Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

It is not really news to anyone at this point that movie theaters are in trouble due to the pandemic we have all found ourselves trapped in and this has only gotten worse as time has gone on. Movie theaters were immediately put under threat when the pandemic began because they were easily one of the most populated types of businesses out there. Of course with a pandemic, as we’ve all learned by this point, people are supposed to stay away from one another and not get within a certain distance to prevent disease from spreading. Unfortunately, there are many people who are choosing not to listen to this advice from medical experts and it is resulting in more and more people contracting the virus and getting sick. This has made it all the more difficult for theaters to actually open up their doors to the public and simultaneously stay open for any decent length of time.

Back in March, theaters had to shut down without any kind of concrete certainty as to when they would have to reopen their doors to the public to resume making some kind of revenue. As a result, there were questions as to what would come first, a vaccine or theaters being able to reopen with restrictions. Obviously, most bets were on the latter option and eventually that was what happened and theaters were able to reopen their doors to the public but with heavy restrictions which limited capacity. On top of limited capacity, theaters were also forced to adhere to the new rules that were put in place which also made it so that people had to follow social distancing rules. All-in-all this is what was expected to happen, but the problem quickly became how theaters would actually get people to come back as they had nothing new to show.

Theaters only really thrive off the fact that they get people to come in by showing off new movies in what is essentially an exclusivity deal with studios. They get movies from studios to show in return for exclusive windows where the only way people can see those movies is by going to theaters. On top of this, they sell concessions to make up for the fact that they only get a percentage of what is made off  every ticket as the studios take a good portion of the money made from each ticket. Needless to say, they needed movies to get people in seat in their theaters, but they had no real way of doing so as studios weren’t sure about releasing films even if theaters were open to the public. It took AMC theaters saying that they were opening in mid-August regardless of what happens to finally give studios the chance to release their films.

Even with the announcements that there would actually be theaters opened up to the public everywhere, studios were still hesitant because of the pandemic as a whole. The studio that ended up taking the leap was Warner Bros. in the end because they really wanted to get their new movie ‘Tenet’ out into the world. What Warner had planned was that they were going to release the movie to international audiences first and then they were going to release the movie domestically next. The thing that many people were unsure of was when exactly they would end up doing that and when AMC made their opening announcement, Warner told people their plan. The end of August would see the international release of the film while the next week would see the domestic release. The first weeks were great for the film as they brought in about $150 million, but the following weeks ended up being nothing but a let down as the movie only brought in a few million domestically.

While a few million may not sound all that bad to the general public, it is actually pretty bad for the movie industry after taking into account the fact that all of those profits are split. With those profits being split, Warner Bros. needed the movie to bring in about $500 million before marketing costs to cover the overall production of the film. After all of this happened, other movie studios finally had all the proof they needed that this is most certainly not the climate to release their films in and they all pushed back the release dates of their films. With that, theaters essentially lost all of the upcoming blockbusters that could bring people through their front doors and they just started hemorrhaging money to try and stay open. It was after all of this that Regal Cinemas just decided to keep their doors shut to the public for the foreseeable future in order to try and save as much money as possible.

Movie theaters everywhere are sharing the same fate as they are all losing money hand-over-fist with no new movies to show and some aren’t even allowed to sell concessions, adding to the pain. Now it would seem that domestic theaters are not the only ones suffering as it would seem that movies theaters in the United Kingdom are going to be shutting their doors as well. Just like domestic theaters, theaters in the U.K. have been losing money trying to stay open and with this new wave of virus cases coming up, theaters there have decided to shut their doors. That being said, movie productions taking place in the U.K. will not be shutting down as they are in their own enclosed environments where they don’t really interact with many other people. So the fact remains that we will still have plenty of movies on the release line-up after the pandemic ends, but we may not have theaters as many are going under now.