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Four Ways This Summer Is a Huge Test for Movie Theaters
June 4, 2021
By Anne Thompson
Ms. Thompson is an editor at large at IndieWire and the author of “The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System.”
The first sign that moviegoers were ready to return to theaters came when “Godzilla vs. Kong” stomped into cinemas at the end of March. Even though it also streamed on HBO Max, the movie made $98 million in North American theaters and $436 million worldwide. That was welcome news after a pandemic year that was terrible for movie theaters.
Then, the pent-up demand exploded last week over the Memorial Day holiday with Paramount’s “A Quiet Place Part II,” which was exclusive to theaters and made about $57 million over four days, and Disney’s villain origin myth “Cruella,” which was also available on Disney+ for $29.99 and made $26.5 million in theaters over the same period. While some distributors argue that Disney left as much as $10 million on the table by splitting its audience with streaming, no other movie that opened in theaters and streamed at the same time has performed as well as “Cruella.”
Here are four reasons a return to theaters and moviegoing isn’t a sure thing.
1. The studios are calling the shots.
The halcyon days when top theater chains could threaten not to play any movie that violated their 90-day exclusive are gone. Now theaters have to take what they can get, like Warner Bros.’ 2021 simultaneous releases in theaters and on HBO Max and Universal’s “The Boss Baby” sequel “Family Business,” even if it’s available on the Peacock streaming service.
Some movies will still be exclusive to theaters, including the “Fast and Furious” franchise juggernaut “F9” (June 25). Studio bosses are not looking out for theaters — they’re attending to their own bottom lines — but they still need them.
“Nobody is friends in this business,” said Patrick Corcoran, a spokesman for the National Association of Theater Owners. “It’s all dollars and cents.”
2. Streaming is king.
The theaters believed that Disney would always be there for them. Every year, it releases tent-pole movies from Marvel (“The Avengers” franchise), Lucasfilm (“Star Wars” films) and Pixar (“The Incredibles”) — big-budget movies that are expected to compensate the studio for its less profitable releases. Those films can yield as much as $1 billion each in global box office. Of the 47 movies in the past 25 years that have crossed that magic threshold, Disney released 26. Whether the studio is temporarily making up for pandemic revenue shortfalls or leaning into Wall Street’s current love affair with streaming, theater owners are reeling from the news that some Pixar titles are skipping multiplexes altogether. Pixar has released 23 animated feature films to date — all smash hits.
It makes sense that Pete Docter’s Oscar-winning “Soul” went direct to streaming on Dec. 25 during the pandemic. But the next Pixar release, “Luca,” is going straight to more than 100 million Disney+ subscribers on June 18 — with no surcharge. Losing a Pixar movie at the theater isn’t about just the loss in grosses but also the family audience that buys overpriced popcorn and soda.
Sure, Marvel’s long-delayed “Black Widow,” starring Scarlett Johansson, will drive a huge weekend at the box office on July 9, but as with “Cruella,” theaters are sharing audiences with Disney+. Now all the major studios except Sony have launched streaming sites to compete with Netflix, and Amazon has bought the MGM studio. The streamers are fiercely competing with one another for content. They have huge maws to feed.
3. Older moviegoers are missing in action.
The pandemic scared seniors out of enclosed interior spaces. So far, younger audiences are driving the return to movies, but independent cinemas, especially, need older customers to come back if they are to thrive. Art films play in theaters over weeks and months to build awareness and value. That doesn’t happen without theaters. “Trying to get back your audience is a marketing challenge,” said Mabel Tam, head film buyer for the independent Landmark Theaters chain. “Every week gets a little better.”
Still, the fall lineup should pull grown-ups back, with films like Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” (Nov. 24) and “Downton Abbey 2” (Dec. 22). “The content through 2022 is a stocked cupboard,” said Chris Aronson, president of domestic theatrical distribution at Paramount. “No one is running out of food.”
4. The theater business is not growing.
We will never see another $11 billion year at the domestic box office — five in a row passed that benchmark, ending with 2019’s $11.3 billion. Over the next three years, fallout from consolidation, debt and leases will continue to shutter many cinemas. The strong will survive. The Alamo Drafthouse chain, for one, has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and plans to open new theaters.
But now more than ever, studios and theaters need synergy. Distributors can now create custom release patterns for their films. They’re learning what works, like getting the most bang from their marketing buck and reaching home customers with the right price points. And theaters are looking for alternate content, such as opera and sports events. “We’re all on a learning curve right now,” said Lisa Bunnell, the president of domestic distribution at Focus Features. If they know what’s good for them, studios and streamers alike should look past Wall Street smoke and mirrors. “Audiences brand a title,” Mr. Corcoran said. “Look at the Oscars and Golden Globes. They didn’t tune in because the movies were out of the conversation.”
Nothing builds value for a title like three weeks in a movie theater with strong word of mouth.
Anne Thompson is an editor at large at IndieWire and the author of “The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System.”
I Wrote James Bond Movies. The Amazon-MGM Deal Gives Me Chills.
By John Logan
Mr. Logan, a three-time Oscar nominee for screenplays, was a co-writer on the James Bond movies “Skyfall” and “Spectre.”
So, Amazon now owns 50 percent of 007. With the acquisition of MGM and its movie catalog, the online retail giant bought into the James Bond franchise. When I heard this news, a chill went through me. Having worked as a writer on “Skyfall” and “Spectre,” I know that Bond isn’t just another franchise, not a Marvel or a DC; it is a family business that has been carefully nurtured and shepherded through the changing times by the Broccoli/Wilson family. Work sessions on “Skyfall” and “Spectre” were like hearty discussions around the dinner table, with Barbara Broccoli and her half brother Michael Wilson letting all the unruly children talk. Every crazy aunt or eccentric uncle was given a voice. We discussed and debated and came to a resolution, as families must, with no outside voices in the room. When you work on Bond movies, you’re not just an employee. You’re part of that family.
The reason we’re still watching Bond movies after more than 50 years is that the family has done an extraordinary job of protecting the character through the thickets of moviemaking and changing public tastes. Corporate partners come and go, but James Bond endures. He endures precisely because he is being protected by people who love him.
The current deal with Amazon gives Barbara and Michael, who own 50 percent of the Bond empire, ironclad assurances of continued artistic control. But will this always be the case? What happens if a bruising corporation like Amazon begins to demand a voice in the process? What happens to the comradeship and quality control if there’s an Amazonian overlord with analytics parsing every decision? What happens when focus groups report they don’t like Bond drinking martinis? Or killing quite so many people? And that English accent’s a bit alienating, so could we have more Americans in the story for marketability?
If you think I’m exaggerating, consider some internal polling data that decreed that the movie adaptation of “Sweeney Todd” — for which I wrote the screenplay — would be much more popular without all those annoying songs.
From my experience, here’s what happens to movies when such concerns start invading the creative process: Everything gets watered down to the most anodyne and easily consumable version of itself. The movie becomes an inoffensive shadow of a thing, not the thing itself. There are no more rough edges or flights of cinematic madness. The fire and passion are gradually drained away as original ideas and voices are subsumed by commercial concerns, corporate oversight and polling data. I wonder whether such an outré studio movie as “Vertigo” would have survived if such pressures existed then. Not to mention radical films like “Citizen Kane,” “The Red Shoes,” “Cabin in the Sky” and “Bonnie and Clyde.”
Why worry about Amazon? It’s not that it’s a bad-faith company. It’s that it’s a global technology company with a more than $1.6 trillion market capitalization that produces on a mass scale and is obsessed with the “customer experience.” It’s not necessarily a champion or guardian of artistic creativity or original entertainment. In the context of the larger company, Amazon Prime Video is not chiefly about artists. It’s about attracting and retaining customers. And when bigger companies start having a say in iconic characters or franchises, the companies tend to want more, not better, and the quality differential can vary wildly, project to project. (See: the rapidly expanding “Star Wars” franchise at Disney and the DC Comics franchises of Superman, Batman and others at Warner Bros.)
As a screenwriter, I’ve had the opportunity to work on several big studio movies. Those that emerge with meaning, with art and uniqueness intact, are always those that are protected from undue corporate influence — those occasions when the moviemakers can work in a protected environment.
In my case, films like “Gladiator,” “The Aviator,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Rango” and “Hugo” were all made from passion and without ever worrying about synergy or spinoffs or cross-platform marketing. Artistic control and stewardship are especially vital to big movies, where the voices are many and the stakes huge.
When we were making “Gladiator,” it took a giant like the director Ridley Scott to fend off the countless naysayers who predicted disaster would befall our “sword-and-sandal epic.” They questioned everything, especially the ending: Isn’t it a bummer? How can we have a sequel if you kill the hero? And is there any way we could avoid an R rating? But Ridley believed in the story we were telling and how we were telling it, so he resolutely kept the commercial concerns and noisy corporate voices outside the door.
So too Martin Scorsese with our Howard Hughes biopic, “The Aviator.” A subject like Mr. Hughes naturally invites controversy and high emotion. The push from outside the creative circle was for the lurid and sensational, but Marty stared down every challenge that threatened our more humane version of the story. He sometimes said, “Yes, that would make an interesting Howard Hughes movie, but it’s not our Howard Hughes movie.” Significantly, in the case of both “Gladiator” and “The Aviator,” we were working with brave producers who defended our choices. They cared more about the art than about the bottom line.
When you’re making a movie, you need a champion to fight battles like these. Barbara and Michael are the champions of James Bond. They keep the corporate and commercial pressures outside the door. Nor are they motivated by them. That’s why we don’t have a mammoth Bond Cinematic Universe, with endless anemic variations of 007 sprouting up on TV or streaming or in spinoff movies. The Bond movies are truly the most bespoke and handmade films I’ve ever worked on. That’s why they are original, thorny, eccentric and special. They were never created with lawyers and accountants and e-commerce mass marketing pollsters hovering in the background.
This is also why they can afford to be daring. Here’s an example from “Skyfall” — my favorite day working on the movie, in fact. Sam Mendes, the director, and I marched into Barbara and Michael’s office, sat at the family table and pitched the first scene between Bond and the villain, Raoul Silva. Now, the moment 007 first encounters his archnemesis is often the iconic moment in a Bond movie, the scene around which you build a lot of the narrative and cinematic rhythms. (Think about Bond first meeting Dr. No or Goldfinger or Blofeld, all classic scenes in the franchise.) Well, Sam and I boldly announced we wanted to do this pivotal scene as a homoerotic seduction. Barbara and Michael didn’t need to poll a focus group. They didn’t need to vet this radical idea with any studio or corporation — they loved it instantly. They knew it was fresh and new, provocative in a way that keeps the franchise contemporary. They weren’t afraid of controversy. In my experience, not many big movies can work with such freedom and risky joy. But with the Broccoli/Wilson family at the helm, Bond is allowed to provoke, grow and be idiosyncratic. Long may that continue.
James Bond has survived the Cold War, Goldfinger, Jaws, disco and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, several times. And I can only hope that the powers that be at Amazon recognize the uniqueness of what they just acquired and allow and encourage this special family business to continue unobstructed.
Bond’s not “content,” and he’s not a mere commodity. He has been a part of our lives for decades now. From Sean Connery to George Lazenby to Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton to Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig, we all grew up with our version of 007, so we care deeply about him.
Please let 007 drink his martinis in peace. Don’t shake him, don’t stir him.
John Logan co-wrote the screenplays for the James Bond films “Skyfall” and “Spectre.” He was nominated for Academy Awards for best original screenplay for “The Aviator” and “Gladiator” and for best adapted screenplay for “Hugo.” He won the Tony Award for best play for “Red.”
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A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2021, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Even James Bond Needs Protection.
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