SUMMER CINEMA TREATS
Our cinemas were closed for three months. Now they’re open again, what do we have in store? Charles Gant investigates
Last December, UK cinemas celebrated a phenomenally successful year. With admissions the second highest since 1970, the sector was looking forward to what it hoped would be an equally stellar 2020. The lineup of surefire hits included Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond in No Time To Die, plus Minions: The Rise Of Gru and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Then, in March, the unthinkable happened. It became all too evident that the coronavirus pandemic was going to hit the UK in a major way, and release dates of films started sliding all over the calendar. UK cinemas went into total shutdown just after the middle of March, and the industry was left reeling.
On Saturday 4 July, lockdown lifted in England – meaning that all cinemas in the country were free to reopen (cinemas in Scotland and Northern Ireland have since reopened, too). After a hiatus lasting more than three months, the big-screen experience was finally back… but not really. By 10 July, the second weekend of play since the reopening, only 85 of the UK’S cinemas
were operating – about ten per cent of the total. New releases on offer – such as Black Water: Abyss and Love Sarah – were proving fairly commercially modest, and the weekend chart was topped by a rerelease of The Empire Strikes Back. Total box office for the 10-12 July weekend was just three per cent of average weekend takings in 2019. Initially, cinemas had scheduled their reopening plans around the two big movies that were set to be released in July – Tenet and Mulan. Hopes were dashed when Warner Bros and Disney moved these titles to the middle of August. In response, major chains such as Cineworld have delayed their reopening from 10 July to 31 July, to give themselves a week or so to smooth out any operational glitches before Tenet arrives. Tenet is the kind of spectacular film that demands to be seen on the big screen, and nobody is expecting floods of customers at UK cinemas until it lands there.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
So, assuming Hollywood studios don’t push back their release dates even deeper into the year (and as heat went to press, Tenet was rumoured to be moving back yet again, which would further slow down the reopening of cinemas), what movies can we look forward to on the big screen for the rest of the year? At Gower Street Analytics, the predictive analytics company that uses complex algorithms to help studios find the most advantageous release dates for their films, director of theatrical insights Robert Mitchell still reckons No Time To Die – which has already seen its release date slide back from April to November – will be the top-grossing film of 2020. Gower Street is also gung-ho for Steven Spielberg’s musical West Side Story, although it remains to be seen what will be the impact of sexual assault accusations recently levelled at star Ansel Elgort, which are denied by the actor. “West Side Story doesn’t need to be marketed on Ansel Elgort,” suggests Mitchell. “There are lots of strong elements to market that film on – it’s Spielberg and it’s one of the most popular musicals of all time.” Gower Street are also optimistic for new Pixar film Soul, which looks a creative risk on paper – the main character dies near the start of the story, and transitions to the afterlife – but also looks strong and distinctive.
Peter Rabbit 2, Tenet, Marvel’s Avengers spin-off Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson, Kenneth Branagh’s Death On The Nile and Wonder Woman 1984 – all to be released in the second half of the year – come next in the company’s list of likely top earners. While all that is good news for cinemas, the bad news is Gower Street’s total UK box office forecast for 2020 is just £665m, which is about half that of 2019. Dragging that number down is the fact cinemas were closed in April, May and June, and box office is forecast to be 75 per cent down on 2019 for July, August and September. Even in the final quarter of the year, Gower Street assumes some social distancing will be in place, and has forecast box office to be 19 per cent down on 2019 for that period. Since cinemas probably won’t be able to sell seats at full capacity until 2021, Mitchell predicts this will be bad news for smaller titles. “It seems logical that, in order to service an audience that is more spread out, cinemas will play the big films on more screens. They do that anyway, but I think we’ll see it even more. And, for the same reason, big titles will play for longer.” In other words, when No Time To Die finally opens, there won’t be much screen space available for alternative choices – and for an extended period.
WAITING GAME
While the year looks set to close out with some appetising major titles, it’s nevertheless true lots of big movies have been bumped all the way into 2021. At the start of the year, Digital Cinema Media (who are responsible for selling the ads that play before trailers in cinemas) issued its predicted box-office Top 10 for 2020, which was topped by No Time To Die. Also in that chart were Minions: The Rise Of Gru (second), The Eternals (fifth) and Fast & Furious 9 (tenth) – all titles now set for 2021.
On the other hand, 2020’s loss is 2021’s gain. DCM’S content business director Tom Linay is already relishing that prospect. He tells us, “Next year was looking busy anyway, and now with the films moving back, it looks really packed. Fingers crossed cinemagoing will be back to some sort of normal level by next January. And if it is, 2021 will be a big year.”
‘Fingers crossed cinemagoing will be back to normal in 2021’