I love going to the theater and it's only in the last couple years I realized how much I enjoy sitting down with a bag of popcorn for 2+ hours of stuff on the screen to fly by. I have a theater a 5 minute walk from my house that I never took full advantage of and last summer I decided I'd just start watching something every month on my own (I have a bunch of friends but most of them will only go to see the latest marvel movie and nothing else). This streak ended this year with Sonic the Hedgehog of all things , I almost saw Onward as well but it's release landed within the same 2 weeks that everything went to shit and Disney quickly announced it'd be on plus within 6 weeks. I ended up seeing it on plus instead but, honestly ? it wasn't the same. Streaming video is massive downgrade from a movie theater in terms of picture and audio quality and it's even almost as much of a step down as watching something on youtube instead of bluray disc with a home market comparison. I'll happily watch stuff on streaming services if given no other option but it's hardly a replacement you know ? for some reason the quality difference doesn't bother me as much for TV series or even say "netflix originals". It's mostly just the big hollywood movies. I've gone out of my way for most of my life to watch them on the big screen and if I enjoy them, I bought the DVD (prior to 2004) or the blu-ray (2007+) to watch them at home, maybe listen to a commentary track or check out hours of special features....
Point is , I consider myself an "enjoyer of the cinema" even if my taste is largely on the side of "will watch anything with an explosion or a dracula" I still watch and enjoy a fair amount of movies every year. The loss of the theater since March has 100% incurred a negative impact on my mood in the intervening months , so much so that I was one of the apparently tiny amount of people that braved the theater to watch Tenet a few weeks back. The experience of going to watch it , I'd almost describe like going to the moon, it was weird , I felt guilty about even going and there was almost no one in the entire multiplex that day , to the extent that I asked myself multiple times "who is making money here , anyone ? ". I'd used the local theaters online booking system to buy myself a seat as I usually would but , out of 268 seats in the MAIN auditorium , only 60 were available for sale, each pair of seats 6+ feet away from any other. I decided to try an afternoon showing. Upon arriving at the theater there were 0 other people in the lobby. None, only 2 staff behind the counter and only 1 concession even open. My ticket wasn't even checked, I imagine the staff assumed that no one would bother to show up if they hadn't bought a ticket before hand (although they did do on site sales). Sitting down in the theater I was only of 6 people scattered to the winds that eventually showed up. I mean you don't have to be a math genius to know those numbers don't work for anyone. I had checked seat availability the previous night (which I believe was a friday) and they'd sold about half the available tickets. 30. 20% capacity is one thing right ? if they sold out every single showing of every single movie and everyone who came in the theater bought a beverage and a popcorn , it MIGHT almost be like a break even situation , maybe in a world that didn't rush to open everything up so fast without more regulation , they could have operated for a couple months like this and word of mouth about "yeah going to a theater felt safe" might have lead to a partial recovery had the release pipeline continued. That world doesn't exist though. Only big cinema fans like myself bothered to go and as it turns out that only lead to 1/4- 1/2 of seats selling... of 20% capacity. And many of those weren't spending 15-20$ at the concession either, opting evenmoreso to just sneak a beverage in from home to avoid as many points of contact as possible. The family audience of Mom/Dad/2kids just stayed home too. All single men and women with a few younger couples trying to have a date.
So a theater that might have sold 200+ tickets for 6 showings a night across 2 screens over 2 weeks , selling 12,500 tickets in pre-covid times. They're now selling only 1200 or so tickets. Add to that that ticket gross is weighed heavily for distribution and studios for the first month and you're left with a situation where the exhibitor is actually losing more money being open to show Tenet than they would have lost had they just stayed closed. People on average don't feel safe going to the movies right now and given that we're now riding a second wave in most of the world (or just another hump if you're unfortunate enough to be in the US) , there's no way this changes for MONTHS. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic but I don't think the theatrical experience will be safely normal for 2-3 more YEARS. Yes, actual years. Vaccines may start trickling out 10-18 months from now but it's going to take 12 months for them to be delivered widely enough to start lowering R to be lower than 1 on a consistent basis. Not everyone will be able to get a shot , not everyone will want a shot and as re-infection is a thing , it's far more likely that society as a whole will have to ride it out and hope it mutates until it's substantially less lethal while at the same time many rounds of vaccination slowly remove all but the worst clusters of infection from the world.
Even the best case scenario , that we can safely trickle out vaccines 6 months from and my whole rant above plays out over 6 months instead of 2 years means that exhibitors will have to pretty much shutter their cinemas until Next November. 12 months with 0 income , 12 months that their former staff will go find something else for work. 12 months that these structures are largely left to the elements.
And so , I come full circle here back to the studios who are left crying they made a billion less revenue than normal. I've much less sympathy there , the simple fact is that despite being a let down , Tenet still just barely made it's money back. No one walked away rich but they didn't take a bath and that was a safe a rollout as they could muster. It *WAS* however; done at the expense of exhibitors losing money hand over fist which will make it harder for them to go into hybernation in the minimal 1 year wait before things stand to get safer/better. These studios have followed the same business model for 26 years now. Make a HUGE expensive movie, spend the same amount again marketing it and shoot for the moon. In the late 90's they were made with the intent of costing 100 million dollars and making 250 million back world wide. 10 years later , they cost 150 million and hoped for 750 million. Now , 10 years after that they cost 250 million + to make and they all want a BILLION world wide. Without exhibitors running full steam ahead and a populace who feels safe sitting in a cinema for 2-3 hours , you will NEVER make a billion off a single movie ever again. These studios will have to change focus for awhile yet, spending 250 million on a movie and then marketing it for an *additional* 250 million for a 500 million dollar investment ? yeah that's just not going to cut it any longer. I'm not exactly shedding a tear over here for the rich investors in this racket but , they might have to accept that any films already in the can are a lost cause. Figure out how to put them out digitally for a couple months and then just bring out the bluray. You will NOT make as much money over this release cycle. Piracy will happen much faster as soon as you make a digital version available. But, I see it as - low risk , unlike exhibitors you don't have to pay a bunch of people to run a theater. You can just toss up a file on a service (this isn't free but it's not losing money every hour like a theater would). Wonder Woman '84 ? Certainly WB bet the farm on this one , they figured 2020 would be an "off year" for marvel films (and they were probably right, even in a non covid universe) so they were hedging their bets on a billion dollar box office. They delayed the movie from last November thinking it'd do much better as a Summer Tentpole, I think there may have been some better VFX done too. Point is they gambled hard on making another 100+ million by delaying it to the summer and covid meant instead they made nothing. The marketing budget was already spent though, a pepsi co-promotion rolled out in time for the films original release date , TV /online ads popped up and here we are a few months later with a still tentative date , rumors of a streaming co-launch and a film that sadly feels like it already came out for a general audience even though no one got to see it. I'm using WW84 as an example but the potential zeitgeist for that film has come and gone. You aren't going to be able to re-launch it 2 years from now , studios are largely still attempting to keep churning out films and banking them for when it's safe which means whenever that happens , whatever the exhibitor landscape looks like , competition is going to be the highest it's been possibly ever. The average movie goer will go watch the biggest newest film out there , not some wonder woman film that was supposed to come out 2 years ago.
So what do you do ? you suck it up and just release a lot of these movies, in countries where it's safe to do so and exhibitors can actually keep the doors open you go ahead and do a small release. Anywhere else ? you pretty much have to sell a fancy digital copy early. Don't expect people will happily pay 30 bucks on top of their subscription fees to see a first run release (even if I feel that price is fine for what you get if directly compared to a theater experience for a group of 4 people). Sell a rental for 10$ a watch (with a 24 hour window) or for 30$ you get access to a full digital copy of the film complete with whatever features that entails as soon as they're available (so it's like you're buying a bluray early). 2 months after this soft rollout, launch a regular digital copy / bluray disc and 6 months after this roll out, it's free to stream on at least one service. I'm willing to bet that even WW84 could make more money than Tenet if it was dropped like this. Would it make a billion dolllars in 3 months ? probably not. It would make half of that I bet and for a while I think studios are going to have start realizing that half is better than 0 or the negative word of mouth that comes with your film being associated with theaters going out of business forever.
My final point here - a lot of movie theaters are going to die in the coming weeks and months. They won't come back. What I do see happening in a post-covid world is upstarts coming in and buying out any abandoned theaters, refurbishing them and re-opening them under new names and slowly but surely if it's something people want to go back to , they will. This is 2-3 years down the road though, so in the meantime I hope studios suck up the loss of "weh weh my movie won't make a billion now" and just enjoy the 500-700 million they can make on digital home and physical home release. Cut the budgets of future films to make this sustainable and *WHEN* things get better you can slowly try to aim higher again if it's safe and profitable. For now I'd love if I could just watch new movies in any way, I'll happily go back to the theater when it's safe so long as someone allows it to exist.
