Coronavirus's impact on the worldwide box office 3 3

[paperheart]

down 98% vs same weekend 2019 - can't get much worse

[Bosco685]

 

[paperheart]

8 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

 

given up on WW1984 already? it's got a shot.

[Bosco685]

9 minutes ago, paperheart said:

given up on WW1984 already? it's got a shot.

Now, now. Santa will surely come to your house so you too can watch Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max too. Maybe like Joker you will learn to appreciate this one too.

[paperheart]

3 hours ago, Bosco685 said:

Now, now. Santa will surely come to your house so you too can watch Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max too. Maybe like Joker you will learn to appreciate this one too.

no interest in seeing this but "stock" estimating $48MM 1st 4 weeks; if accurate, would only need another $10MM- seems possible given almost nothing else is being released in Jan/Feb

[Bosco685]

1 hour ago, paperheart said:

no interest in seeing this but "stock" estimating $48MM 1st 4 weeks; if accurate, would only need another $10MM- seems possible given almost nothing else is being released in Jan/Feb

So you'll complain and post anything negative about the film with no interest in the characters or film franchise. Makes sense!

[bentbryan]

Looks like Hollywood is getting shut down again for a few weeks. 
 

https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/hollywood-productions-will-be-shut-down-until-mid-january-per-sag-aftra-amid-public-outcry-and-pleas-from-health-officials/

[Bosco685]

1 hour ago, bentbryan said:

Looks like Hollywood is getting shut down again for a few weeks. 
 

https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/hollywood-productions-will-be-shut-down-until-mid-january-per-sag-aftra-amid-public-outcry-and-pleas-from-health-officials/

People are so burned out from having to protect themselves from COVID, they want to rush back to a normal life. But even with solid vaccines, getting them out to a very large majority of the population while still applying appropriate protection seems to be our future going well into 2021. I just don't think folks have the patience because industries like entertainment thrive on steady content. Leading to Tom Cruise going off on his crew when they got sloppy protecting others on the set.

What a troubling ride we have for some time.

[bentbryan]

2 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

People are so burned out from having to protect themselves from COVID, they want to rush back to a normal life. But even with solid vaccines, getting them out to a very large majority of the population while still applying appropriate protection seems to be our future going well into 2021. I just don't think folks have the patience because industries like entertainment thrive on steady content. Leading to Tom Cruise going off on his crew when they got sloppy protecting others on the set.

What a troubling ride we have for some time.

It’s such a mess. Sucks. 

[paperheart]

buy 100 shares and get a medium popcorn; at the start of the pandemic AMC had 105MM outstanding shares, when they sell these it'll be closer to 375MM

Struggling AMC Entertainment Files To Sell 50 Million More Shares

[Bosco685]

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Studio Executives think movie theaters will have to reexamine everything in 2021. Variety sat down with a number of decision-makers in the film industry and most of them agreed that there would have to be major changes coming out of 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has already fundamentally changed how the entire theater supply chain functions. Multiple chains and locations attempted a reopening earlier this year and the efforts fell flat. So, whatever happens in 2021, the owners of various theaters in America will have to be absolutely sure they can avoid another shutdown. All of that is said before even acknowledging how releases like Trolls World Tour and Wonder Woman 1984 making their way to streaming and Video On Demand before they had the chance to hit theaters in the U.S. So, things are going to be different, whether the operators like that fact or not in the coming years.

 

“I live in fear of exhibition chomping at the bit to get back to the status quo,” Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution told the publication. “I do believe people will want to get out of their homes and resume a normal lifestyle, but it’s very shortsighted to think that’s all that needs to be done. Theater owners need to look at every facet of their business, like we’re looking at every facet of ours.”

 

The magazine also spoke to Ted Rogers, the film programmer at Ragtag Cinema. The non-profit independent movie theater is based in Columbia, Missouri. For his part, Rogers absolutely agrees with Aronson’s point about adapting. Just because multiple large scale releases are on the horizon, that doesn’t mean success will magically follow. Customers are going to have to be enticed to reenter their doors. And that may start with unconventional viewing choices. Driving that connection between communities is going to be key going forward.

 

“I think it’s about leaning on what arthouses have been doing this whole time: speaking directly to the audience, not programming to the lowest common denominator,” Rogers says. “That’s what’s going to wow audiences. Not just being a work-a-day exhibitor, but creating a community space.”

 

[Bosco685]

Variety: How 2020 Changed Hollywood, and the Movies, Forever

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Hollywood studios have used the pandemic to heed the advice of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

 

For decades, the film business has remained frustratingly resistant to change. Movie theater owners have held firm about the boundaries of a traditional theatrical release. Up to this year, a studio’s newest blockbuster had to play in cinemas for 90 days before its home entertainment launch. Film exhibitor’s conventional wisdom: People wouldn’t pay to see the latest Marvel movie in theaters if they could wait a few weeks to watch it on-demand at home. It fostered an often openly contentious relationship with studios, who have long attempted to shorten that three-month timeframe in an effort to reduce marketing costs.

The rise of streaming services, which gave customers the ability to watch hundreds upon hundreds of titles with the click of a button, put additional pressure on the ironclad theatrical window. Cracks started to appear. Yet theater operators pushed to prolong conversations that had the potential to upend their business model for as long as possible so they could keep milking the lengthy period of big-screen exclusivity until they had no choice but to yield to market forces.

 

Then, the pandemic changed everything — as massive, world-shaking events have a tendency to do. Theaters were forced to close and exhibitors were left without revenue for months. Studios tore up their release schedules, postponing some movies to next year and sending others to streaming services or digital rental platforms. Developments that were unthinkable a year ago began to unfold at incredible rates. When cinemas were able to reopen, theater operators quickly learned that their bargaining power had drastically diminished. If they wanted to showcase “The Croods: A New Age” or “Wonder Woman 1984,” exhibitors had to accept that those titles would be available online sooner than usual. The business had been fundamentally altered.

 

“Without the pandemic, you wouldn’t have seen the theatrical windows collapse in the way they did,” says Lisa Bunnell, the president of distribution at Focus Features. “Whether you like it or not, the pandemic forced us to try things that would be harder to do in regular times.”

 

For traditional studios, it’s resulted in a game of 3D chess with action that rivals “Game of Thrones” in terms of pure, head-spinning chaos. Old allegiances crumbled, new alliances were forged with former rivals, battles were waged via press release. In a matter of months, Universal went from being the enemy of cinemas to the savior of the theater business. Not to be outdone, Warner Bros. positioned itself as a villain that could rival nearly any onscreen baddie when the studio announced its entire 2021 slate would debut simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters. That was after cinemas fell all over themselves praising the company as their white knight for deciding to open Christopher Nolan’s time-bending espionage epic “Tenet” on the big screen during summer. Tyrion Lannister would struggle to make sense of these power plays, maneuvers and strategic retreats.

 

Industry experts agree that, to at least some degree, the changes roiling the film business are going to outlast the pandemic.

 

“A lot of the innovation we’ve seen is going to continue,” predicts Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “When we look back at 2020, we will see this isn’t a reboot. It’s a rebuild of the theatrical model.”

 

It remains to be seen how the contours of the new film distribution world become fixed. Studios and theater owners acknowledge the neat and tidy 90-day window is no more. Rather than a one-size fits all model, many believe it could be determined on a studio-by-studio or even film-by-film basis. That means “Fast & Furious” entry “F9” may play exclusively in theaters longer than the upcoming Tom Hanks sci-fi drama “Bios,” even though both hail from Universal Pictures.

 

“The conversation is more than open at this point,” says Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “I don’t think the extreme examples will stick. I don’t necessarily see big movies going day-and-date very often,” he adds, in reference to the hybrid release of “Wonder Woman 1984.” “There will be a middle ground.”

 

[Bosco685]

What a way to close out 2020.

[Bosco685]

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The Chinese box office posted numbers larger than that of the United States for the first year in box office history. The global numbers were a fraction of what they would have been under normal circumstances as the global pandemic tremendously hindered audiences from gathering at the cinema, resulting in a 72% drop off in ticket sales worldwide when comparing the most recent year to its preceding year. The 2019 to 2020 tumble was greater in the United States, which resulted in the U.S. falling as the number one contributor to a box office report for the first time.

 

In 2019, the domestic box office drummed up $11.4 billion, bolstered in part by Avengers: Endgame assembling crowds to post the largest box office sales numbers for a single title of all time. The 2020 box office took in merely $2.28 billion as a whole, which is less than Avengers: Endgame did worldwide.

 

Globally, 2020 movie tickets are expected to have generated between $11.5 billion and $12 billion. 2019 saw the box office taking in $42.5 billion. China generated an estimated $2.7 billion at the box office, making it the largest box office sale generator for thee year.

The largest film of 2020 internationally was the Chinese movie The Eight Hundred, a World War II epic which topped Bad Boys For Life's second place finish with $413 million. Behind the Bad Boys sequel is the Sam Mendes war epic 1917, which took in $385 million with a January 10 launch, followed by Christopher Nolan's Tenet with an estimated $362 milion. Tenet was the first Hollywood tentpole to test the waters by opening amidst the global pandemic. These numbers all come in via THR.

 

The box office is looking to bounce back in 2021, as the year was already filled with blockbuster titles and will soon be releasing movies originally scheduled for 2020, as well (should the current schedules hold up).

 

[paperheart]

after this implosion, what will 2021 hold for US BO; back of the envelope vs 2019: Jan-Mar down 80%, Apr - Dec down 20% = $7BB +/-

Edited January 7, 2021 by paperheart

[paperheart]

2020 Worldwide Box Office Slumps 71% To $12.4B

https://deadline.com/2021/01/hollywood-movie-studio-global-rankings-2020-global-international-box-office-analysis-2021-outlook-1234665561/

[Bosco685]

 

[Bosco685]

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Here we go again. Late last year, Warner Bros. was skewered after announcing that all of its new movies in 2021 would debut simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters. Cinema operators, rival studios and even some of the filmmakers behind the movies wondered aloud why, with the prospect of coronavirus vaccines looming, Warner Bros. would make such a sweeping decision? It was a move that appeared to wave the white flag on moviegoing for the next 12 months.

 

Nobody expected mass immunization overnight, but with vaccinations being administered at a crawl in the U.S., it now looks like Warner Bros. may have been forward-thinking in acknowledging the box office’s slow return. Numerous films remain on the release calendar for early 2021, yet cases of the virus in many areas are higher than ever and approximately 65% of U.S. theaters — including those in popular markets like New York and Los Angeles —  remain closed. Getting back to the movies in any normal fashion seems as unrealistic today as it did last March when cinemas across the nation were shuttered.

 

To be sure, the majority of potential blockbusters have already been postponed to mid-summer or later. But there are a handful of films scheduled for the first quarter of the year: Sony’s “Cinderella” starring Camila Cabello (Feb. 5), Disney and 20th Century’s “The King’s Man” (March 12) and Jared Leto’s superhero thriller “Morbius” also from Sony (March 19), to name a few. These seem very unlikely to keep their theatrical release dates, at least without embracing some kind of hybrid digital or video-on-demand debut.

 

Even in traditional times, the stretch between January and March is kind of a cinematic dumping ground. So it’s not entirely unexpected that the current release calendar doesn’t pick up in a meaningful way until May, with the debuts of Disney and Marvel’s “Black Widow” (May 7), Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Godzilla vs Kong” (May 21), Ryan Reynolds’ “Free Guy” from 20th Century Studios (May 21), Paramount’s “Infinite” starring Mark Wahlberg (May 28), Disney’s “Cruella” with Emma Stone (May 28) and Universal’s “F9” (May 28). But many of these titles are expected to shift as well if conditions don’t drastically improve in the next month or so.

 

Hollywood players will continue to take different approaches to operating and finding the best way to reach audiences during the pandemic. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal appear more primed to ride out the next few months, with contingency plans that range from day-and-date releases on streaming services to accelerated premium video-on-demand windows. Neither Sony nor Paramount have a streaming service ready to offload titles, so those companies will probably continue to delay release dates or sell their movies to platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Paramount has auctioned off most of its upcoming movies and doesn’t have anything on the horizon until “A Quiet Place Part II” on April 23, which it has no plans to sell.

 

As it stands, “Cinderella” is slated as the first release of 2021 from a major studio. However, it’s hard to believe the Kay Cannon-directed fairy tale adaptation will keep its early February release date.

 

Sony declined to comment on the scheduling.

 

[paperheart]

‘No Time To Die’ Poised To Depart Easter Weekend For Fall Release

In what should not be a shocker, we are hearing that MGM/Eon’s No Time to Die is bound to move from its Easter weekend release of April 2 to some time in the fall,

[Bosco685]

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A Hollywood executive believes the 2021 movie release schedule is a mess and there will be more delays through July. When the coronavirus pandemic forced movie theaters to close last year, studios had no choice but to push back their highly-anticipated titles. Initially, some of these projects moved from spring and summer to fall and winter, but the combination of Tenet's low box office and new COVID-19 cases spiking led to another wave of delays. Movies like No Time to Die, Black Widow, and more secured 2021 release dates, in the hopes theaters would be safer in the new year.

 

Unfortunately, that hasn't come to pass. Coronavirus cases continue to surge around the world, and a majority of U.S. theaters remain closed (including those in key markets like New York and Los Angeles). Already, 2021 has seen release date delays, with Sony pushing Morbius back to October. The belief is Morbius won't be the only film to move, with many expecting No Time to Die to shift back to the fall. There will likely be many others that follow suit and have their premieres delayed.

 

A report in THR on the anticipated wave of 2021 release date delays includes a quote from a "veteran studio executive" who has a bleak forecast for the movies this year:

 

“I think everything substantive between now and Top Gun: Maverick in early July will move. It’s a mess.”

 

Outside of Morbius, none of 2021's projected blockbusters have been officially delayed, but based on this, it's only a matter of time before that happens. Considering this proves true, the likes of No Time to Die, Black Widow, F9, and more will be on the search for new dates. It's more than likely studios are currently weighing their options before announcing something, trying to find the best window for their respective titles. Right now, there are major releases planned for the fall and winter, which could make that a difficult task (unless those films move as well). It'll also be interesting to see if studios pursue alternative release models for their films, such as PVOD or streaming. The industry remains committed to the theatrical experience, but delaying new movies in perpetuity runs the risk of them becoming stale. That's why Warner Bros. opted to debut Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max.