Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Movie theaters returned, but audiences didn’t. Now what?
LOS ANGELES — “Tenet” was supposed to mark the return of the movie theater business in the United States. Instead, it has shown just how much trouble the industry is in.
After five months of pandemic-forced closure, the big movie theater chains reopened in roughly 68% of the country by Labor Day weekend, in large part so they could show the $200 million film, which Warner Bros. promoted as “a global tent pole of jaw-dropping size, scope and scale.”
But “Tenet,” directed by box-office heavyweight Christopher Nolan, instead arrived with a whimper: It collected $9.4 million in its first weekend in North America and $29.5 million over its first two weeks.
Theaters remain closed in New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest markets in the country and the center of Nolan’s fan base. In the areas where “Tenet” did play, audience concern about safety — even with theater capacity limited to 50% or less in most locations — likely hurt ticket sales. Box-office analysts also noted that “Tenet” is a complicated, cerebral movie with little star power; a frothier, more escapist offering may have had an easier time coaxing people back to cinemas.
Whatever the reason, the bottom line was clear: People aren’t going to the movies at anywhere close to the numbers that Hollywood hoped, and things are not expected to improve in the near term. Studios are postponing big movies again, leaving theater owners without much new to offer for the next two months. Some analysts have started to re-sound alarm bells about the future of the theater business.
“We have no way of forecasting how long it will take for consumer comfort with indoor movie theaters to return,” Rich Greenfield, a founder of the Lightshed Partners media research firm, wrote in a report.
“I’m disappointed that the marketplace is still 30% unopened,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of distribution, said. “The markets we are missing are key markets where Chris Nolan movies have really performed well in the past.”
Theater owners now must put their faith into two factors out of their control: studios staying the course with end-of-year releases, and New York and Los Angeles (along with San Francisco, the No. 3 market in the country) allowing theaters to reopen.
In addition, the longer the pandemic drags on, the more that streaming becomes a threat to theaters. At least a dozen movies originally destined for big screens have been redirected to streaming services or online rental platforms. The move has kept money flowing to studios, but analysts say that it has undercut theaters by training consumers to expect new films to be instantly available in their homes.
“We’re learning that markets being opened, cinemas having safety protocols and studios releasing movies are all tied together,” John Fithian, chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said in an email. “Open markets need safe cinemas, movies need open markets, cinemas need movies. All these things raise audience awareness and comfort in returning to movies. You can’t do one at a time.”