After months of Tinsel Town struggling with the impact on business as a result of COVID-19 closures, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has relented and will be allowing movie exhibitors to open up their theaters as soon as March 5, but it comes with conditions.
Theaters will be able to sell movie tickets with the limitation of 50 sold per viewing screen and at 25% capacity overall, according to Deadline. Of course, all of the COVID-19 stipulations must be enforced, including the practice of social distancing and wearing face masks. The breaking news immediately inflicted an upward movement for AMC and Cinemark stocks. AMC saw a 15% gain, while Cinemark reached a nearly 8% increase on Monday.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, most films have found their resting place on streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and more. Later in the year, the opening of states such as Nevada, Texas, Florida, and Georgia also gave rise to revenue streams in ticket sells, but were very minimized due to many of the films being re-releases, limited releases or having prolonged residencies.
Drive-in theaters made a killing, but also struggled with accessing new content from the studios. While it seems a bit safer to watch films at drive-ins because of its embedded social distancing and open space environment, there’s simply not enough drive-ins in the United States to accommodate the millions of moviegoers on a consistent basis. According to Statista.com, there were a total of 321 drive-in cinemas in 2020 — certainly not as many sites as the 4,000+ theaters around the world.
Also on the top of Hollywood’s worries is whether people will feel safe going to public theaters so soon. Since the new year has begun, it appears many moviegoers are still in limbo or simply too occupied with real-life situations to be concerned with buying tickets to a movie.
The Marksman, starring Katheryn Winnick, Liam Neeson, and Teresa Ruiz, was one of the first films in 2021 to have a wide release, but the implications of COVID-19 hindered grosses with a ceiling of $11.4 million domestically and $3.8 million internationally.
Another wide release, The Little Things, starring a stellar cast that includes Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, and Chris Bauer, made more impact internationally than the former with a $8.4 million international imprint, but was marked with a similar domestic gross at $11.8 million. While some of the hit to box office grosses can indeed be attributed to same-day releases on streaming platforms, there’s no denying that the general public still possess a distrust in public health conditions.
It’s still ironic that the film industry is barely holding its head above water. With all the money that has been made since the inception of Hollywood, one outside the business would think it fairly odd that the industry would collapse in such a small time range of one year — or alternately, would not have enough resources to sustain its life cycle until the pandemic passed, whether that be a couple of years — but clearly, that seems to be the case.
