Are stream sirens way forward for movies?
Video may have killed the radio star but fans fear Covid-19 has sounded the death knell for blockbuster cinema releases, as 2020 saw theatres closed and streaming services surge.
Last year, film fans were expected to flock to the box office for everything from Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond in No Time to Die to Steven Spielberg’s epic remake of West Side Story, only for the worldwide lockdown to postpone all major releases until 2021 and perhaps beyond.
And when cinemas did tentatively (and briefly) reopen, it seems audiences were reluctant to return to their seats, with Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated sci-fi film Tenet, the only major release of 2020, taking just £235 million worldwide – a far cry from the £830m achieved by his 2012 Batman thriller The Dark Knight Rises.
While cinemas struggled, on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ saw a boom in subscribers, amassing a combined 32.4 million users in the UK alone. What’s more, the number of households now paying for streaming services is also double the number signed up to satellite TV providers such as Sky, BT and Virgin Media.
So, what does this mean for the traditional trip the cinema? Warner Bros, one of the world’s biggest entertainment companies, has announced plans to release all of its 2021 films simultaneously online and in US cinemas for the first time, including Wonder Woman 1984, causing many to wonder whether the likes of Disney and Universal will follow.