This is not going to be one of my typical posts that has pictures and reviews and stuff like that. No, this is a far more serious post that I’m used to making, but things need to be said. Let’s call a spade a spade: 2020 sucks. There’s no getting around it. This has been a very bad year for everyone around the world. The COVID-19 virus has swept the entire planet in a pandemic that continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives and the global economy. Here, in the United States, it’s even managed to infect the White House and the Presidency. This is the only time I will get political here. This administration could’ve avoided this situation if they took the threat of COVID-19 seriously. Instead, they decided to downplay it, costing the lives of over 200,000 Americans, and leaving millions more infected and unemployed. The situation here in the United States is the result of bad leadership. With that said, how has the pandemic affected the film and movie theater industries? To put it bluntly: Catastrophic. Most people haven’t been able to go to theaters since March when movie theaters start shutting down. Back in August, theaters started opening back up with older movies to entice people back with films like Empire Strikes Back, Independence Day, and Avengers: Endgame. You know, the movies that theater-goers love to see on the big screen. Unfortunately, over the course of the year, movies been constantly pushed back for months and even up to a year, which doesn’t leave a lot for theaters to deal with. Just recently, according to Variety and other sources, the latest James Bond film, No Time To Die got pushed back to April of 2021. Even worse, is that as of this writing, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune just got kicked back almost a full year to October of 2021. That basically leaves Disney’s Soul and Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman ’84 for December. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got right now, and there’s a very strong possibility that Wonder Woman will get moved.
Last month, I managed to get back to theaters for the first time in months to see Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Fantastic movie, and I loved the theater experience, however, there weren’t a lot of people in the theater with me. The film has made a little over 300 million dollars world-wide. Considering the circumstances, that’s not actually awful, but there’s a problem: The movie cost upwards of 200 million to make, so it’s not likely to break even over the course of the film’s life. It also didn’t have the impact that Warner Bros. and movie theaters were hoping for. They were hoping for the film to draw audiences back into theaters, so they could really start to release more of their bigger budget blockbusters like No Time To Die. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen, because in some of the bigger markets in the United States, like New York and Los Angeles, theaters are still closed, so people can’t get there. They would have to drive for hours just to find an open theater. Most people aren’t willing to do that, especially now. Because Tenet didn’t have the momentum that studios and theaters were hoping for, other studios have begun pushing back their films to next year, in the hopes that this pandemic will subside or be better handled by then. As a result, theater chains like Regal, which is owned by Cineworld, who runs theaters in both the United States AND the U.K., have just announced that they will be closing their doors at the end of business on Thursday. This doesn’t mean that theaters are going out of business, at least not yet. As John Campea said on his YouTube channel, they’re entering survival mode. They can’t keep their business running if they don’t have new movies to play. It’s not financially feasible. I expect AMC’s theaters to do the same as well as Cinemark and MegaPlex here in Utah.
That’s not to say that movies aren’t coming out, but the movies that are currently being released are generally indie movies and films that have been moved to online streaming services. The film industry is in uncharted territory now. There is no rule book or blueprint for how things should proceed. Decisions are being made based on the current information that studios and theaters have, and that changes from day to day. Can movie theaters survive until April? I think they can, and I think they will, IF people start taking this pandemic far more seriously than they have been all year, and start being responsible by wearing their masks and maintaining social distancing. But it is incumbent for people to be responsible and do what they are being asked/told to do. If we can be responsible and help get this pandemic under some control, then I believe that 2021 could be an epic year for movies. At this point, 2020 is a lost cause. There’s no getting around it, but I really do hope that things will turn around for next year. They have to. Until then, stay safe, be responsible, and we’ll all get through this together.