Ailing cinema must find its licence to thrill again
– Founder of development and regeneration advisers URBME
IT had been talked about over the weekend. But on Monday morning, Cineworld – the world’s second biggest cinema chain – confirmed that it is closing all of its cinemas on a temporary basis, blaming the Covid-19 crisis and the delay of the latest James Bond movie, No Time To Die.
Although the closures are temporary – though I wouldn’t put money on it – it is a further blow for the leisure and hospitality industry and town and city centre economies around the country. Cineworld has 127 cinemas in the UK, employing 5,500 people.
Obviously this is bad news, and it cannot be portrayed as anything else. However, as with many other industries and businesses, the cinema industry would have eventually had to face down a number of challenges thrown at it by technology and the internet, challenges which have brought a fragility to its business model. The pandemic has merely accelerated a reckoning.
Cinema has a long history, and has played an important role in the lives of many, many people, and our towns and cities.
Although the cinema and earliest motion picture screenings originated in France, it was across the Atlantic where the industry grew most rapidly. In the United States vacant stores were converted to simple picture houses during the early 1900s charging five cents for admission, which became known as nickelodeons.
However, the oldest picture house still in continuous operation can be found in Korsør, Denmark, the Korsør Biograf Teater which opened in August 1908.
The first country in the world to build a
multiplex cinema was Canada, when in 1957 the Elgin Theatre in Ottawa became the first picture house to offer two film showings on different screens.
Owner Nat Taylor went on to form the Cineplex Odeon Corporation, and opened the 18-screen Toronto Eaton Centre Cineplex, which was the biggest in the world at the time.
Today, the industry is dominated by the likes of AMC Theatres – who own Odeon Cinemas – and Cineworld. In modern times, the cinema experience has become increasingly homogenised, based on a narrow product of blockbuster movies, high definition surround sound, and dull confectionery.
For many, the magic has gone from cinema, and now it’s more an economic transaction than an experience to savour.
The digitalisation of film and the internet poses an existential threat to cinema, and this threat was there prior to the pandemic. And so now, cinema based on its present business model could well be on the brink.
Here in the Potteries, cinema is dominated by Festival Park’s Odeon multiscreen, and Cineworld which underpinned the Hive, intu’s extension of the intu Potteries shopping centre.
We also have the Stoke-on-trent Film Theatre on Staffordshire University’s College Road campus which offers a mix of mainstream and arthouse film. When we come out of the other side of the crisis, they will all face new challenges.
The combination of home-based tech and a Covid-19 world will mean that if cinema wants to survive, then it will need to diversify and innovate. The multiplexes and multiscreen cinemas are too focused on the latest blockbusters – as Cineworld seem to have acknowledged – and so a diversification of products could attract a wider audience.
In addition, it could be that they have too much space dedicated to film, and some of it could be adapted for more flexible uses, and to offer a wider range of content beyond film – art, performance, music – but which is compatible with their original purpose. Cinemas could become centres of content rather than just cinemas.
And if cinemas do shrink and diversify, this could also open opportunities for smaller, more localised cinemas, and help community-led initiatives come to the fore.
Notwithstanding the pandemic, a trip to the cinema has been a rarity for me now for a number of years, with most trips involving little people. For me, the whole experience is no longer special, and has been homogenised to the point where I’d rather wait for a film to be released on DVD, while those I genuinely enjoy seem to be few and far between these days.
Of course, it may be that I’m simply getting old. But I know if there was a place that had a broader offer in an attractive setting where I’d want to dwell, I’d be in.
Cinema needs to reinvent itself. All it needs is a shot of the imagination and creativity that made it great in the first place.