Reel challenge: what will cinema look like after lockdown is relaxed?

Cinema is back at last! Less with a big, cannonball splash off the high board than a tentative, slow-motion easing in, as if entering a very cold swimming pool, potentially containing piranhas. But still, it’s back! With lockdowns and restrictions on public venues easing in the UK and the US, the big cinema chains are looking to reopen in early July. And at last, they have some actual new movies to show. For the past few months, Hollywood has been moving its precious blockbusters back to save them from the floodwaters of coronavirus. But now everyone’s ready to wade back in – give or take some last-minute testing of the waters.

Two high-profile movies are currently waiting at the water’s edge: Disney’s lavish live-action remake of Mulan and Christopher Nolan’s latest sci-fi brain-melter, Tenet. Nolan, especially, has positioned himself as a champion of cinema this year. In March, he wrote an impassioned opinion piece for the Washington Post, arguing that cinema was “a vital part of social life”, and pleading for support both financial and emotional: “We don’t just owe it to the 150,000 workers of this great American industry to include them in those we help, we owe it to ourselves.” While studios were panicking and pulling imminent releases such as No Time to Die and Fast and Furious 9, Nolan held fast with his intended July release date for Tenet, keen to be the one to revive the industry.

Admittedly, Tenet looks like just the kind of movie to get us back into cinemas: stylish, spectacular, expensive, and genuinely new – an original story, rather than a franchise instalment. What’s more, Nolan has become a master at stoking viewer curiosity with a mystifying trailer, withholding the actual substance of the story so that you simply have to go to the cinema to find out what it’s really about (although post-screening coursework might be an additional requirement). From what we know, Tenet’s plot involves John David Washington and Robert Pattinson somehow reversing time in order to avert a major catastrophe, which could also speak to our current moment on a subconscious level.

But wait! Tenet was originally slated for a 17 July opening date but its studio, Warner Bros, has pushed it back, first to 31 July, then again to 12 August. A waters-testing reissue of Inception now fills the 17 July slot. Which meant the charge was supposed to be led by Disney’s Mulan – the epic story of a brave Chinese warrior girl who, er, leads the charge. As with Tenet, a lot is riding on Mulan. A $200m remake of the 1998 animation, it is a big play by Disney for the vast Chinese market, although China’s own attempts to revive moviegoing serve as a warning for the rest of the world: cinemas briefly reopened there in March, but were ordered to close again a week later, likely due to fears of a potential second wave of coronavirus infections. Mulan was slated for worldwide release on 24 July but has subsequently been moved back a month to 21 August. No one wants to go first, it seems.

There is extreme caution on both sides: the public is uncertain how safe it is to return to cinemas; the industry is uncertain how many of them will come, what to give them, and how much money it can make. The movie business is a gamble at the best of times; right now the odds are unfathomable. “There are just so many factors pushing and pulling, we don’t know,” says David A Gross, head of the Los Angeles-based movie consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research. The balance between factors such as public safety concerns, pent-up demand, limited competition, overall economic conditions, and interest in specific movie titles is simply “not quantifiable”, says Gross. “Whoever goes first is really going to be jumping in.”

In ordinary times, both Mulan and Tenet would be potential billion-dollar earners at the global box office. Demand for both titles should be high. Tenet’s prime audience is young adults, who will be less worried about going to the cinema from a health perspective (if the recent outbreak of illegal raves is anything to go by). Mulan’s target audience is families, who might well seize any chance to go out to the cinema after months at home under lockdown with children bouncing off the walls. If they are lucky, both movies could actually score similar box-office numbers to what they would have done pre-pandemic. Being the only new movies in town, they could well open on twice as many screens, with virtually no competition.

If the water does look safe, others are queuing up to join them. Already scheduled for late summer or early autumn are Bill & Ted Face the Music, The New Mutants, A Quiet Place Part II and Wonder Woman 1984. Never in history have there been so many finished movies ready and waiting for a release. But total box office will still be way down. Until a vaccine is found and life returns to normal, Gross doesn’t see how cinemas can operate at more than two-thirds normal capacity. Cases are still high and/or rising in some areas of the US, including the Los Angeles area – the No 1 American market. Elsewhere, there is the constant risk of a second outbreak. It will only take one story about a cinema-borne infection to turn punters away again.

We are at least getting some idea of what to expect when we get back into cinemas. Some things will have visibly changed: hand sanitiser stations, one-way queuing systems, face masks, contactless payment, Perspex screens round ticket booths and food and drink concessions (popcorn should be permitted, but definitely not pick ‘n’ mix). “There’s an absolute understanding among the cinema sector that we need to reassure customers they are coming back into an environment where their safety is paramount,” says Phil Clapp, chief executive of the UK Cinema Association. All of this translates into extra costs, however. As do requirements for deep cleaning between screenings, fewer daily screenings, and extra staff to help audiences.

Most significant of all are the government’s guidelines on social distancing, says Clapp. The recently announced change in distancing rules from two metres to one is the difference between cinemas being able to fill 25% of seats (with every other row empty and gaps of two or three seats between each group) and 50% of them. But the appetite is there. According to a public survey by the Film Distributors Association, 75% of Britons said they were keen to return to cinemas post-lockdown, although only 55% said they would do so at pre-lockdown levels (32% said they would be going to the cinema more).

Even with a successful reopening, the movie industry will be feeling the effects of the pandemic for a long time to come. Industry earnings worldwide will be down an estimated 60% to 70% compared to last year, which means $20bn to $30bn in lost revenues. Some changes could be permanent. While cinemas were shuttered, streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ saw subscriber numbers rocket. Movies intended for cinema release went digital instead, including Trolls World Tour and Artemis Fowl. Trolls World Tour made more than $100m in on-demand takings – comparable to what the first Trolls movie did in cinemas. By cutting out the cinemas, the studio, Universal, got a bigger cut.

If on-demand digital releases became a permanent state of affairs, the whole Hollywood business model would be upended, which is why it probably won’t happen. Let’s not kid ourselves, Trolls World Tour only did so well because of the lack of alternatives, and while $100m sounds like a lot, it barely covered the movie’s costs. It pales in comparison to the $1.2bn Universal’s The Fate of the Furious made in cinemas. It is not an either/or, says David A Gross: “When a movie is successful theatrically, its value is greater in streaming. Either it’s going to sell for more money or it’s going to be worth more to a Netflix or a Disney+. If there’s any movement at all, it’s going to be a sharper definition between what belongs on the big screen and what belongs on the small screen.”

Increasingly, what belongs on the big screen is big-budget, effects-driven, globally marketed franchise movies. In 2019, franchise movies took 83% of the worldwide box office. Serious dramas, comedies, indie movies, foreign-language films, lower-budget movies, old classics, and more experimental fare are all being pushed to streaming services and the small screen. This is a trend that was already developing, but the shutdown could have accelerated it.

That could have consequences for smaller and independent cinemas – the places where non-mainstream movies get a chance to flourish. A startling survey by the Independent Cinema Office (ICO) found that out of 497 UK operators of all sizes (including the larger chains), 41% do not think they will be able to open with social distancing measures. Only 28% thought they would be reopening in July or August, and a significant number don’t expect to reopen until next year. Smaller venues, where social distancing is difficult or impossible, and venues whose clientele skew older will find reopening especially difficult.

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Without government support, many are in perilous economic straits. “A lot of independent cinemas are run by trusts or charities. They don’t necessarily have investors or backers like commercial cinemas might to raise funds to carry them over,” says Catharine des Forges, director of the ICO. A few, such as the Bromsgrove Artrix, have already shut for good. “It’s not just about watching the film; it’s also about being in that communal environment and being able to experience that artform. People like me who work at this end of it see ourselves as more aligned with culture and arts, but obviously there’s a whole commercial side to it which is more aligned to the leisure industry.”

So while Mulan and Tenet could be seen as “saving cinema” in one regard, that is not the whole picture. But assuming things return to some kind of normal, there is still much to look forward to, at least in the medium term. For one thing, the backlog of postponed blockbusters means late 2020 and 2021 are shaping up to be great times: No Time to Die, The Batman, West Side Story, The Eternals, In the Heights, The French Dispatch, Fast and Furious 9, Mission: Impossible 7, Jurassic World: Dominion, perhaps even James Cameron’s Avatar sequel. The decision to move the 2021 Academy Awards back two months, to 25 April, means February and March could be a smörgåsbord of prestige dramas, rather than the post-awards season dumping ground it usually is.

Raised stakes and limited screens could make the industry think twice about what it puts out. So altogether, it could just mean less crap cinema. Then again, it is also possible that post-pandemic audience tastes will have moved on and the films won’t have. Perhaps we won’t be quite so excited about superhero showdowns and implausible car chases, and more in the mood for tales of dystopian disaster (witness the popularity of Contagion on Netflix), or real-world drama, or just escapist silliness. Who knows? But after months of small-screen captivity, a fair few of us will be grateful for any kind of cinema.