub-franchises and members of the team stand on their own for a while so that when they do eventually come back together it feels fresh and significant. However, being at this sort of resetting stage right now -- rather than if this pandemic had happened last year in between Infinity War and Endgame -- makes it a much more natural place to take a pause than if this had disrupted the intended flow of that storytelling.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

While I haven't seen anything saying one way or the other, I'd feel very secure in betting my left nut that it will do what the previous movies did where they're basically self contained but certain elements & characters carry over into other movies. I'd say the shared universe where things carry over from one movie to the next is one of the things that people enjoy the most about Marvel movies. Plus, on a more crass level, the shared universe helps create the idea in the general public that they have to see them all.

I agree that it's likely they'll pursue some kind of arc.

However, I won't bet, as I want nothing to do with your testicles!

 

[Wayne_j]

82% of Americans oppose opening movie theaters:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-widely-oppose-reopening-most-businesses-despite-easing-of-restrictions-in-some-states-post-u-md-poll-finds/2020/05/04/495ddc3a-8e36-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html

As for me I would be OK going to a movie theater if virus cases are actually on the decline, everyone is wearing masks, and the theater is at 25% seating capacity. I am much more worried about eating at a restaurant (which is the public's 2nd least thing they want opened) because wearing a mask there would be impossible.

This poll makes me very pessimistic about box office potential for at least the next year.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I'd go to movies if they were opened normally again. I'd just check out my surroundings, and adjust my own personal actions accordingly if needed. Went to a KBBQ last night for dinner, it was fine. If it was sketchy, I'd bail. People running businesses that rely and interact with the general public have so much incentive to make the visiting their establishments as safe as possible.

 

[John Dirk]

As for me I would be OK going to a movie theater if virus cases are actually on the decline, everyone is wearing masks, and the theater is at 25% seating capacity

No dog in this race since I avoid commercial theaters as a matter of course but that's just it, how can they be profitable at 25% capacity or similar?

 

[John Dirk]

People running businesses that rely and interact with the general public have so much incentive to make the visiting their establishments as safe as possible.

I'll admit to being a skeptic here but I would modify your above statement as follows.

People running businesses that rely and interact with the general public have so much incentive to make visiting their establishments APPEAR as safe as possible.

 

[Worth]

No dog in this race since I avoid commercial theaters as a matter of course but that's just it, how can they be profitable at 25% capacity or similar?

There's also the matter of concessions. Popcorn and fountain drinks won't fly anymore - they'll need something pre-packaged, which will further eat into profits.

 

[TravisR]

As for me I would be OK going to a movie theater if virus cases are actually on the decline, everyone is wearing masks, and the theater is at 25% seating capacity.

Obviously, we need to get closer to the actual point where they decide to reopen but that sounds like something that I would be comfortable with as well. The way I look at it is that if a studio is opening a mega-budget movie, they feel that it's safe too. And certainly not because they're nice or because they're particularly concerned with safety but because they don't want to open themselves to potential legal action and they don't want their product known as the reason for an outbreak somewhere.

No dog in this race since I avoid commercial theaters as a matter of course but that's just it, how can they be profitable at 25% capacity or similar?

Yeah, that's the problem. What's safe probably isn't profitable.

 

[John Dirk]

Yeah, that's the problem. What's safe probably isn't profitable.

Agreed and this is disturbing. While personally not a fan of commercial theaters for a myriad of reasons I do recognize and acknowledge the overall need for them. They're a major revenue source for studios and also provide jobs in the communities they serve. Ultimately we need them in the equation if studios are going to keep churning out the blockbusters we've all come to love or sometimes love to hate.