Most likely it depends on how long studios will want to sweat this conundrum. Once cinema chains start going belly up in the US it’s obvious the next ones are going to be the studios themselves. Would they chance this?
From a certain point onwards you have no control any more how the market regards your shares. They either cut their losses now with a more or less successful staggered release (of TENET/MULAN/both) that might be termed a win in Corona times and a model for further releases.
Or they get down to business with putting these films on the market in the least painful way as PVOD. The question is no longer if they will lose money compared to ‘normal’ business, that’s a given. In a few weeks the question may well be which studios survive the show.
I’ve been in the ‘release NTTD in cinemas first’ camp since the beginning.
But now? With the prospect of endless delays I wouldn’t complain if they went with a streaming debut. I really wouldn’t. I’d watch it. And I’d absolutely see it again on the big screen when that option became available. It’s that or never see it at all, or inevitably lose interest out of frustration. But I imagine the film will be delayed until 2021, and even then a release isn’t guaranteed.
I’m in the same boat. In the US, we’re looking at 2022 at least before we’ll be potentially back in the cinemas, whatever of them remain after the fact. Even then, it’ll be socially distanced to the point where, along with the drastic reduction in number of cinemas themselves, will cause the studios to lose significant amount of profit opportunity when they put these delayed films out into a suddenly saturated market that won’t have the financial health to get them all to the numbers that they need to be labeled as “successful”.
I still think that they should look at some form of premium home release, be that in the format of a digital download at a high price or even giving people the option of purchasing a physical copy of it for a considerably higher cost. Maybe pricing it at a price point similar to that of a video game ($59.99), coupled with some other creative methods of release, such as maybe putting them in drive-ins or using the film as the marquee event for pop-up drive-ins like the ones that Wal-Mart is setting up starting next month in their parking lots. Perhaps through partnerships with various sponsors, such a thing could become more widespread and they could use No Time To Die as kind of a marquee event to launch such an enterprise.
I believe someone brought that up elsewhere before: with a release as download or stream or physical copy, there should be the option to have a voucher (or several) for a cinema visit with a reduced admission price. That way, people will still go to see the movie in cinemas at a later time, create a reduced box office and - first and formeost - buy popcorn, tacos, buckets of Coke etc., which is what cinemas make their main money with, anyway.
That would be a viable way forward. Meanwhile the cinemas will need support, ideally by a combined initiative of all studios. Either the studios become part of the cinemas or vice versa. I see no other way how the infrastructure can be held over months with little to no actual new product to show.
Perhaps it’s also time to rethink the infrastructure itself. Is it possible to convert showrooms into ‘boxes’ or séparées? At least partially and perhaps also for a higher ticket price?
I have a close friend who works as warehouse manager for a very large plexiglass manufacturing company and they have matched last year’s total business revenue (which was a record year) in the last 90 days and are having to work 3 shifts round the clock to meet demand.
I also don’t forsee theaters here in the US reopening en masse until late 2021 or 2022 and by then who knows how many will even be able to open. Theaters will have been closed so long that many especially smaller ones won’t have enough money to reopen. I can totally see this pandemic being the death knell for the movie-theater experience.
I can see theaters being virtually destroyed by the pandemic and I can also see a huge rebound as people flock to the theaters to be in groups again. I think there will be a big thirst for human interaction.
I‘d be willing to pay, say, € 30 to 40 for a 48 hour rental. If NO TIME TO DIE was totally the bee‘s knees I might then pay that amount again for some kind of special edition Blu-ray - though I don’t actually watch these things much lately. So the film could ideally earn about € 80 to 100 from me. My contribution to the Corona effort.
I wouldn’t pay much for a permanent download, because downloading it at a resolution that would be acceptable for me would take forever on my absolutely horrendous internet connection. I would, however, pay a solid premium if they were to make a physical, 4K release available to those for whom streaming is not the most solid option. My suggestion would be to set it at a price point of $59.99, which is the price of a videogame. That industry has seemed to have done quite well during the pandemic in terms of sales, so a similar price point might get people on board if it were marketed in the correct manner, i.e. people were made aware of where the uptick in the price was going.
Just putting it out there for the Sony folk who may be reading the boards. Put Ghostbusters Afterlife out there like this, and I’ll drop quite a bit of money for it.
Absolutely. I wouldn’t even disagree if the studios put up some kind of combined fund to keep theatres afloat and donate a percentage of the price to that.
Sure, most cinemas are big chains having earned handsomely during the fat years. But they are a bubble that just burst with nothing really in it and the folks actually working there are now on the dole or worse. Start up some relief fund so the theatres can hibernate until 2022. If there’s no solution by then there’s not going to be a solution at all.
Instead German cinema owners push a new study claiming offices are more dangerous than cinemas since people would not speak in cinemas. Therefore the 1,5 m distance between seats should be reduced to 1 m.