Is this the future of the cinema?
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“Things won’t change as much as they accelerate. While other crises reshaped the future, Covid-19 is just making the future happen faster.”
I read this quote from the No Mercy/No Malice blog by Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern. It’s an epiphany that’s been making rounds through seemingly every sector of the economy by the researchers, bloggers and journalist that postulate about industry trends.
And it’s a an epiphany ringing especially true for the feature film industry with two big announcements that dropped in the past month. First, Disney’s announcement that it will be releasing its $200+ million (most expensive movie ever directed by a female filmmaker) blockbuster Mulan on Disney+ on September 4th, accessible via a $30 rental fee. The second, AMC Theaters and Universal Studio’s announcement of a shortened exclusive theatrical window, from months to 17 days.
Everyone could predict that studios would eventually start releasing big budget films directly to their hot new streaming video platforms. After-all, Hollywood these days never miss a chance to copycat what Netflix is doing. We also knew it was only a matter of time before theaters lost the leverage to enforce the arbitrary theater release window.
Nobody could have predicted that either of these things would happen in 2020.
The question on a lot of minds now is whether these seismic shifts in cinema exhibition represent the beginning of the end of the cinema in cinemas. The reality is that cinemas have been fighting a long war, not just since the advent of digital streaming video but even further back in time. Indeed, for the past 40 years since technology brought films to the home en mass via VHS and Cable TV, cinemas have been fighting for survival against movies in the home.
What makes this moment different?
The technology available today has completely changed the power dynamic between movie studios, theater owners, and consumers. Today consumers can buy displays that provide the same or better image resolution (4K and 8K) and color quality (HDR) than is available at most cinemas. Devices like the Sonos Arc purports to provide a miniaturized implementation of best in class cinema surround sound in one easy to install package. On the content side, streaming video technology allows the major studios to bypass all the middle men (in Disney’s case) and create software that delivers content directly to their customers.
With this, cinemas are now on the losing side of their long fought war. They were always on the losing side. It was a war they never had a chance of winning. Old technology never wins against new technology. But losing this war doesn’t mean cinemas will disappear. Just like books didn’t go anywhere when e-books entered the stage. Rather, cinemas will transition away from being the primary way the masses experience feature films. Instead, the traditional cinema will primarily exist as event spaces for tentpole films and special film events.
This is a trend we’ve been seeing for the past decade, and we’ll see it much more now thanks to Covid-19 adding accelerant to existing industry trends, as Mr. Galloway suggests. We’ll see cineplexes closing down at a faster rate as theater chains search for a pivot. The theater release window will be abolished. Most films will land directly on streaming platforms. Premium Video on Demand (PVOD) will become more popular.
One more prediction. There will be new ways of watching films outside the home that don’t exist yet. It won’t be the type of cinema exhibition that we have now where as many people as possible are crammed into a large auditorium. It will be all the things we love about the technology that has allowed us to enjoy the cinema at home. And it will be social, an event, a shared experience. The things that made us fall in love with the cineplex. With Covid-19 delivering us the future of cinema exhibition today, it would be fitting that it accelerates the future of the cinema exhibition we’re hoping for tomorrow.
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