Effects of Coronavirus (COVID-19) On Entertainment & Tourism Industry

[Jerroddragon]

Studios pushed back hard against BetaMax and VHS; it worked out. Movies will find a way.

For sure, but Betamax doesn't cost ten bucks a month.

Netflix and many services like it were already making it hard for movie theaters to work, the only reason the last few years have been ok are Moviepass and then AMC alist. Without those even more people would not be seeing films.
Disney today said they are going to be focusing on Disney Plus....so I think we are going to see smaller productions for the next few years at least.

 

[OhHaiInternet95]

Seems almost primitive, but in the 50's and 60's early TV (and the earliest 50's tv sets were about 12 inch black & white screens) nearly KO'd the movie theater business. For a bit, the studios backed off of big budget movies in the late 60's and made some really good small budget films. Of course Jaws & Star Wars brought the big budgets roaring back. Bottom line. Don't write off movie theaters. They're an entertainment venue in themselves. They'll survive, and perhaps become stronger, and maybe a bit different. . Things work in cycles. Once covid is gone people will be eager for 'date' nights again, outside their homes, no matter the quality of their home entertainment systems.

It may be hard to predict how, but I agree, theaters will make a big comeback.

I know I’ll be going out A LOT when this is all over. For now, dinner and a movie out are the only two things I’ve been avoiding due to safety of being indoors with others for prolonged times—so you better believe I’m going to want to make up for lost time when this ends.

Sorry, I just don’t see theaters coming back for a variety of reasons.

 

[JoeCamel]

I was by Feld Entertainment this morning and it was about half normal in the lots so the ice and other shows should be in production soon. Question is will the arenas be ready for them and will people take their kids there for an afternoon or evening?

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

I feel the argument for "A Blockbuster has never done well on PVOD" isn't fair because it has never been tested, and no, I don't count Mulan. I don't believe its unfair to either because its not like every blockbuster has a major political controversy and protest against it, a very poor test. Same with Tenet, want to get people back to the movies? Well, releasing a PG-13 confusing espionage film is not the way to rally the country around theaters.

Im just waiting surprised that Soul is for free. I think the $30 premiere access thing was ridiculous, but if you asked families to pay $10? I bet they'd make $50 mill opening weekend at least. Surprised its just dropping on the service but if this is their new model, it makes sense.

I think we see a big one drop on VOD soon, whether it be an MCU/Disney film, or a DC films, or a major sequel, Saw, Idk, somethings gonna give and it'll be a much more proper "test" of the market. Should would've been perfect for that. I guess now we'll see if D+ numbers grow signifncalty or not, but Id pay up to $10 for a film like Soul.

 

[Alicia]

Sorry, I just don’t see theaters coming back for a variety of reasons.

We have the concept of widescreen movies thanks to the Television industry almost putting theaters out of business. The sweeping epics like Ben Hur presented in Vistavision and Lawrence of Arabia in Cinemascope.

If streaming (and Covid) are giving theaters a run for their money, they will either adapt or die. And given its last 110 year history, I'm putting my money on adapt.

There may be a lag time. There will be stories written about how the movie theater industry has died. But think about all those stories from the mid 1980s declaring the home video game industry dead after the Atari bust, but before the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted. And look at the home video game market now.

 

[JungleSkip]

We have the concept of widescreen movies thanks to the Television industry almost putting theaters out of business. The sweeping epics like Ben Hur presented in Vistavision and Lawrence of Arabia in Cinemascope.

If streaming (and Covid) are giving theaters a run for their money, they will either adapt or die. And given its last 110 year history, I'm putting my money on adapt.

There may be a lag time. There will be stories written about how the movie theater industry has died. But think about all those stories from the mid 1980s declaring the home video game industry dead after the Atari bust, but before the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted. And look at the home video game market now.

Until Theaters 1)Improve the experience and 2)Don't feel like a complete ripoff, they will continue to decline.

Even the "highest box office numbers ever" we've been getting recently come from fewer and fewer tickets sold.

 

[Joe]

You know when I thought Avatar 3 and later would go directly to D+ this wasn’t exactly how I had it planned out...

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

We have the concept of widescreen movies thanks to the Television industry almost putting theaters out of business. The sweeping epics like Ben Hur presented in Vistavision and Lawrence of Arabia in Cinemascope.

If streaming (and Covid) are giving theaters a run for their money, they will either adapt or die. And given its last 110 year history, I'm putting my money on adapt.

There may be a lag time. There will be stories written about how the movie theater industry has died. But think about all those stories from the mid 1980s declaring the home video game industry dead after the Atari bust, but before the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted. And look at the home video game market now.

I think what we see is less theaters, but not a dead experience. Im in Maine, grew up in NH. Not hot spots for Movie going. In NH where I grew up, city of 85K had 3 movie theaters all with at least 10 screens, but no more than 12.

In Maine, there is 1 cinema in downtown Portland, a Cinemagic in South Portland, as well as a 16 screen theatre in Westbrook (basically right outside Portland).

I expect in places like these, for there to just be 1 location after all this. Who knows who owns this theaters as that is an entirely different discussion, but this is the trend I expect to see more of, and less big 16 screen theaters to boot.

As I said in April and Ill say now, with how much safer and easier it'll be for the next few years to complete animated projects, I suspect the way family movie going has been has now forever changed. THAT is the biggest change of all of this. The price for families makes sense, these studios can produce and finish these films now (not happening for many live action films), and again this has not been tested at wide scale. If anything, I see this being a big change. We already have 2 Pixar films and 2 Dreamworks films going straight to VOD (Onward more by circumstance), this trend I just don't see ending sadly.

Theaters may become more for adult crowds, is more my overall longterm guess. We shall see.

 

[JoeCamel]

We have the concept of widescreen movies thanks to the Television industry almost putting theaters out of business. The sweeping epics like Ben Hur presented in Vistavision and Lawrence of Arabia in Cinemascope.

If streaming (and Covid) are giving theaters a run for their money, they will either adapt or die. And given its last 110 year history, I'm putting my money on adapt.

There may be a lag time. There will be stories written about how the movie theater industry has died. But think about all those stories from the mid 1980s declaring the home video game industry dead after the Atari bust, but before the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted. And look at the home video game market now.

Until Theaters 1)Improve the experience and 2)Don't feel like a complete ripoff, they will continue to decline.

Even the "highest box office numbers ever" we've been getting recently come from fewer and fewer tickets sold.

Holographic theatres with good holograms. An experience you can't get at home. Or something very high tech where the "movie" was produced for this format

 

[OLSinFLA]

We have the concept of widescreen movies thanks to the Television industry almost putting theaters out of business. The sweeping epics like Ben Hur presented in Vistavision and Lawrence of Arabia in Cinemascope.

If streaming (and Covid) are giving theaters a run for their money, they will either adapt or die. And given its last 110 year history, I'm putting my money on adapt.

There may be a lag time. There will be stories written about how the movie theater industry has died. But think about all those stories from the mid 1980s declaring the home video game industry dead after the Atari bust, but before the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted. And look at the home video game market now.

As a cinemaphile I just have to correct you :D Lawrence of Arabia was filmed in Super Panavision 70, which is 70mm film without a widescreen stretch (so it's 2:1). Ben-Hur, on the other hand was MGM Camera 65 (later Ultra Panavision) a 70mm film with an anamorphic compression which lead to a ridiculous 2.75:1 (thats the image is nearly 3 times as wide as it was tall). VistaVision was a short-lived process where 35mm film was run sideways producing an image of 1.85:1, or 1.77:1 Currently proceesses are either Panavision (2.40:1), Matted (just use a portion of the frame - 1.85:1) or Super 35 (Use only half a 35mm negative but print it widescreen to 2.40:1). Panavision is a direct decendent of CinemaScope (trademarked by Fox as 'the poor man's Cinerama') - Panavision made lenses of CinemaScope, but eventually improved on them and stuck out on their own. Ultra Panavision had been retired in 1966, but was dragged back out for The Hateful Eight. The lenses proved to be so good at given a certain image, Avengers: Endgame, Infinity War and Rogue One all used Ultra Panavision (although cropped down to 2:40:1). Finally there's IMAX which in the pre-digital days was 70mm film run sideways in both filming and projecting. The grandaddy of the all was Cinerama which used 3 35mm films on a highly curved screen - obviously that was very imprecfect but anyone who has seen it will tell you nothing today even comes close. And one piece of final trivia - 70mm widescreen was attempted in the 1930s (Fox Grandeur was one) but the recent intoduction of sound plus depression but an end to it. Some early 70mm films do survive though including an early John Wayne film.

This completely useless post (lol) was brought to you by someone who studied to be a cinematographer. For a in depth look at widesceen, there's an excellent website (widescreenmuseum.com) One final bit ; TV's are 16:9 because when all common formats are added (4:3, 2:40, 1.85) it creates the least amount of black bars, although 21:9 (essentially Panavision) monitors are becoming popular.

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

As a cinemaphile I just have to correct you :D Lawrence of Arabia was filmed in Super Panavision 70, which is 70mm film without a widescreen stretch (so it's 2:1). Ben-Hur, on the other hand was MGM Camera 65 (later Ultra Panavision) a 70mm film with an anamorphic compression which lead to a ridiculous 2.75:1 (thats the image is nearly 3 times as wide as it was tall). VistaVision was a short-lived process where 35mm film was run sideways producing an image of 1.85:1, or 1.77:1 Currently proceesses are either Panavision (2.40:1), Matted (just use a portion of the frame - 1.85:1) or Super 35 (Use only half a 35mm negative but print it widescreen to 2.40:1). Panavision is a direct decendent of CinemaScope (trademarked by Fox as 'the poor man's Cinerama') - Panavision made lenses of CinemaScope, but eventually improved on them and stuck out on their own. Ultra Panavision had been retired in 1966, but was dragged back out for The Hateful Eight. The lenses proved to be so good at given a certain image, Avengers: Endgame, Infinity War and Rogue One all used Ultra Panavision (although cropped down to 2:40:1). Finally there's IMAX which in the pre-digital days was 70mm film run sideways in both filming and projecting. The grandaddy of the all was Cinerama which used 3 35mm films on a highly curved screen - obviously that was very imprecfect but anyone who has seen it will tell you nothing today even comes close. And one piece of final trivia - 70mm widescreen was attempted in the 1930s (Fox Grandeur was one) but the recent intoduction of sound plus depression but an end to it. Some early 70mm films do survive though including an early John Wayne film.

This completely useless post (lol) was brought to you by someone who studied to be a cinematographer. For a in depth look at widesceen, there's an excellent website (widescreenmuseum.com) One final bit ; TV's are 16:9 because when all common formats are added (4:3, 2:40, 1.85) it creates the least amount of black bars, although 21:9 (essentially Panavision) monitors are becoming popular.

Not a useless post whatsoever, I learned A LOT from this!!!!

 

[Teebin]

Can you imagine watching “The Lighthouse” on a 21:9 screen. It drove me bonkers on 16:9!

 

[RevFreako]

I don't think theaters are going to die completely. What IS going to happen is that as studios shift their focus to streaming, theaters are no longer going to be riding herd on how distribution is handled, release windows, etc., things that they've had too much control over for some time. They'll get past COVID, but then they have a much different "adapt or die" concern to face.

 

[ThemeParks4Life]

Can you imagine watching “The Lighthouse” on a 21:9 screen. It drove me bonkers on 16:9!

I saw The Lighthouse on a 21:9 screen without screen masking when it came out last year. The lack of masking at multiplexes has made me used to pillar/letterboxing unfortunately.

 

[TheGentTrent]

You know when I thought Avatar 3 and later would go directly to D+ this wasn’t exactly how I had it planned out...

I get that this was a tongue-in-cheek joke, but James Cameron would never allow that to happen. He’s among the old guard (Spielberg, C. Nolan) who believe in the power of theatrical releases. If Disney dumped any of his movies to Disney+ or VOD, he would fly into a characteristic rage and probably never work with them again.

 

[lowbudget]

This should be a catalyst to push theatres in a new direction, as someone mentioned earlier they are selling less and less tickets each year. The current industry model is a dead man walking. I really believe that the new theatre experience will be something similar to Alamo. Smaller, better regulated crowds, with a higher level movie going experience. To a lot of people, myself included, the worst part of going to a movie is the other people around you. I'd pay a 50% premium for a better experience. There will always be a market for a cineplex, but the market for a proper theatre experience is largely untapped.

 

[RevFreako]

I get that this was a tongue-in-cheek joke, but James Cameron would never allow that to happen. He’s among the old guard (Spielberg, C. Nolan) who believe in the power of theatrical releases. If Disney dumped any of his movies to Disney+ or VOD, he would fly into a characteristic rage and probably never work with them again.

I get that this was a tongue-in-cheek joke, but James Cameron would never allow that to happen. He’s among the old guard (Spielberg, C. Nolan) who believe in the power of theatrical releases. If Disney dumped any of his movies to Disney+ or VOD, he would fly into a characteristic rage and probably never work with them again.

There's a reason Nolan is the youngest member of that crowd.

 

[Grabnar]

This should be a catalyst to push theatres in a new direction, as someone mentioned earlier they are selling less and less tickets each year. The current industry model is a dead man walking. I really believe that the new theatre experience will be something similar to Alamo. Smaller, better regulated crowds, with a higher level movie going experience. To a lot of people, myself included, the worst part of going to a movie is the other people around you. I'd pay a 50% premium for a better experience. There will always be a market for a cineplex, but the market for a proper theatre experience is largely untapped.

Some of the newly renovated Regal theaters are trying out these new formats. One of the local ones has 4DX and the ScreenX as well as their homebrewed version of Dolby vision, so it's not like they're unaware that they need to adapt to survive, even before all of this.

 

[RevFreako]

Some of the newly renovated Regal theaters are trying out these new formats. One of the local ones has 4DX and the ScreenX as well as their homebrewed version of Dolby vision, so it's not like they're unaware that they need to adapt to survive, even before all of this.

I don't think the screen format is really what things will turn on - most people are blissfully ignorant that there's a difference between what their megaplex labels Imax and so-called "TRUE Imax." That's not what needs to change.

 

[Joe]

I get that this was a tongue-in-cheek joke, but James Cameron would never allow that to happen. He’s among the old guard (Spielberg, C. Nolan) who believe in the power of theatrical releases. If Disney dumped any of his movies to Disney+ or VOD, he would fly into a characteristic rage and probably never work with them again.

Considering how much time and money he's pissed away over the years, if Avatar 2 doesn't do at least the same business then they'll tell him to stomp sand.