RE: Movie Studios Perspective26 Jun 2020 17:27
Investroid, sure there's been some delays, but here's one of your recent posts in which you made some excellent, positive points and observations which perhaps you'd forgotten about and needed reminding of :
RE: Last Week25 May 2020 00:56
The chances of huge blockbusters going straight to Netflix or the like isn't likely to happen, even with social distancing in place in cinemas. There are several reasons for this but a few I can think of include:
1. Cinema is the pinacle of the movie entertainment experience. It simply cannot be replicated at home, period. I have an LG C9 OLED TV with a Q90R Dolby Atmos sound system and I would never give up a cinema experience to watch movies on my setup first. There is no comparison.
2. Streaming has so many disadvantages to consider alongside the advantages. You have to consider network bandwidth, video and sound compression issues, and finaly quality issues of home entertainment equipment. 4K isn't even ubiquous in homes yet. TVs are owned on average for 5-10 years per household. I certainly wouldn't want to watch a huge space opera like Interstellar or Avatar 2 for instance at home! The latter I want on IMAX 3D!
3. Studios make a killing through the big screen experiences as the cinema is the start of the value chain. It goes Cinema, Streaming, DvDs. Why cut out one big source of revenue to just two when you can have all three? By bypassing a theatrical release and going straight to a rental option, studios risk losing out on the combined revenue of having a theatrical release and a secondary digital rental window. Avengers Endgame made $2.8 Billion at the box office alone. Avatar 2 will likely beat it. Sure Trolls made $100m for Disney but how likely are Disney to replicate that with other releases. Also, its very likely that the numbers were helped by the fact everyone is stuck at home and have nothing better to do than stream stuff! It won't always be that way as lockdowns ease around the world.
4. Cinema viewership was increasing year on year for the last 4 years upto 2019, regardless of the popularity of streaming.
5. I remember reading somewhere that cinemas have on average a 15%-20% occupancy rate. It's very easy to make social distancing work with that.
6. Previous pandemics have shown that our love of theatre/cinema will never die.
Do I think social distancing will be damaging for cinema? - No.
Social distancing in cinemas when the average occupancy rate if 15-20% anyway shouldn't be difficult at all.
Plus social distancing is making other forms of entertainment less appealing. Holidays for instance are less attractive. Who wants to travel when your hotel spa and swimming pool is closed, when the buffet is closed. When the risk of illness or disease abroad is a a real risk. I think domestic enterainment such as the small pleasures of an amazing movie on the big screen are more attractive as a result. It's relatively cheap, relatively safe escapism and I for one cannot wait to watch
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