Theatrical moviegoing is an „outdated“ distribution model that brought in $42.5 billion in global revenue last year.
Theatrical moviegoing is an „outdated“ distribution model that brought in $42.5 billion in global revenue last year. We got word this week that AMC may run out of money by the end of 2020 or early 2021, with either increased global box office (unlikely with almost every major 2020 release delayed until 2021 or sent to PVOD streaming) or a cash infusion keeping it from bankruptcy. Movie theaters, many of the major chains, have survived bankruptcy before, back when the chains overspent in the mid-1990’s saturating the marketplace with newer and better theaters to compete with cable. The competition is harsher this time out, with streaming and VOD threatening to make theatrical moviegoing a secondary option for top-tier filmed entertainment. But if AMC goes bankrupt and/or the movie theater chains don’t survive, it won’t be because of anything other than the pandemic which kept audiences away for most of this year. If theaters don’t survive, and I presume they will in some capacity, it won’t be because Chris Nolan’s Tenet wasn’t popular enough or Disney’s Mulan went to PVOD. It won’t be because Hollywood didn’t evolve with the times or theaters couldn’t compete with at-home entertainment options. Yes, we may see a “movie theaters as video game arcades” scenario (just as arcades crumbled as at-home consoles became able to approximate or surpass most cabinet-style video games) whereby theaters are only reserved for the biggest of big blockbusters for experiences that you can’t replicate at home. But if theaters don’t survive the Coronavirus, it will be because of the pandemic, period. Everything else is a distraction. People aren’t avoiding theaters because they don’t want to, but rather either because they can’t, they don’t feel safe or those theaters are lacking in tentpoles. Theaters aren’t struggling because of Netflix NFLX or “Hollywood never makes original movies for grown-ups!” Theaters are struggling because a pandemic shut down the globe earlier this year, and theaters were thus prevented from doing the one singular thing they do, showing big new movies in theaters, that allowed them to make money. Since the pandemic arguably wasn’t properly dealt with in America (arguably due to a disinterested executive branch of the federal government), the kind of theatrical recovery taking place elsewhere (like China) wasn’t possible in America. This led to Hollywood holding their big event movies for a later date. Everything else about the push-pull between theaters and streaming, movies versus TV, etc., is irrelevant. Theaters spent much of the year unable to do the thing that provided fresh revenue. And in normal times, movie theaters are still pretty popular. The number of North American total tickets sold in 2019, around 1.235 billion (so says The Numbers), is ever declining from the peak of 1.
