The Film Industry Post-Lockdown
As the UK begins to open back up, creative industries across the board exist in a state of crisis. Many theatres, live music venues and independent cinemas are all having to adapt to new regulations alongside those adopted by your local pub or supermarket already have done. For the average viewer, the coronavirus pandemic has provided a significant amount of downtime for all of us to revisit old favourites or catch up on some of the stuff we hadn’t quite gotten around to. For the film industry, though, Coronavirus meant a sudden loss of income and jobs for people all throughout the field. From the point of view of the average film fan, then, what shape has that impact taken?
At time of writing, there’s quite a disparity between the approach of reopening for commercial cinemas. Of the three largest cinema chains in the UK (ranked by market share in 2018 from Statista.com), both Cineworld and Vue have opted to keep their establishments closed for an additional three weeks after initially being allowed to reopen on the 4th of July by the government; both chains are set to open from the 31st July. Meanwhile, some Odeon cinemas have been reopened, with the expected social distancing and health and safety guidelines in place. Odeon’s is a phased reopening, with many screens not yet open, and some others only open on set days rather than trading seven days a week. Whilst numbers aren’t yet available, it’s fairly easy to predict that the loss of an entire quarter’s worth of earnings for each chain will likely have knock-on effects for jobs and both ticket and food prices too. However, they will likely bounce back easier than independent cinemas.
One major area for support has been the British Film Institute (BFI). They already helped to fund and keep open independent venues across the UK. Following the pandemic they repurposed some funding for independent venues to create the £1.3 million FAN (Film Audience Network) Resilience Fund, distributed to help venues offset the near-complete loss of revenue they’ve experienced with nearly four months of closure since the lockdown first started. This, and other more conventional funding streams such as donation drives and consistent engagement with consumers online have been vital to ensuring that communities supported by these special venues do not lose them.
Streaming services were already winning the battle in the modern movie market but they have never shone brighter than during the global pandemic. All the most recent talked-about new film releases have been confined to home streaming platforms. We’ve had the disastrous Artemis Fowl, a live recording of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical smash-hit Hamilton, Netflix’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Cinemas were already fighting against the ease of access, huge range of content and lower price point that streaming offers, and it will be interesting to see just how many new films released soon will be found first on the likes of Amazon Prime, Disney+ or Netflix.
So that’s where cinemas stand currently; streaming may have finally had the chance to outdo multiplexes and may signal significant viewing behaviour changes since even traditional production companies have released their films first on streaming platforms to get them in front of an audience (I’m looking at you, Scoob!). The release schedules of two films in particular, though, do not paint a particularly optimistic picture for cinema to come.
Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet, was on multiple occasions thought to be the film that would reopen cinemas. After being pushed back from its initial release date twice, Tenet has JUST been pulled indefinitely from release schedules entirely. Likewise, the latest Bond film, No Time to Die has already been delayed back to a November 12th release date, although considerations are now being made for it to be pushed back into the summer blockbuster release window next year. Given the team behind the film pushed it to November way back on the 4th of March, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to see No Time to Die as an example of when we’ll really start to see the proper return of major cinematic releases. For now, though, we’ll have to be contented with re-releases of movie history, as this seems to be the prevailing method currently employed by the big cinema chains.
Again, returning to my local cinema’s listings, we’ve got the likes of The Empire Strikes Back, The Dark Knight trilogy, the entire Harry Potter franchise as well as recent successes such as Sam Mendes’ war drama 1917 and Bohemian Rhapsody. There are only two major new releases currently playing, and they really pale in comparison to these films; very little buzz has been made about Australian creature-feature Black Water, Abyss, and Bloodshot, the first of five films in the Valiant Comics cinematic universe. It is likely that anniversary screenings and re-releases will continue to dominant the silver screen for the moment, as shooting and production can only recently have become viable once again very recently.
I think cinema is somewhat safer than live theatre, primarily because of the much lower cost of entry, much broader reach and ease of distribution (unless more re-broadcasts take place). The estimated global loss of $5 billion projected in March 2020 will take some time to recoup, so it’s likely that movie studios big and small will be looking for bankable, safer options. I’m predicting the release schedule will be dominated primarily by franchise content, alongside any films already in production before the pandemic hit. Film festivals proved to be adaptable to the digital world, with many planning either to develop original programming or to proceed at least partially online.
Covid-19 has left a lasting mark on the film industry, and I firmly believe that the shifts towards much earlier home distribution won’t disappear anytime soon. Cinemas will eventually reopen properly, albeit with social distancing measures in place. Hopefully, enough people will be tempted out of their homes by the current offerings to support one of the industries that has no doubt provided a significant amount of entertainment for practically all of us locked up in our homes. So, if the thought of seeing your favourites once again could tempt you back inside a cinema, pop along to your local: you could be saving a lot of jobs in the process.
Written by Martin Shore
Martin Shore is a recent English Graduate who’s been managing a bar for the past year. He has been writing his own film blog and for whatculture.com for a couple years, and is about to commence a part-time master’s degree in Film Studies this September.