The far-left Deadline reports that as far as the 2021 box office, “in the short term, sources expect Q1 and Q2 2021 to be quite soft.” In fact, people are wondering if the new James Bond movie, which is expected to hit theaters in late March/early April will actually open or move later into the year.
Overall, though, people are optimistic that things will eventually return to normal as far as movie-going goes. This optimism is based on the fact that China has returned to normal, as Deadline reported, “China demonstrated remarkable buoyancy after cinemas reopened in July and never looked back. Its war epic The Eight Hundred was the highest-grossing film worldwide in 2020.”
Too bad no one in China bothered to see Wonder Woman 1984, which is flopping something terrible over there, along with pretty much everywhere else.
So there are all these movies … Top Gun 2, Black Widow, No Time to Die, Fast & Furious 9, Quiet Place 2, etc. … piling up. The studios are making massive interest payments on this shelved product, and what to do, what to do?
Well, each of these titles is a multimillion-dollar gamble now. In some cases, we’re talking about a quarter of a billion dollar gamble. The gamble is what to do with them.
No Time to Die is supposed to go first — as in open first. Well, Tenet tried that last summer and grossed less than $60 million domestic.
What has to be especially agonizing for the studios is that they have options. If they didn’t have any options, they wouldn’t have to sweat this so much. If it was only one choice, when to release it in theaters, that’s not so bad. But now they have options, and those options create stress and a lot of second-guessing if money is eventually lost.
Do we do what other movies have done, and go directly to Premium Video On Demand (PVOD) and skip theaters? Trolls 2: World Tour not only (reportedly) grossed more than $100 million going this route, but saved the studio a ton of promotion money.
Or do we do what Warner Bros. and Disney have done — use our big titles (Hamilton, Wonder Woman 1984, Soul, Mulan) to boost our streaming services.
After all, Wonder Woman 1984 tanked in theaters, but apparently helped HBO Max increase its subscribers in record numbers.
And how sure are we movie attendance will come back here like it has in China?
America is not China.
I know Joe Biden would like it to be, but it’s not.
Let’s remember that America is a place where we’ve been scaring the hell out of everyone for almost a year now, and from what I’m reading, Democrats are in no hurry to reopen their big cities. There’s even serious talk of continuing with masks in public places AFTER the vaccine rids us of the coronavirus.
Who wants to spend 150 minutes wearing a mask that reeks of popcorn?
The other question, though, is how much our habits have changed. How self-aware are we now of the germs and filth we experience in most movie theaters? Plus, a lot of theater chains may very well go bankrupt.
At home, in this great country of ours, even people on welfare have flat-screen TVs and surround sound, not to mention Netflix and the like. The question is, are we done going to the movies? Paying all that money and dealing with talkers and obnoxiously priced concessions?
The counter-argument is always that we will never give up the audience experience. Come on. Really? Kids today live their whole lives on their phones and tablets, and were doing so before the virus hit. Who would have though huge swaths of the population would give up the “audience experience” of playing outside with your friends?
The same people who are certain Americans will never give up the “audience experience” were caught off guard by the streaming revolution, which even I saw coming more than ten years ago.
No one knows. That’s the only certainty here.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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