Stream Genie
Since home (...bus/train/toilets at work...) streaming became a thing, the digital landscape has teemed with content providers jostling for our eyeballs and subscription coin. Whilst Netflix and Amazon Prime remain all but ubiquitous, various upstarts have entered the ring in the form of Sling TV, Peacock, Twitch, Crackle and Crunchyroll (have those last three been at the Rice Krispies??..) Established mega brands Apple, HBO, Hulu and Youtube all continue to compete for position whilst Disney continues its march towards colourful, fluffy, big-eyed, ABSOLUTE WORLD DOMINATION with Disney+, released at the tail end of 2019.
With so many viable alternatives to going out or talking to the person you're staying in with, it's no surprise the media have long been speculating on the “death of cinema”. How do multiplexes and smaller chains with huge overheads compete with such an affordable array of on-demand entertainment? Whilst Marvel (now Disney-owned of course) and co. have certainly done their best to supercharge the box office in the last decade, the overall industry trajectory, at least in the US has been downward.
Citing a relatively unexciting release docket and more home viewing options than ever, at the dawn of 2020, analysts were already forecasting another dipped year at the box office.
As per Paul Dergarabedian, Senior Media Analyst via Forbes in February, “It would be naive to think that the movie industry does not face challenges in 2020... there are many variables in the mix and many surprises yet to come....” Looking back from our strange new world, that last remark achieves an unintentionally sinister quality – like a smirking, portentous threat from a calculating Bond villain....
COVID was that surprise and challenging it has been. Bond certainly wasn't able to stop it. It was all he could do to get out of the way. In a watershed move for the entertainment industry, 007's latest outing in a franchise whose every entry is a worldwide event delayed its release from April to the hopefully healthier November. Fittingly titled No Time To Die, Daniel Craig's final Bond film is estimated to have taken a $30-50 million hit on defunct early marketing - the alternative however was a spring release into a global market full of shuttered cinemas. China's lockdown alone would likely have cost the production a couple hundred mill in revenue.
With the world's most famous spy visibly shaken and stirred, Hollywood's dream factory received a severe reality check. Within days, release schedules were torn up, films pulled from cinemas left and right and shoots ground to a halt. James Cameron's already delayed Avatar sequels once more hit pause alongside production on Jurassic World: Dominion, Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, and The Matrix 4. In the UK, restrictions on working, travel and social distancing put temporary stoppers on the new Batman film, Fantastic Beasts 3, Disney's live action update of The Little Mermaid and Netflix's second series of The Witcher.
Like us, the little people they entertain, even perma-sculpted, white-teethed celebrities are not immune to the virus' effects. Producers have been scrabbling like mad to accommodate the crisis, in many cases attempting to repatriate cast and crew amid a global pandemic over which their insurers are still arguing about picking up the tab.
Superheroes, dinosaurs, aliens, wizards, rock n' roll gods and Keanu Reeves all shunted aside by an invisible virus and with it, further delays and uncertainty for the cinemas.
For films fortunate enough to have wrapped principle production before the world's wheels came off, a game of chicken ensued with shellshocked cinemas. The most notable of these, Chris Nolan's highly anticipated Tenet carries the unofficial burden of reanimating the global box office. Delayed three times already, Warner Bros have now removed it from their release schedule, clearly reticent to drop a hugely expensive but potentially hugely profitable feature into an untested, still-reeling market. Meanwhile, cinemas were loathe to reopen without the support of a genuine box office draw to entice movie-goers back through the foyers, with giant chains Cineworld and Vue both postponing their re-openings in light of Tenet and Disney's live action Mulan remake (yes, another one) blinking first.
In America, with bricks and mortar screens shuttered, a renaissance has taken place for drive-in cinema, formerly popular in the '50s, when the only invisible, deadly threat was deemed to be Communism. But real profitability for the industry means bums in seats and mixed messaging on masks and other safety precautions alongside flip-flopping cinema chains still has consumer confidence shaken at the prospect of sitting in a dark room packed full of strangers. Just think how wound up you got by someone coughing through a movie pre-pandemic...
The reality is lockdown has not just exacerbated our existing desire for streamed content, but shifted our perception of access. Disney+ doubled its subscriber base from February to May, surpassing 50 million accounts and Universal managed to make substantial hits of The Invisible Man and Trolls: World Tour by swiftly pivoting them to on-demand viewing, the latter sequel actually outperforming its cinema-going first instalment. It's likely that had more to do with frazzled, home-schooling parents looking for something... ANYTHING to quieten their spawn for a couple of hours as opposed to any Godfather II-esque improvements on an already revered original. Nevertheless, the precedent has now been set for blockbuster primary releases happening in homes, a model Netflix was already pushing before Wuhan hit the headlines.
As our insatiable appetites for on-demand grow and exclusivity windows from wide release to home viewing get ever shorter, cinema chains are left wringing their hands in desperation. We used to have to wait a year for a VHS and a further three before a big movie hit the TV, but now Universal have broken with the standard Hollywood good-faith practice of allowing cinemas roughly 90 days' screening exclusivity. That genie won't go back in its bottle, regardless of the pandemic's trajectory from here. In response, AMC, the giant operating Odeon amongst other chains, have refused to screen any future Universal films, an understandably frustrated but self-sabotaging move which will likely hasten the exodus of blockbusters to the small screen or spell their eventual doom. Could the next film in the ever popular, increasingly expensive, exponentially ridiculous Fast and Furious franchise (the one where the writers just say “fuck it” and everyone finally goes to space) hit home screens before multiplexes....or not hit screens at all??
Whilst the majority of large productions have recently been incentivized to return to business stimulating local economies with such special treatment as non-quarantining of big stars like Mission Impossible 7's Tom Cruise (“big” as in famous...) and daily cast and crew antibody tests on the latest Jurassic Park sequel (good to see animatronic velociraptors treated better than NHS staff...), the industry as a whole is in turmoil and the future uncertain.
Cinema has weathered storms before – the explosion of TV in the '50s, home video in the 80s, cable and home theatre and more recently streaming.... but mix a big dollop of desire for instant gratification with a little fear of congregation and a whole lotta recession and the future might realistically see a lot less popcorn on the floor
….And Vin Diesel was going to go to space :-(
By Ian Greenland