Following the Covid-19 outbreak, there are a number of things happening that we have yet to experience in this generation. Studios are not reporting sales for any tickets to see their movies. This isn’t really all that surprising, however, since theaters have shut down with the exception of small privately functioning ones including drive-ins. With that in mind, companies haven’t even deemed it necessary to report ticket sales as it is entirely negligible. This is the first time that the Box Office reports haven’t been released solely due to the fact there were none.
The last time their was a lull in Box Office reports was in 1994 when an earthquake hit Northridge in California. An analyst at the time, Paul Dergarabedian, had to sneak into the offices just to release the reports to the press. Unlike that time, the reason as to why there are no reports is because there is no information to release. There is absolutely nothing that can be sent out to the press at this time that will give a report on ticket sales.
This just goes to show that we are in a time that is slightly unprecedented in history. There have been pandemics before, but not in this modern age which is shutting down everything. In an age where everyone is more connected, it is easier to see the affect that it is having on the world, especially the entertainment industry. The Box Office not having anything to report is just the beginning of a series of issues that will continue to pop up down the line.
For the general public, the way that it goes when a film releases is that a person will go to the movies then they will wait for a movie to release on digital or DVD. With the Covid-19 pandemic currently keeping people from going to the movies, this process becomes much more difficult. While we almost certainly won’t see movies that haven’t released to cinemas come out to the public, it is a possibility that movies in cinemas will release early. If movies haven’t made it to theaters yet, they can be released later as ordinary cinema releases, but the same can’t be said for films that were already in cinemas.
Due to just horrible timing and bad luck, many films don’t have much of a choice as to what can be done with them. The films have started their theatrical releases, so trying to reschedule them simply would not work out with full release plans and could result in even more money lost. With that in mind, studios are just releasing the films onto on-demand services so that they don’t lose out on even more money than they already are. Some people think that this will change the industry as a whole, but it really won’t, and it is just to keep some movies from completely flopping.
Companies, as already stated, are making the move to allow currently playing movies to become available to the general public on digital on-demand. Universal made the move to allow films like The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt to be made available starting Friday March, 20th. Following, in suit, is Sony who plans to make Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot available digitally on March 24th after it had an eleven day run in the cinemas. Also planned for digital release on March 24th is Birds of Prey, a decision that had been made by Warner Bros. with the pandemic in effect.
Theaters being closed is just one of the massive impacts that are currently affecting the entertainment industry. There closing is up there as one of thee worst aspects of the pandemic in the industry and I would say it is included as part of the production process. With these processes ground to a halt, jobs have been lost or they are in danger and these companies doing what they are could be seen as a way of curbing the financial impact at least a little. This will also make it possible for people who are stuck at home to be able to watch the films, stay occupied, and support the films they had planned on seeing from the start.
To be honest, there is no telling what will happen in the industry post-virus, but with the actions that we are seeing now, many are confident in recovery. Those in the film industry have stated that they believe it is possible to make a recovery when everything is said and done. The best way to tell whether there is a strong recovery or not is how well theaters do when it is all over. Ticket sales for the year were already at a twenty year low before the outbreak started, so things aren’t all that great for them. Hopefully theaters will be capable of bouncing back and it won’t be too long before they are able to reopen to the public.
With people of all different kinds of backgrounds stuck in isolation due to Covid-19, some work is capable of completion. What is meant by that is projects often times take a while to work on due to the fact people have multiple things to do on a regular basis. Being stuck somewhere reduces the amount of things that need to be done, however. So, since people can work on projects that have been forgone, after everything is over, new things will be finished or close to finished. An example of which is writers managing to get their works finished considering they have nothing else to do.
The virus is pushing people to get work done online which is getting people to work on scripts, screenplays, etc. There are movies, novels, and sequels that people have been waiting for information on. So now we are seeing artists putting their time into these other projects. Getting work done from home isn’t the reason why these projects are being worked on either. It is because, in isolation, it is easier to start thinking about what to move onto to keep busy. This results in everyone getting something they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
For instance, due to the isolation many people are confined to, Kevin Smith has said that he is working on scripts for sequels. He has said he is working to finish scripts for Clerks 3 and Mallrats 2. Smith has been known to work on a number of different projects through the years with some simply not becoming reality. So for fans of the original films, this is a welcome idea for people who have been waiting all these years for sequels. The original films have amassed cult followings with the first Clerks becoming a classic. It only amassed around $3 million, but with a budget of around $27,500, it launched Smith’s career as a director.
Smith has stated on a Facebook post that the Clerks 3 and Twilight of the Mallrats scripts were top priority. He also gave some details on the Clerks 3 film after years of development, saying that the location for the plot of the film is the Quick Stop that it all started in. So, while the virus has stopped numerous productions, the writers’ side of things is not suffering. The virus is a terrible thing that is shutting down most of the world as we know it, but not everything is awful, so we have to take the good with the bad.
Amazon has a fair number of shows available through their Amazon Prime Video service. Among those shows are original series that sometimes push the bounds on what we would normally expect in a show. They often times have shows that are also based off works done by others. So what happens when you combine the concept of something entirely outside the realm of what you normally think possible and an established work of art? You end up with a piece of fiction that you may have always wanted to witness, but couldn’t until now.
‘Tales from the Loop’ is an upcoming drama series set to premiere through Amazon Prime Video. The series is based on the narrative art book with the same title by Simon Stålenhag. The art book isn’t the only thing that the series is based off, as he also made a role-playing tabletop game of the same name that serves as an influence. To create such a world, he took influences from local Swedish landscapes, his childhood, and themes from science fiction films. His works have since become the basis for the television series, and a movie that is set to be directed and produced by Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, respectively.
The premise of ‘Tales from the Loop’ is that a town of people live above a device known as “The Loop.” This device is, in actuality, a supercollider which was built to discover the secrets of the universe. What results from this are a series of stories that poke into the realm of science fiction. This fantastical mysterious town tells poignant human tales that bare universal emotional experiences that everyone can experience equally.
The series stars Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Town), Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation), Daniel Zolghardi (Eighth Grade), Duncan Joiner (Waco) and Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes, Game of Thrones). ‘Tales from the Loop’ is coming from Fox21 Television Studios and Amazon Studios to be released through Amazon Prime Video in an eight episode series. It was created by Nathaniel Halpern, who wrote all eight episodes of the series. Halpern also serves as executive producer alongside Mark Romanek, Matt Reeves, Adam Kassan, Rafi Crohn, Mattias Montero, Samantha Taylor Pickett, Adam Berg, and Simon Stålenhag. ‘Tales from the Loop’ will premiere on April 3, 2020 on Prime Video only.
It is commonly known that sometimes our minds can play tricks on us and our entire realities can change. With that in mind, production companies can come up with ideas for any number of movies based off psychological issues. The idea that someone saw something that no one else believes is a trope in many thriller films. Psychological thrillers are meant to make us, the audience, question whether the character is actually losing their sanity or not. Hopefully this film will do an excellent job at story telling and we will be guessing until the end.
‘The Woman in the Window’ tells the story of an agoraphobic psychiatrist who sees something amiss in her neighbor’s home across the street. With a fear of places or situations that might cause her to panic and make her feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed, she doesn’t go out much. Dr. Anna Fox ends up befriending her neighbor from across the street while living in her NYC brownstone. She then starts keeping tabs on the family across the way and, thinking she is watching over the perfect family, sees something she shouldn’t have. From that moment on, her life changes in a way that she never could have predicted.
The story we are presented with is based off a novel of the same name written by Dan Mallory under the pseudonym A.J. Finn. He presents a story in which there is an unreliable female narrator telling a story of an apparent murder. What we are left with is a story involving a possible psychopath that will leave people on edge. The novel received so much praise that it, despite being released in only 2018, was chosen to become a feature length film. Mallory was involved in a scandal after lying about having cancer, but that did not keep the movie from being made, and his second novel is still being worked on.
‘The Woman in the Window’ stars Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore. The film was directed by Joe Wright who also worked on the films Hanna, Pan, and Darkest Hour. The screenplay for the film was written by Tracy Letts based directly off the novel by Dan Mallory. It was produced by Scott Ruden who has worked on numerous award winning films, Eli Bush who was best known for producing Lady Bird, and Anthony Katagas who worked on 12 Years a Slave. ‘The Woman in the Window’ was set to release on May 15, 2020, but with the Coronavirus Pandemic, it has been pulled momentarily from the release window.
As has already been discussed by so many people on the internet, movies are being delayed left and right. There are many people that think the companies that are making the films should instead put their movies up on digital services. There are a number of reasons why this is simply not going to happen with almost every movie that has been delayed. I say almost every movie because it has already happened when Universal made the radical decision to make The Invisible Man and Trolls: World Tour available to rent on-demand for $20.
Of course, this got people guessing as to whether the company will continue this trend which would change the theatrical release model forever. That would be stupid on their part, however, and they know that which is why they said already that it is pretty much a one-time thing. For those that don’t understand why, theaters equal money for the entire industry and they also allow companies to gain widespread feedback on a film from the general public. The amount of money that is lost by not putting films in a theater before they release for purchase is just absurd. There is a reason direct-to-video movies always sell terribly.
Movies being released to theaters is a part of the business cycle for movie production. It is up to the companies whether more money can be made by delaying a release or allowing early rentals. I’ll just say now that the former is certainly the most likely in this situation. Even if a movie is delayed, the possibility for it to make revenue is still there and if the movie is a blockbuster, then it’ll still be one months from now. Delays can only help a production or project be better in the end by giving people more time to work on post-production.
The National Association of Theater Owners has already put out a statement saying that people hoping accelerated releases are completely ignoring financial aspects to those releases. They have said that the rescheduling of those films will take place when life returns to normal. This actually works out for theater companies since, when the delayed movies release, they will have plenty of movies that are awaited by the public to put on screens.
When quarantines end and people can escape isolation, theaters will be able to make a lot of money. With the number of anticipated films, and the amount of people who simply want to leave the house, theaters will make quite the buck. Whichever titles are going to be available after the quarantine are going to be massive events that bring out relatively large crowds. This means that this isn’t the worst that could happen to the industry and they will recover.
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