Robbie COLLIN
Even with some venues reopening next week, films are in scant supply, says Robbie Collin
‘Wonder Woman 1984’ is the one thing left that feels capable of drawing a crowd
Afew short weeks ago, things were finally looking up for cinemas. Yes, James Bond might have just fled for the vaccine-soothed uplands of April 2021. But despite 007 ditching the business in its hour of need – and, indeed, the ongoing lack of new wares from Hollywood in general – there was a growing sense that 2020 might be survivable.
In the three months since restrictions were eased, the box office had slowly rallied, to the point that £2 million had come in over the Hallowe’en weekend even without a major new release. The wholesale Covid-proofing had been an unblemished success: unlike restaurants, pubs and supermarkets, not a single coronavirus outbreak had been traced back to a screening. And British distributors were finally plucking up the courage to bring out films whose appeal extended beyond the kind of devoted cinemagoers who had been scratching at the doors since late March.
The Secret Garden and Two By Two: Overboard had found appreciative audiences over the half-term break, while a diverse and appealing bunch of forthcoming titles – Death on the Nile, Wonder Woman 1984, Peter Rabbit 2 – suggested the end of the year might keep some places ticking over into the new year and beyond.
Then, in early November, all cinemas in England were forced to close again, along with the majority in Scotland and Wales. And accordingly, the schedules emptied – for both the duration of the new measures and the period of uncertainty that would follow them.
So now that the Government has decided to allow English venues in tier one and two areas to reopen from next week, it would be interesting to hear what they imagine they’re going to show.
The experience itself will be much the same as it was in October, with socially distanced seating, enhanced cleaning routines, and use of masks encouraged as standard. And thanks to the DCMS safety grants administered last month, some venues will have brought in additional measures, like the five hospital-grade air purification units installed two weeks ago in the Prince Charles Cinema in London.
Arguably more concerning is the matter of what’s going to be in the projectors. Wonder Woman 1984 is the one thing left that feels capable of drawing a crowd. It’s also the only big film which is still scheduled to open in cinemas before the end of the year – providing the absurd and unsupported new requirement that those in tier three areas remain closed doesn’t scare it off. Warner Bros’ superhero sequel was originally meant to launch in the pre-covid Shangri-la that was November 2019, but was postponed to avoid a clash with Joker and Frozen 2. Its release date has since forlornly plopped its way down the calendar before coming to rest on Dec 16, just over a week before its Christmas Day arrival on Warnermedia’s streaming service HBO Max in the United States.
For Warner Bros, the move makes perfect sense, since it allows them to get a hotly anticipated product out to market while it still feels reasonably fresh. And as the studio showed in August with Tenet, a blockbuster’s budget and marketing costs can be clawed back with an international theatrical release, even if cinemas are operating at a reduced capacity and audiences have to wear masks. Audiences, too, will be well served by it, since they’ll be able to enjoy the film in sanitised cinemas wherever possible.
But cinema owners won’t be turning celebratory pirouettes just yet. When the Cineworld chain made the seismic decision to close all of their UK and US sites indefinitely in early October, it was prompted by the latest Bond postponement, but based more broadly on the lack of coming mainstream releases that would encourage millions of Bond viewers to convert their tentative return trip into a habit. But much like Tenet in August, Wonder Woman 1984 will open in a vacuum. The next major studio production slated for release is, unbelievably, Bond’s 25th outing, No Time to Die, in April 2021. And the usual winter glut of awards contenders is mostly being held back for Oscar season, which has been postponed until… April 2021 again.
As for the various art house and foreign-language gems that sustained smaller distributors between July and October, those cupboards are now bare, and can’t be restocked until the festival circuit resumes operations.
In short, the second lockdown hasn’t put cinemas back to square one, but a place that makes square one look cushy by comparison. Wonder Woman might save the day yet, but only if she spurs on some serious backup.