Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

This pandemic that we have all unfortunately found ourselves trapped in is one that is causing a lot of things to happen in the world. Without the pandemic, things were already not getting along very well but the restrictions we have found placed on us by the outbreak have expedited some things. For instance, many of the ways businesses are now interacting with the public at large have been affected by the pandemic and it is very easy to notice this change. According to a few companies now, they have been changing the way that they conduct their business moving forward and they have said they wanted to enact this change for awhile now. The pandemic has been cited as the biggest reason these things have been moving forward.

One of the biggest industries being affected by the pandemic at the moment has been the movie industry as a whole. We have been hearing about the movie industry extensively over the past couple of months and it is now becoming an even bigger issue as time goes on. Movie theaters are perhaps the biggest part of the industry being affected by the pandemic and it is resulting in some pretty drastic changes as time goes on. At first, like most public businesses, theaters were temporarily shut down to prevent more people from getting infected with the virus. This was meant to only be a short period of time until countermeasures could be put into place which would protect customers and theaters alike. Unfortunately, this plan did not go over so well as the months rolled on.

The idea for the reopening of public businesses was going to be that they would get to open their doors back up again when individual locations felt it was safe. This became an issue very quickly when many states simply would not allow them to reopen their doors to the public because they were too high risk to reopen. Thus, the months continued to fly by as theaters remained one of the last institutions to reopen their doors to the public. They couldn’t just reopen their doors though as they had to have rules in place in order to follow new health and safety standards to prevent the pandemic from getting worse. This wasn’t even the worst thing that theaters had to deal with in order to open their doors back up again.

Theaters that actually could reopen their doors didn’t really want to for the longest time because they had no new movies to show to draw people in. Movies were delayed for a long time and a second smaller wave of infections caused studios to push back some of their releases. What was created from this was a cycle where movies needed theaters and theaters needed movies so that they could open. Eventually, AMC felt that they had waited long enough and even if they had no movies to show, they would be opening in the middle of August. This is what made studios decide that they would try and release a couple of their films and see if the market was really back on track to what it was before.

Unfortunately for both studios and movie theaters alike, even when movies ended up coming out, it didn’t really matter. The vast majority of people are still not willing to put their and their family’s health at risk just to go to the movies. Although theaters state that there has yet to be a case that traces back to theaters, this is because there are so few people going to them in the first place. Ever since movie theaters have reopened they have been going downhill because there is almost no one going out to see movies and beyond that, there are no new movies to show. Yet again, the cycle of theaters and movie releases continues and this time, theaters are really going to be in trouble. In fact, there are almost no movies set to release through the remainder of the year and even early next year.

After ‘Tenet’ released and it was pretty much deemed a failure considering how much they are still in the negative, studios pulled their movies from release rosters. This has led to a now tremendous problem being faced by movie theaters where they are now losing money hand over fist for maintenance to theaters that are getting no use. This has even resulted in theater chains like Regal Cinemas shutting their doors once again for the foreseeable future to make up for the fact that they aren’t getting any revenue. Going even further beyond just closing down for awhile is the issue that the AMC theater chain is currently dealing with which is the fact that they will apparently have no money left by the end of the year. This has just shown how bad it has become for the movie theater industry thus far.

AMC being the biggest theater chain in the world doesn’t help its own cause, but seeing this shows just what the future holds for other theaters as well. Movie delays have essentially destroyed the market for movie theaters, but you can’t blame studios for doing it. They have every right to believe that they will lose almost all of the money they invested in their delayed films if they release them now instead of waiting. Plenty of films have now been delayed by their studios and there are very few which remain in this year’s line-up. A fair number of those films are still set for December releases, but news regarding them comes in every single day. For instance, the movie ‘Soul‘ was set to release in December, and while it may still be doing so, it is releasing straight to Disney+.

This trend is starting to become more and more common nowadays with the way movies are being delayed because studios don’t want to keep themselves from earning revenue. Disney is chief among these studios at the moment and they are among the group that actually has a couple of films left in this year’s roster. They have been trying to adapt to the scenario unfolding around them and, as such, they have most of their bigger films moved into some time next year. This is all so that they can try and hold out for some breakthrough with the pandemic because they want to have their films release theatrically. Even though this seems to be the case, they have made it clear they want to focus much of their efforts on the streaming side of things for now.

Although the Disney+ release for ‘Mulan’ has become a controversial disaster in a way, it gave Disney some clarity. The release of the film itself was not really disastrous, it was everything else surrounding the movie that was, and so it isn’t too surprising that the film actually created a revenue stream through their streaming service upon release. With that, they knew that they would actually be able to make money with releases because even with a somewhat bad release they brought in some money. According to Disney, their focus has been shifting to their streaming service for some time now, but now they plan on making it their main focus from this point on. Even though they said this, they are apparently not foregoing all theatrical releases.

Disney is still planning on continuing their original release methods for films, with them actually having theatrical releases still. Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that the new regulation will allow company officials to decide whether a film is made for the cinema or for streaming. This will make it so that their biggest releases that they plan on making the most from will actually remain theatrical releases. Whereas films that they believe are better suited for families and small groups that are best off being watched at home will be put on their streaming services. This means that they have found a way to release the films they want to release even when they normally can’t and bring in revenue of some kind.