As most sequels they feature many of the biggest moments of the first film but in different settings as I have done here.
William Goldman famously wrote “Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
On March 12th President Biden said he hoped July 4th could be the USA’s Independent Day from Coronavirus. When he became President on January 20th set a target of 100m vaccine doses by his 100th day, on March 19th announced had met that target after only 58 days, 42 days early, setting a new target of 200m by his 100th day (April 30th) currently over 130 vaccines have been given.
In January Boris Johnson announced his timetable of reopening the country after the third lockdown with English cinemas along with hospitality not reopening before May 17th. This would have meant cinemas would open 10 days after Black Widow had opened in the US and 17 days after opening in Asia and Australia.
On March 17th Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek said: “Our situation and our conditions change. Just a few weeks ago, theatres in New York and Los Angeles weren’t even open. Now, all of a sudden they’re open, so we’re waiting to see how prospective theatregoers respond to these re-openings” … “We’re going to remain flexible. We’ll make the call essentially probably at the last minute in terms of how these films come to market, whether it’s Black Widow or any other title.”
Less than a week later Disney announced they were delaying the release of Black Widow to July and will release it in theatres day and date with Disney+. Disney also announced the delay of many other films including Free Guy to August and Luca to be released on Disney+ Premium in June. The trailer for Luca now feels like it’s trolling cinemagoers, saying “we can go anywhere, do anything”…. “this is going to be the best summer ever” after the news summer holidays in Europe are “extremely unlikely”?
What changed in that week that made Disney change their mind? And why did Disney announce this hours after Cineworld announced Regal cinemas would reopen in the US in April and Cineworld in May, as surely they would have announced this during Disney’s shareholder’s meeting on March 9th?
Was this to purposely antagonise exhibitors to show that Disney can do what they like when they like with their films. As Disney have long memories and it was 11 years ago this month when Disney tried to shorten the theatrical window for Alice In Wonderland, UK exhibitors threatened to ban the film from their cinemas and came to a last-minute agreement. Disney wanted to cut the standard 17-week theatrical window from 17 weeks to 12 weeks, eventually negotiated a compromise cutting it by a couple of weeks.
Alice in Wonderland opened March 5with £10,555,220 (replacing Avatar after 11 weeks #1) down 30% week 2 £7,343,506; down 34% week 3 £4,847,129. Down 48% week 4 £2,496,673 taking £34,817,788, 83% of the £42,169,542 taken over the 9 weeks it was in the top 15 taking £139,995 from 200 screens in its 9th weekend.
Odeon cinemas said at the time “The negative impact on cinema attendance that such a reduction in the window will have will threaten the continued existence of many cinemas, especially the smaller and medium-sized cinemas.” And that “Odeon/UCI has invested considerable sums of money, especially in the UK, over the past 12 months to install digital projection systems in its cinemas,”
But as the distributor is choosing to book their films in these cinemas they should be able to choose how long they want to play them in cinemas, but while exhibitors can pull underperforming film within a week these films still have to play out the full theatrical window even though once a film leaves cinema its unlikely to return. This is why the theatrical window should be flexible to each film, so flops can go to PVOD within 17 days but surprise hits like The Greatest Showman window can be extended, as it was still performing strongly in its 17 weeks.
2017’s The Greatest Showman opened with £4,754,049 (634,719 admissions) week 2 down 49.3% £2,409,143 and £9,998,783; week 3 down 11% £2,142,337 and £13,537,211; week 4 down 1.8% £2,103,605 and £16,865,309; week 5 down 2.9% £2,042,450 and £19,965,506; week 6 down 12.5% £2,201,523 and £23,226,869; week 7 down 12.5% £1,925,895 and £26,106,298; week 8 up 0.1% £1,927,367 and £30,414,668; week 9 up 3.8% £2,000,922 and £33,563,952; week down 38.1% £1,239,069 and £35,265,331 71.2% of total £49,523,728 (6,611,980 admissions).
The Greatest Showman took £623,091 (down 8%) in its 16th weekend on 13th April 2018 #6 and £44,928,180 90% of its total and £300,947 down 2% in its 18th-weekend #6 from 317 screens the weekend the film was released on digital in the UK and £90,376 #14 in its 20th week on release when it was released on DVD selling 497,000 copies in its first week.
Normally films will take upwards of 90% of their box office within the first four weeks; Avengers: Endgame opened with £43,400,000 dropped 67% in 2nd weekend £14,331,192 and £69,025,14l 69.2% in 3rd weekend £4,414,015 and £80,439,499 and 49.4% in its 4th weekend £2,232,115 and £83,993,395 taking 95% of total £88,688,477 (12,283,723 admissions)
Disney had previously tried to shorten the theatrical window with Up and A Christmas Carol in 2009 and 2007, Odeon and Vue pulled 20th Century Fox’s Night at the Museum from cinemas after the theatrical window was shortened to 13 weeks.
Bob Chapek said at the time “We feel that it’s important for us to maintain a healthy business on the exhibition side and a healthy business on the home video side. We think this is in the best interest of theatre owners because a healthy movie business is good for them and allows us to invest in high-quality, innovative content.”
Cinema Exhibitors’ Association now UKCA said at the time while not commenting directly on the film but speaking “in general terms”, though, it said it “strongly” supported the maintenance of “a clear and exclusive window between a film’s theatrical release and its release on other platforms”… “The CEA believes maintenance of the window will ensure that audiences continue to enjoy the widest possible range of films in their intended environment, the cinema theatre.”
When UK cinemas reopened in July 2020 the schedules of major exhibitors looked like they had been frozen in time since March, the one film that performed strongly despite being released on digital and DVD over the months since was Pixar’s Onward taking over £2m and Trolls World Tour that was released straight to digital and DVD in April after cinemas closed still managed to take over £1m when they reopened.
Will films including Justice League Snyder Cut, Tom and Jerry, Godzilla Vs Kong and Promising Young Women that skipped a cinema release due to lockdown get a cinema release when cinemas reopen, previously major exhibitors have refused to book Sky Cinema films despite the channel only being accessible to 10% of the population who subscribe. Far more who have access to BBC1, ITV1 and Sky One and cinemas have screened the likes of Doctor Who, Sherlock and more recently Little Minx and Katherine Jenkin’s Christmas Spectacular despite both being on ITV1 and Sky One within weeks of a cinema release.
Showing again if it’s a film people want to see in the cinema they will see it in the cinema, why Parasite also performed strongly in cinemas when it was released in February 2020 despite widely available illegally online and 2008’s Taken was a massive hit in the US despite being released in the US almost a year after being released in France and being widely available illegally online.
After Promising Young Woman was nominated for Best Picture at the BAFTAs and Oscars it made sense to for Universal premiere the film on Sky Cinema a few days after the BAFTA ceremony as waiting till May 17 to release the film in cinemas it could have lost its momentum against the summer films. While the film is a powerful feminist movie about revenge and it’s a film of the moment with attacks against women front page news, it will be a film that could struggle to find an audience in the cinema; it opened in over 1,000 screens in the US in December taking $5.7m after 13 weeks despite being the key Oscar contender alongside Nomadland, also struggled to find and audience in the US despite critical acclaim.
Nomadland is favorite to win nest Picture at the Oscars, whiich will be seen as a win for Disney eventhough the film was the last major acquistion for Fox Searclight in Feneyary 2019 before the studio was acquired by Disney. Nomadland will be released on Disney+ in the UK at the end of April and then have a selected cinema release in May.
Admissions for 2020 in the UK were the lowest ever with box office down over 80% from £1.251bn in 2019 down to £290m the lowest box office since 1990 (£273.41m) but with 153.02% ticket inflation over the last 30 years, that’s the equivalent of £691.8m. If UK cinemas were to reopen on May 17th cinemas would be closed for 19 weeks (37% of the year) admissions for the first third of 2019 were over 53m. This years box office is likely to be about £720m with 110m admissions similar 2002 levels of box office.
Black Widow moved to July and being released also on Disney+, comic-book fans will still want to see it in cinemas and IMAX but opening against F9 now will exhibitors book it on their biggest screens?) the saviour of cinema will be Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway opening May 21 ahead of the half term, children films were the best performing genre in the UK when cinemas were open last year and not being sarcastic at all Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway could be the biggest film in the UK until No Time To Die. Spiral and Cruella will have a more limited audience, later because it will also be released on Disney+ and it’s unknown how wide its release will be and if majors refused to book it.
June starts with A Quiet Place Part 2; the original film wasn’t as big a hit in the UK due to it getting a 15 certificate and the sequel will have similar issues. The rest of June and the start of July will see a slowdown due to the European Football Championships between June 11th and July 11th, why it made sense to delay the restart to July. Many parts of mainland Europe are going back into lockdown again and on Friday it was expected French cinemas won’t reopen fully before July and the Cannes Film Festival has been moved from May to July.
June/July will see many of the Oscar/BAFTA nominees being released including The Father, Another Round and Supernova, with the year going into fifth gear on July 9th with the release of F9 and then also The Croods 2: A New Age, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Cinderella, Top Gun: Maverick, Old and Jungle Cruise.
No Time to Die will be the biggest film of the year, the question is how big it will be as a year ago opening Easter 2020 it was expected to take upwards of £100m similar to Skyfall and Spectre opening just before the Easter holidays and Skyfall and Spectre both opened before October half-term.
Early October has been extraordinarily strong over recent years for adult dramas including The Martian, The Girl on the Train and Blade Runner but No Time to Die will be expected to take more than each took in their release in its opening weekend.
While Spectre had the benefit of four days of previews No Time to Die will likely only have one but saying that Skyfall managed to open with £20.18m from a 3-day weekend, but it had even more hype than all other James Bond films have had featured in the opening of the London Olympics in July.
Mentioning football, the next big issue to deal with for cinema after COVID is dealing with Qatar World Cup as it starts November 21st ending 18th December which will have a major impact on next years Thanksgiving and Christmas releases, normally studios will delay the launch of films internationally as with F9 opening in the US June 25but July 9in the UK but won’t be possible to do this with these films as schools are back in January and audiences get older with award contenders.
As New York cinemas started to reopen on March 5th and Los Angeles from March 19th taking $1.55m from 75 cinemas (box office was up only 3% from the previous weekend), 8.8% of the $17.6m weekend box office. (this was 41% more than $1.05m taking two weeks earlier when New York cinemas reopened) The 89 cinemas in New York took $844.3k down 17% from the previous weekend. Raya and the Last Dragon was #1 for its third week taking $5.2m despite also being available on Premium Disney+ for $30, with many cinemas in Los Angeles and New York about $20 it was cheaper to watch the film on Disney+.
The Hollywood Reporter had an article this week “There’s not much theatres can do”: Disney’s ‘Black Widow’ tries day-and-date as studios experiment” but as an article by Deadline last April ‘Reopening Hollywood: How theatre chains will try to restore customer confidence in moviegoing’ showing what could have been done and should have been done, as ever since early last March before cinemas closed they could have done much more. I have said many times over the past year that immediately after China closed cinemas days before their most lucrative weeks of the year the rest of the world should have taken notice, but as January/February started so strong exhibitors were in total denial.
Similarly, were how Western cinemas reopened far quicker than China, reopening after 3 months in July while China reopened on August 6 months later. While US exhibitors made mask-wearing political, China brought in far stricter safety measures from the start, and they knew everyone would follow the rules to the letter. This has been the issue with the cinema industry for most of this century always looking short-term while the tech disruptors that have had huge growth look long-term.
The slow return of cinemagoers in the West was predictable as by not going stricter with the safety measures it was obvious to almost everyone it will take much longer to get consumer confidence back of the majority, the UKCA claimed that in September 93% of people felt comfortable going back to the cinema, but that 93% was just 10% of the normal levels of customers in cinemas and they would be mostly cinephiles and Covidiots.
It’s easy for exhibitors to reject face masks and vaccine passports but how else are cinemas going to make the majority feel safe to go back to the cinema in the next few months as even now the surveys say only 20$ of people currently feel comfortable going back to the cinema now and about 30% in the next three months with 50% within the next 6 months, probably not until No Time to Die.
Yesterday Universal’s action film Nobody opens and then on Wednesday, March 31 Warner Bros’s Godzilla vs. Kong opens (also on HBO Max). Godzilla Vs Kong opened in China on March 26th taking $20m on its opening day and upwards of $90m for its opening weekend, the film was always expected to perform strongly in China was as the market is close to normal and 2014’s Godzilla took 15% of global BO in China ($77.6m) 2017’s Kong: Skull Island took 30% of global BO ($168.2m). As part of the agreement with Legdendary Pictures for Warner to release 2021 slate in cinemas and HBO Max they will keep all Chinese box office for Godzilla Vs Kong.
As with Disney’s decisions to release films on Disney+ Premium, the decision by Warner to release their 2021 slate on HBO Max along with theatres will be a costly one for both studios and done only as they couldn’t release these films theatrical only this year and couldn’t delay them any longer. Warner’s 2022 slate will mostly launch in cinemas as will Disney’s.
When Universal Pictures delayed the release of F9 on March 4th it was always expected Disney would also delay Black Widow to July and delay Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings to later in the year, as Disney was never going to use Black Widow as a canary in the coal mine.
While there have been several major films released this year, The Little Things and Tom and Jerry by Warner Bros and Raya and the Last Dragon from Disney, both were also available on streaming services HBO Max and Disney+. The only film that has only had a theatrical release Chaos Walking had a lengthy delay wasn’t expected to perform well has taken $9.7m after 3 weeks, still #4 only due to the lack of wide releases, as The Croods: A New Age #5 it’s 17th weekend taking $620k and Wonder Woman 1984 #8 in its 13th week taking $460k.
Not just saying this in hindsight now but I said this a year ago when cinemas closed that exhibitors would rush to reopen cinemas far too soon and this would cause long-term damage to the confidence of the majority. This was seen by their lack of action after China closed all their cinemas in January days before the most lucrative time of the year as box office started so strongly in January and February.
Always saying they were waiting on government guidance before doing anything, it was later revealed that some of this government guidance came from watching 2011’s Contagion, so surely the film industry should have been in a fat better positive in dealing with a pandemic after making all known and unknown natural disaster films for the last century.
COVID as streaming will be blamed for killing movie theatres but the biggest enemy to the cinema over this century has been major exhibitors giving their customers what they think they want (turning cinemas into living rooms with recliners and restaurant food) and not what they want (big screens with superior picture and sound at a reasonable price). Since cinemas closed last March exhibitors talked a lot about the ‘pent-up demand’ that will get people rushing back to cinemas, but away from cinephiles, most people are now perfectly happy to watch new releases at home on their 50inch TVs and 5-inch phones.
Tim Richards boss of cinema chain Vue International recently said “Families, couples, individuals are being tied up at home for weeks or months now,” he says. “When it is over there will be a demand to get out as we have never seen in history. There is no scenario after lock-down [where] people will say ‘I’m not going out; I’m staying in to watch Netflix’.”
What exhibitors have failed to realise for the last 12 months is it’s not about when cinemas reopen, it’s always been about consumer confidence of the majority to return and this is unlikely to happen before July so if cinemas reopen May 17 they will be playing to the 10% again till July?
If exhibitors were clever would switch charting box office from sales to admissions as would immediately highlight how much bigger cinema is to streaming; HBO Max has 38m US subscribers but SambaTV reported 5% watched Snyder Cut with 1.8m Vs 10m who saw Justice League in movie theatres in 2017. Likewise, SambaTV reported 1.7m watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier similar to 1.6m WandaVision, but with 100m+ Disney+ subscribers it’s only 2% of subscribers for what is one of their biggest IPs, in comparison CACW opened in 2016 with $401.8m globally 45m+ admissions.
Streaming services announce shows and films were watched by record numbers, but they rarely reveal any numbers, in November Disney CEO Bob Chapek said, “pleased with the results of Mulan as a premiere access title”, as Disney also said about Hamilton and Soul. Netflix count a viewing as someone who has watched at least 2 minutes of a TV show, (with Spenser Confidential watched by 85m households, Tiger King 64m, and The Queen Gambit 62m) many are critical of this but when you go to the cinema it doesn’t matter if you have seen a minute of the film once you have paid to see the film the ticket sale is added to the box office. For linear TV it’s a panel of household viewings and then an algorithm is used, this will often mean BBC1 and ITV1 will get a higher rating than smaller channels and as TV ratings are used to calculate advertising rates, vital for these channels to get accurate data.
A report published on March 25 by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said streaming companies share top-line viewing data. All of this should play into the hands of exhibitors as they can show that despite Netflix having over 204m subscribers, Disney+ 100m+ and HBO Max 38m+ cinemas can show they are still generating far bigger box office and audience numbers.
In February, the government talked about vaccine passports being a way to speed up the reopening of the hospitality sector and a way to boost capacity. In January Pimlico Plumbers announced a no job policy and cruise companies Saga and P&O have required all customers to have vaccines.
As with the delay to the first lockdown, the government dithered about implementing vaccine passports over the following weeks despite the expectation that they will be needed for flying with Qantas airlines and the EU saying they will be needed to travel. But instead of being proactive Boris Johnson looks to again be reactive to vaccine passports after others have implemented them.
UKCA immediately rejected vaccine passports saying they were impractical and discriminatory, but with over 28m having the first dose of the vaccine not having them is more discriminatory to those people who believed having a vaccine would allow them to go to normality quicker. While exhibitors think otherwise cinemas as pubs and restaurants aren’t a necessity and people choose to go to them.
On March 25th, the Guardian reported Curzon Cinemas were looking into having vaccine only screenings, with now more than half of the UK population having at least one vaccine and most others having been tested (school children are tested at least once a week) it gets more discriminatory not to have vaccine passport after there was a backlash to Boris Johnson’s comment about needing a vaccine passport for the pub he backtracked and said it would be when everyone was allowed to get a vaccine. The issue with that is as seen this week case numbers have stopped falling and as the country opens up over the next few weeks case numbers are likely to increase again, deaths have dropped off but while cases aren’t so serious with younger people many are suffering from long-term conditions.
Its easy for UKCA to reject vaccine passports as they also rejected face masks before there was a backlash so what else would they suggest as admissions for 24 of the 25 weeks cinemas reopened last year were less than 10% of normal, so the majority of people don’t feel comfortable returning to cinemas with their safety measures so surely more needs to be done to make the 90% majority to feel safe again. The UKCA said “making proof of vaccination a condition of entry to a cinema will potentially introduce significant issues of discrimination under the Equalities Act 2010” but as everyone can get tested and going to a cinema is a choice, not a necessity then no one is being discriminated, the only ones that are as those who would like to go to the cinema but don’t feel safe to do so.
Businesses should be doing all they can to make sure their customers are comfortable and knowing that the strangers you’re mixing with have had the vaccine or have had a recent negative test gives them the confidence to relax. Vaccine passports would also mean capacity could increase in cinemas and across the hospitality sector and more people would feel more confident to return.
Predictably after two months of dithering, Boris Johnson looks to be opting for vaccine passports for the hospitality sector, expected to be announced in April and the public is in favour of them as a recent YouGov poll shows. Boris Johnson talked about the need for pubs to have vaccine passports on Wednesday, and this was on the front page of newspapers on Thursday. Early in March 2020, the UKCA said they were waiting for government guidance with cinemas and then government guidance was to shut cinemas on March 17 will they also be following the same guidelines if they recommend vaccine passports in May to all hospitality?
What exhibitors have failed to understand since the start of March last year it’s never been about film availability or cinemas being reopened, it been about consumer confidence, you saw this in Match last year in the lead up to cinemas being closed as exhibitors carried on as normal and have seen ever since in the US and the UK. There has been the loyal cinephile 10% that have constantly returned week after week in the US and UK, but cinema should be for the many, not the few.
In the UK, the cinephile 10% are likely to have subscription cinema, so while they might be seen to be loyally “supporting cinema” during these dark times, but with these loyal cinephiles who have stood by cinema whilst millions didn’t is digging into profits. Every time a customer uses their Cineworld Unlimited and Odeon Limitless cards whilst the full value of the cinema ticket is added to the box office the exhibitor pays a negotiated per ticket rental fee to the distributor on all tickets sold.
Last year the government dropped VAT for the hospitality sector to 5%, while most of the hospitality sector passed on these savings immediately to their customers and While Cineworld and Odeon passed it on to their subscription cinema customers many exhibitors didn’t pass on the reduction for other customers, their excuse it was only a few pence, but that’s not the case when it comes to the South East and London where many cinemas are over £20 and it’s £3+.
Lockdown should have been a chance to reinvent the cinema experience in the streaming era, but cinemas reopened last July, and nothing changed, 2021 is the 125th anniversary of commercial cinema and should be a celebration of cinema as 1996 was with National Cinema Day with all Cinemas £1 on June 2nd when over 1.2m went to the cinema, over 10% of the 123m admissions in 1996, it was repeated the following year as successfully with over 1.5m admissions.