US Theaters May Need to Close Again
By George Robbins
Movie theaters have been doing their absolute best over the past few months due to the position they have been put into by the pandemic. They were all forced to shut down as soon as the pandemic was announced back in March. Ever since then they have been trying to come up with a way of drawing people back in while simultaneously coming up with plans for how they will open. Well they have managed to succeed in at least opening their doors back up again to the public, but there is a complication. The former issue of whether they can bring people back in or not is now beginning to rear its ugly head. Movies may be in even more trouble than they were in before.
Studios are having an equally difficult time because they need money in order to start working on their next projects. This is kind of an issue given the fact that they can’t even get people to come and see their films, but they can make up for it at least a little bit by selling movies straight to digital.This is a plan which has been working in respect to some films already and the success of VOD films has got studios thinking about what they will do moving forward. Unfortunately for theaters, they don’t really have this option because they need people to go out in order to make their income somehow.
This previous weekend in the United States was a wake-up call for theaters because it showed that people are still far too wary to go back out to such a public place so soon. Though the previous weekend presented a huge box office return, this past weekend only saw movies like the blockbuster ‘Tenet’ getting just over $6.5 million nation wide. This just shows that if a blockbuster is having issues, then what chance do other movies have when it comes time for release. Therefore, theaters may just end up having no choice but to shut down again. It is just way too early for them to be opened back up to the public again and this just shows that.