Studios, Theaters Brace for Tentpole Havoc If Strikes Linger Into Fall
Cinema owners are scrambling to figure out whether the major Hollywood studios will make drastic changes to their upcoming release…
Cinema owners are scrambling to figure out whether the major Hollywood studios will make drastic changes to their upcoming release calendars should there be no labor resolution.
Via The Hollywood Reporter:
The extraordinary success of Barbie and Oppenheimer was a needed shot of adrenaline for Hollywood and theater owners as domestic box office revenue hit $311.1 million over the July 21–23 frame, the fourth-biggest weekend of all time. Never in history has one movie opened to $100 million or more, and a second one to more than $50 million. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie strutted to a stupendous $162 million, while Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer earned an equally stunning $82.4 million, well ahead of all expectations for a three-hour biographical drama.
But will it be the last major cinematic event of 2023 if the actors and writers strikes aren’t resolved in the coming weeks and the big fall and winter tentpoles consider relocating?
The box office ecosystem is still incredibly fragile and has yet to return to pre-COVID levels of health. The domestic summer box office before Barbenheimer was down 7 percent from the same corridor in 2022, a disturbing trend. Now, after the July 21–23 weekend, it is up by a hair at least, or 1.1 percent, according to Comscore. Revenue year-to-date is running 16 percent ahead of 2022 but is still down nearly 19 percent from 2019. And summer 2023 is still down 14.4 percent from the same period in 2019.
Multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that theater owners are scrambling to figure out whether the major studios are going to rearrange their fall and winter tentpoles. Actors cannot promote any film that’s from a member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, meaning any streamer, major legacy studio or a specialty division such as Sony Pictures Classics, Searchlight or Focus Features (which are owned by Sony, Disney and Universal, respectively).
“This is a critical moment for cinemas. They cannot survive another version of the pandemic and the loss of big movies,” says one studio source. Nor can Hollywood, for that matter. “I don’t know if people who are sitting at the negotiating table are taking this seriously enough or understanding it,” adds another top studio source. “Maybe the producers have different agendas. Maybe if you are Netflix, you aren’t concerned about the box office.”
Ya’ think? It’s not just Netflix which doesn’t care about the theatrical movie business. As journalist and author Mark Harris noted:
Exactly! I just don’t get this at all. The legacy Hollywood movie studios (Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros.) do rely on box office revenues from movie theaters. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix do not.
This would seem to be a pretty fucking big difference in terms of their respective business agendas, especially since Disney, Paramount, and Universal are bleeding money from their dumb decision to leap into streaming.
Dollars generated from movies playing in theaters is actual revenue. The legacy studios both want and need that income.
Meanwhile the tech bro consortium of the AMPTP …
Eh, not so much.
Amazon: Let’s stream movies and TV to sell more toilet paper!
Apple: Let’s stream movies and TV to see more iPhones!
Netflix: Let’s stream movies and TV to induce users to stay home and watch us!
Apparently, the legacy studios are allowing the Silicon Valley companies, who have zero care or concern for the century-long history of theatrical movies, to dictate the terms of returning to the negotiating table.
Hence … no negotiations.
At the risk of squashing a promising return of business to movie theaters (see: Barbie and Oppenheimer)?
At the risk of decimating the entire theatrical movie business?
It. Just. Makes. No. Sense.
Maybe years from now, we’ll be privy to the internal discussions of the AMPTP companies during this strike and somehow what Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. will make sense.
But in a business where the companies want to, you know, make money, and the studios are about to leave hundreds of millions of box office revenues on the table as they push back release date after release date …
It feels like a suicide mission.
To read the rest of The Hollywood Reporter article, go here.
For the latest updates on the strike and news resources, go here.
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