Days after James Bond got delayed, and Regal Cinemas closed their doors, the coronavirus pandemic has officially defeated the movie industry, with the remaining big 2020 films pushed into 2021. Even the films that dared to have theatrical releases during the pandemic have suffered with the lack of people going out to view them.
Within the last 24 hours, both the official confirmation that Cineworld was closing all of its theaters and that Warner-Brothers was delaying the rest of its 2020 films has taken place. Now, nearly seven months into the global pandemic, the list of high-profile blockbusters that have been delayed includes the highly anticipated Dune remake and the already delayed WW1984.
The former has been pushed back nearly a year to October of 2021, which in turn has now delayed the Robert Pattinson Batman movie until March of 2022. This total schedule reconfiguration has pushed back every major DC film with likely date changes already in talks at Warner-Brothers for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and The Rock’s decade long Black Adam project.
While both the delays of major films and the closures of Cineworld theaters are a result of the ongoing pandemic and the state restrictions on theaters in 20% of the U.S. market, they are also the result of the underwhelming performance of Tenet at the box office. Opening in every major film market around the world, the Christopher Nolan epic has been a misfire as the studio was not able to convince Americans to venture out to the theaters. With an estimated budget of $200 million, within five weeks of showings, Tenet has just passed $300 million worldwide, with only $45 million coming from the U.S. market.
This is a terrible number as studios rake in only 55% of domestic box office revenue and just 30-40% (25% in China) of international box office revenue. So, for Tenet to break even at the box office, it needed to make roughly $700 million globally. The lack of box office take was concerning for studios, which is why they quickly decided to move their projects into a future that might be safer to moviegoers and to the businesses that help make the studios profit.
So, this can be viewed as an “A” affected “B” which in turn affected “C” situation. The Coronavirus spread in the U.S. led to the highly populated states of New York and California keeping their theaters closed; a result that affected the number of people that could see movies, eliminating 20% of the U.S market space; a result that affected the amount of money Tenet has made domestically to only a fraction of what it would have made pre-pandemic; an outcome that caused movie studios to delay their films, which caused the theaters to close down. Also, the fear around the coronavirus has led to a large chunk of Americans deciding not to even risk going to unnecessary places/businesses.
While the movie industry will recover, come next year, it will never reach the glory and profit of the pre-COVID days. Even with the eventual creation and release of a vaccine, fear will cause the American public to continue social distancing and mask-wearing, which will undoubtedly limit the profits of each film released. Studios, once they reopen, will be required to continue with half capacity theaters and lengthier cleanings in between showings.
The amount of money a film can make will be lowered, and thus the big-budget theatrical films will become a rarer species. Not to mention, there will still be a high percentage of Americans who will refuse to go out in public, even with a vaccine. The flu, which has a vaccine, still kills over 20,000 Americans each year, and considering COVID-19 will have the same trend, studios will be more selective with which films they give high budgets to.
Make no mistake though, the eventual resurgence of the movie industry will only be a truce, as the coronavirus has already achieved victory in wiping out the golden age of cinema that we have been experiencing. This was a great era of prosperity across all film studios, but like all eras, they never last and now a new era has begun. Possibly an era in which Netflix, and other streaming services, reign king in supplying the big-budget blockbusters to audiences that won’t have to venture out to spaces that could contain COVID-19.
