How Are Movie Theaters Going to Survive ?

T

TheDingo

Veteran
Right now it looks like few if any feature films are going to make to the theaters this year and I have no idea how the theaters are going to survive while they wait for the audiences to come back ?

I see that Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" is currently scheduled for an July 31st and Patty Jenkins "Wonder Woman 1984" has been pushed back to October 2nd. ( this is the fourth push-back for WW84 ) And I really wonder when I will be able to go back to watching anything on the big screen. ( maybe only in New Zealand :evil: )
 
It's a good question.

Maybe some of the current players will go bust and get sold off for pennies to large conglomerates who can take a short-term loss and retool them into more profitable enterprises.

I'm sure that as long as demand rebounds, there will be movie theaters in the future. I'm just not sure it will be the same entities if they go out of business. (And the same goes for us cameramen.)
 
Never thought in my lifetime I would see motion pictures as a professional art form being destroyed but it has reached that point. The eating away of competition, independent companies, decision-making and enthusiasm (where's the enjoyment?), I doubt there is anyone healthy enough to start another SIMPP or United Artists.
It's not an absence of talent I would say although the brightest would be rejected by the corporate studios given their narrow ideological fixations. Digital tech contributed by allowing corporations even more control over content, but this is mind rot from the top down.
Disney stopped allowing FOX films from being shown in revival cinemas (even though there was a demand).
Art without public merit or artist enthusiasm is not art.
And it isn't good business either since the corporations don't care if movies stop getting made. Look how quickly they shut down for the virus.
You look back to the 1960s and world cinema was so vibrant. The UK, Japan, Italy, it is just astounding how enfeebled it has become.
The most independent nation cinema right now seems to be Nigeria.
 
I may be an outlier here ...

My best memories of the movie theater was the summer matinees ... kids out of school ... two cartoons ... Wurlitzer playing at intermission ... live
comedy on stage while the projectionist readied the feature film.

Every Saturday morning hundreds of kids descended on the theater ... bought raffle tickets in hopes of winning a bike ... football ... or a doll.
Decent main feature and then out into the light heat and humidity of the summer day. Sticky hands and face ... too much sugar ...

That morphed into a closed group of closely held businesses that herded folks into a queue for marginally palatable overpriced swill ... and
steadily declining theatrical fare ...

Seems like as the morality of society started a slow decline ... Hollywood raced it to the bottom ... and we are all subject to the society that
emerged in the process.

When a family of four has to spend close to $60 USD for tickets ... swill ... and then be subjected to onerous sound levels and 30 minutes of
adverts .... at some point the consumer will move on ...

Today most home theaters rival the quality of the big screen ... 4K TVs projections systems even PC Monitors ... yes you lose the big screen but
you also are not subject to the bores who talk during the film, text on their phones and cannot keep from a running commentary on the film ... usually
an uninformed rant ....

"Art without public merit or artist enthusiasm is not art."

Tell that to all the artists who died paupers ... only to be resurrected when the populace caught on to their genius.

Democratization of content will allow a wider audience to embrace quality video and content ... without being held hostage by
those who championed the Harvey Weinsteins of the world.

Rant over ...
 
More films are being made than ever before. The industry has shifted to streaming distribution for the most part, even the theaters.

Quite frankly the corporate conglomerate owned studios are averse to risk taking, so keep rehashing past successes for major release for the most part. Very little interesting new and original work shows up in theaters anymore in the US.
Studio conglomerates and theater conglomerates are more interested in protecting their investments than in producing original works of art. Most of the truly interesting and creative new work is showing up on the streaming platforms instead of theaters.
The industry isn't dying, it is just changing to suit the times and new technologies.

Personally I love going to see a good movie in a theater, but films that are worth the effort and expense are few and far between if you are burned out on action franchise series, Disney cartoons and Marvel Comics super hero reboots.
As a comic illustrator I met once who had left Marvel to start his own 3D graphic novel publishing effort said, " Sooner or later you get tired of drawing men in panties punching each other." Same is true of watching them if you have seen essentially the same **** over and over for 50 years.
Add the current pandemic risks into the mix and I'm not sure it is worth going at all even if they do reopen. Frankly the large flat screen 4K HDR set in my living room occupies about the same area of my field of vision as the typical postage stamp sized screens in modern corporate small theater multiplexes.
 
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Razz16mm said:
More films are being made than ever before. The industry has shifted to streaming distribution for the most part, even the theaters.

Quite frankly the corporate conglomerate owned studios are averse to risk taking, so keep rehashing past successes for major release for the most part. Very little interesting new and original work shows up in theaters anymore in the US.
Studio conglomerates and theater conglomerates are more interested in protecting their investments than in producing original works of art. Most of the truly interesting and creative new work is showing up on the streaming platforms instead of theaters.
The industry isn't dying, it is just changing to suit the times and new technologies.

Personally I love going to see a good movie in a theater, but films that are worth the effort and expense are few and far between if you are burned out on action franchise series, Disney cartoons and Marvel Comics super hero reboots.
As a comic illustrator I met once who had left Marvel to start his own 3D graphic novel publishing effort said, " Sooner or later you get tired of drawing men in panties punching each other." Same is true of watching them if you have seen essentially the same **** over and over for 50 years.
Add the current pandemic risks into the mix and I'm not sure it is worth going at all even if they do reopen. Frankly the large flat screen 4K HDR set in my living room occupies about the same area of my field of vision as the typical postage stamp sized screens in modern corporate small theater multiplexes.
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Which is kind of ironic, considering they're the ones most financially able to weather the pitfalls of a risk.
 
The resurgence of drive in theaters seems to be one emerging trend of cultural interest thanks to the pandemic. But studios and distributors are going to have to be much more generous with revenue sharing terms for those to succeed in the long run.
 
TheDingo said:
Right now it looks like few if any feature films are going to make to the theaters this year and I have no idea how the theaters are going to survive while they wait for the audiences to come back ?

I see that Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" is currently scheduled for an July 31st and Patty Jenkins "Wonder Woman 1984" has been pushed back to October 2nd. ( this is the fourth push-back for WW84 ) And I really wonder when I will be able to go back to watching anything on the big screen. ( maybe only in New Zealand :evil: )
Click to expand...

Considering how hard the second wave of COVID is about to hit America, I think Tenet and Wonder Woman fill flop hard if they try to come out, and we'll have a long time before movie theatres are viable. People are eager to get out right now, but when the consequences come roaring back I think it'll scare off too much of their potential audience to be worth releasing at this time. This all being said, theatrical releases are the only way these huge budget movies can make their money back, and I think once the pandemic is actually under control in a year or so, there will be a resurgence of movie theatres. But, much like with most low-margin businesses, I think a lot of struggling theatres will probably shut down for good, or at least be mothballed until someone sees it as a good idea to invest in them.
 
It's not the "risk taking" in a creative sense. It is in the financial. Major motion picture studios know might sell and what won't.

It's different for the streamers. They can literally make any feature film or TV series that the viewing public yearns or not yearns for. But the "not worthy of yearning" types won't get many chances unless backed by an established talent like Soderbergh.

And movie theaters are the brick&mortar retailers of filmed entertainment, that are going out of style along with the other brick&mortar retailers. Some will survive as the "high end" theaters - higher prices, far fewer seats, superior food&drink. Others will remain the "opening weekend" mass merchandiser, owned by a streaming service that wants to monetize a release's popularity/marketing. Some might turn into nightclubs/discos. The rest will go the way of the dodo bird.
 
I can't find the statistics for this, but won't movie theaters survive because young people need a place to go on dates? They're not going to stream something together on the 1st date because their apartment is tiny (or they're living with their parents), plus they want to go OUT and spend some money on their date (but less than a concert or play or nice dinner). Plus, it gives them something to talk about.

Then there's groups of kids going together to the latest Marvel movie. These ticket-buyers may not be enough to keep theaters afloat, but their needs cannot be met by streamers.
 
One can go to a Starbucks and stream Netflix over WiFi.

Of course, one has to scramble together enough funds for Java Chip Frappuccino for two.
 
But once again you're taking a utilitarian look at what the date is. Sometimes the point is to spend a little money, to do something a little fancy, to go where other people are. Movies are a cheap dalliance to people with money, but to broke kids they are stepping out on the town.

(If you take your date to stream a pirated copy of the latest Marvel movie at Starbucks, that might be the last time you see her.)
 
This is all sort of short-term outlook, though (probably).

Once I have a vaccine, I won't give a damn about that chart. Maybe some people will become germaphobes. But from a rational standpoint - it's not as if unknown viruses are lurking everywhere. We knew about covid19 months before it hit the U.S. I don't expect to go get groceries and randomly contract ebola or something novel.
 
COVID-19's reproductive rate has been slightly increasing over the months as they learn more. They barely knew anything about it 6 months ago.

Most experts believe the R0 to be between 2.5-3 although I recently saw on article claiming some researchers now think it's doubled to around 5. In the movie Contagion, it was 4 (without knowing how much higher it could have been before the vaccine was made).

Ebola is less than 2 and measles can be as high as 18.

If something exists that hasn't been contained, and is deadly, increasingly contagious, and has no vaccine then there is no normal life.
 
Right but I'm talking about post-containment. The 1918 Spanish Flu didn't doom theaters. (Granted there were no alternatives then.) So, when do we expect the next pandemic of this impact? In 1, 10, or 100 years?
 
ahalpert said:
Right but I'm talking about post-containment. The 1918 Spanish Flu didn't doom theaters. (Granted there were no alternatives then.) So, when do we expect the next pandemic of this impact? In 1, 10, or 100 years?
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From what I have read, the virologists and epidemiologists say there are factors in the 2020 world that didn't exist just a few short years ago
that make it likely that we will see more terrible diseases and more Pandemics on an ongoing basis from here on out. Even though it's a terrible
saying, more Pandemics, more often may become normal. I guess the world will have to start to get used to the same mindset those of us
in California have lived with our entire lives. "When will the Big One (earthquake) hit? In 1 year, 10 years? 100 years?

Number four in Maslow's Hierachy is "Safety Needs". We've learned through this that Maslow was right, humans are terrible at functioning in a sane,
rational manner when they have no choice but to live in the unknown. Look at Americans behavior, as a people, as a nation, through 2020 so far, our
country has collectively lost it's mind and I largely attribute this to FUD. Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt.
 
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The Doom of theatres is not a single strike, but several blows:
- Succes of Video on Demand
- This lockdown has been somewhat of a trial period of testing out not going straight to Cinema but VOD instead. My memory isn't great, but AMC/Regal or some theatre chain has banned a Hollywood-studio from future releases since they didn't do a theatrical release and subsequently skipped the period in which cinemas are the only ones showing the movie.
- Scaring the investors, not good to have a business so fragile in which you can get stuck with high rent and 0 income.
- Home theatre/TVs getting so good that it becomes diminishing returns to go to a cinema.
- Cinema no longer have access to "all the content" i.e. Amazon, Netflix etc. create movies that can only be seen on their platforms, yeah they might try some theatrical release, but mostly that has been to get PR and eligibility for various awards.

Cinemas will still be around for a while, but they will probably have to downsize or maybe even change form, like becoming "rentable to show a netflix movie"...
 
puredrifting said:
From what I have read, the virologists and epidemiologists say there are factors in the 2020 world that didn't exist just a few short years ago
that make it likely that we will see more terrible diseases and more Pandemics on an ongoing basis from here on out. Even though it's a terrible
saying, more Pandemics, more often may become normal.
Click to expand...

If that's true, it's not just cinemas that are in trouble. Bars aren't going anywhere because the demand for them will continue. But if they had to shut down for a year every ten years? How many establishments can survive if they lose 10% of their revenue?

Maybe they can all develop more pandemic-resilient infrastructure (like Californians have for earthquakes). Or maybe they'll have to raise prices 10% to compensate, which would also help knock out cinemas (but would it be the death toll? I'm not sure.)

Regarding pandemics - there have been multiple in the last 20 years, but none of this widespread impact or duration.
 
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