When the sun sets at the box office of the 2020 movie, it will be hard to consider the numbers as a little less disastrous.
After five consecutive years of revenue in North America exceeding $ 11 billion, this year is expected to reach a nearly 40-year low of about $ 2.3 billion. This will be 80% less than last year according to data firm Comscore.
Globally, where markets have been able to recover more fully, ticket sales are likely to end between $ 11 and $ 12 billion. Last year, that total reached $ 42.5 billion. But, of course, 2020 is a year with a big asterisk.
“It’s a year like no other,” said Jim Orr, president of Universal Pictures ’national theater distribution. “We’ve never seen this small business in this industry.”
Outside of January and February, it is impossible to judge the box office of the year by pre-pandemic standards. The box office, on the whole, is pretty predictable in a normal year. But when cinemas closed on March 20, “everything went out the window,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore. “Unpredictability became the constant.”
Most American cinemas did not open for six consecutive months during the summer season, which generally accounts for about 40% of year-over-year earnings. Over the past two years, the summer film season has grossed more than $ 4.3 billion. This year it raised $ 176.5 million, much of which comes from movie theaters.
“The autocine became the hero of the summer,” Dergarabedian said.
When indoor cinemas began to reopen in late August and early September, it had limited capacity and limited output. Currently, about 35% of theaters are open in the US. UU. And some of the larger markets, including New York and Los Angeles, remain closed.
Although there has been a steady stream of new releases, the big box office hits have been few and far between. Some switched to streaming services, others became premium digital rentals, but most simply retired in 2021 and beyond.
Perhaps there is no more revealing fact than what 2020 was the first time in more than a decade without a Marvel movie. Walt Disney Co.’s superhero factory for the past two years topped the New Year’s charts with “Avengers: Endgame” and “Black Panther,” and has regularly had two or more films in the top ten.
As expected, the top 10 of 2020 is a bit chaotic and consists mainly of films from the first two months of the year. Sony’s Will Smith sequel, “Bad Boys for Life,” has remained in first place in North America since its release in January with $ 206.3 million. Globally, it ranks second after the Chinese film “The Eight Hundred,” the first time the world’s most important film originated outside of Hollywood.
The only films after the closing that reached the top 10 are “Tenet” by Christopher Nolan, in eighth place with $ 57.2 million and the family animated sequel “The Croods: A New Age”, which went debuted in Thanksgiving and has earned $ 30.8 million so far to put it in tenth place.
And in at least 15 films among the top 100 were retro releases, including “Hocus Pocus”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”.
“The positive side of movie theaters is that even though people had unlimited options at home, people were still looking for the movie theater,” Dergarabedian said. “People have a desire to get out of the house and have fun. That desire hasn’t changed, but the ability to do so was deeply limited.”
It has even changed the way premiere weekends are judged, once they are a reliable indicator of a film’s long-term prospects, and could remain so for a while.
“The instant gratification we used to offer on Sunday mornings after opening on a Friday? It probably won’t happen again for quite some time,” Orr said.
Theaters have adopted improved security protocols and have experimented with different ways to get people back in their seats, including renting private theaters, but attendance during the fall and winter remained limited.
“People go to the movies to escape. If you go to a movie theater where you have to wear a mask and you have to sit apart and you have to be very aware of your surroundings, that’s not how the theatrical experience, “said John Sloss, director of media consulting firm Cinetic. “To judge this year in terms of theater attendance, I think he’s doing a disservice to what’s really going on.”
Going to the movies in 2020 is the story of an industry that employs about 150,000 people struggling to stay afloat until normalcy returns, which everyone expects to happen even if it isn’t in the near future. Small movie theater owners will benefit a bit from the pandemic relief package.
But the effects on companies have been staggering and it may be some time before the full impact is known, although there have been some historic developments and commitments. Some innovations have been well received, such as Universal’s historic agreement with several exhibitors to shorten the theatrical window from 90 days to just 17 days in some cases. Others, like Warner Bros. ’decision to release all of their 2021 movies on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously, have failed.
It’s no secret that streaming services, whether subscription or on-demand, filled a big gap for movie fans looking for new content. While home choices will continue to compete with cinemas for the eyes and money of consumers, few believe they will be a coup de grace for cinemas. In general, studies do not seek to abandon the theatrical model, even if some priorities have shifted to transmission.
“I think there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel,” Orr said. “As vaccines continue to develop, I am 100% convinced that people will run back to cinemas when possible in their area. The model will not go away.”
Disney CEO Bob Chapek noted on the company’s recent investor day that they earned $ 13 billion at the box office in 2019.
“That’s not an easy thing to do,” Chapek said.
Last weekend, “Wonder Woman 1984,” which was available to air on HBO Max for free, also grossed $ 16.7 million in 2,100 U.S. theaters. That number would have been a disaster before. Because of the pandemic? It’s a record.