Hero's welcome: Liam Neeson to greet audiences for his new film in New York
As cinemas in the US start to reopen, distributors and exhibitors are hoping to coax audiences back in front of screens with promises of enhanced safety, unmissable movies – and a personal welcome from the stars.
Liam Neeson will personally greet cinemagoers who go and see his latest action thriller, The Marksman, at the AMC Lincoln Square in New York’s Upper West Side before screenings on Friday.
“This is one for the diary,” Neeson told the Hollywood Reporter earlier this week. “It will be nice to welcome people. I think going to the cinema is a bit of a sacred experience. I’ve felt that way since I was a kid.”
Neeson, 68, also confirmed that he had received his first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.
New York is the second-largest market for moviegoing in the US, following Los Angeles, where cinemas remain closed. San Francisco’s screens have recently been given the all-clear to reopen with other cities on the west coast are thought to be not far behind.
New York’s cinemas will be limited to 25% capacity, with a maximum of 50 people in each screening room.
“The reopening of New York is a strong symbolic gesture to the theatregoing audience that it is okay to put your toe in the water,” said Tom Ortenberg, chief of Open Road/Briarcliff, which is distributing The Marksman in the US.
The film opened in a number of territories around the world in January, where it has taken $16.4m to date.
In a poll released on Thursday, the US’s National Research Group suggested moviegoer confidence is now at its highest level since last summer. Studios are capitalising on this sentiment, with a number moving planned release dates forward, following a year of postponements.
The Peter Rabbit sequel, original scheduled for release in February 2020, has moved to 14 May 2021 from 11 June 2021, while the followup to A Quiet Place, which had been set for March 2020, moves forward from this September to 31 May.
AMC is the largest cinema chain in the US. All of its 13 venues in New York will reopen on 5 March, with the Regal chain, which is owned by Cineworld, said to be opening an April reopening.
Plans for cinema reopening in the UK remain contingent on the roadmap out of lockdown remaining unchanged. But current guidance means indoor cinemas in England would be allowed to reopen from 17 May, while outdoor cinemas would be permitted from 12 April.
There is currently no date for reopening for cinemas in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The reopening of New York is a strong symbolic gesture that it is OK to put your toe in the water
Tom Ortenberg
With UK venues closed because of the pandemic, theatregoers would love to travel forward in time to see a new show. One of the new musicals waiting for them will be The Time Traveller’s Wife, an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling novel, with original music and lyrics by Dave Stewart and Joss Stone. It is set to open in the UK at the end of this year or in early 2022.
Stewart and Stone, who collaborated on the SuperHeavy album in 2011 and other recordings, have created the songs for the romance between Clare, an artist, and Henry, whose genetic disorder sends him hurtling into his past and future. In a statement, the songwriters said the experience had thrown them “into an eddy of emotive melodies and heart-wrenching lyrics to go with the push and pull of this unusual love story. We all time-travel in our relationships and in our lives in general, but to write something that people will see and hear happening live on stage is thrilling to imagine.”
The musical has additional lyrics by Kait Kerrigan and a book by Lauren
Gunderson, America’s most produced playwright, who is best known in the
UK for her teen drama I and You, staged at Hampstead theatre with Maisie Williams. Gunderson said that when she first read Niffenegger’s novel she was “floored by its thunderous emotion and potent humanity. I knew this love story belonged on stage with music and vision that matches its emotional punch and soaring feeling.”
The production will be directed by Bill Buckhurst. Producer Colin Ingram said that it will “lift everyone’s spirits as a truly wonderful tonic in post-pandemic world”.
Several other high-profile new musicals are on the horizon once theatres reopen, including The Drifter’s Girl, starring Beverley Knight, and Get Up, Stand Up – The Bob Marley Musical. On Monday, Andrew Lloyd Webber said he was “buoyed by the government’s roadmap” for coming out of lockdown and that he had “put the wheels in motion for a summer reopening” of his shows. His new musical version of Cinderella, at the Gillian Lynne theatre in London, is due to open in late June.
You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses when you’re not allowed to invite them round. (Or go round to theirs.) There has been a tiny glimmer of an upside to this, I think. For a whole year, fashion has not been about impressing anyone.
Which is good, because the impressing-other-people thing had got out of hand. A year ago, luxury had become an abstract concept in the fashion industry. Luxury fashion was basic T-shirts with eye-catching logos and price tags to match. Bag charms – trinkets to be hung off a handbag like baubles from a Christmas tree – were
“must-have luxury pieces”. I think this was called conceptual luxury. Or was it imaginary luxury? I forget. It seems a long time ago.
The past year has reminded us that luxury is about feeling good, not about showing off. It can be a knitted slipper boot rather than a stiletto heel. Sweaters in fabrics that feel nice against our skin have made us happy, not sweaters from brands that feel swanky to own. What started last March with a run on tracksuit bottoms has developed into the chance to figure out which clothes we actually like wearing when there’s no one around to impress. We are all loungewear connoisseurs, now.
Comfort is the new luxury. Don’t get me wrong: I am deliriously excited about excuses to get dressed up again, and I fully intend to channel Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek at the first opportunity to go out for pizza. But I have also come to really appreciate the joy in comfort, so I expect by the end of the night – by which I mean 10pm, since I will no doubt be a complete lightweight – I’ll be just as excited to get back into pyjamas.
The jacket I’m wearing here came from Cos about five years ago. It’s a cardigan that thinks it’s a blazer: a soft layer that has been cut to look as if it has edges. This is the sort of thing I am going to want to wear more of, rather than my more demanding clothes. Party nights aside, clothes that feel nice are the new clothes that look nice. Like Zoom yoga, they are a habit we have embraced while no one has been watching – and that could be worth bringing with us, on the other side.
• Jess wears blue cami, £65, by Modern Rarity from johnlewis.com, burnt orange trousers, £25, marksandspencer.com. Cardigan and shoes, Jess’s own. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Oribe and Tom Ford Beauty. Stylist’s assistant: Peter Bevan.