Hollywood Starts Year With Clean, Blank Slate

The summer movie season generally brings in about $4 billion in box office revenue.

This past summer, however, it brought just $180 million in box office receipts as many movie theaters remained closed and anticipated blockbusters were delayed until this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“It was the pandemic,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with ComScore Inc. in Sherman Oaks. “That affected everything.” Last year, the U.S. box office revenue declined by 81 percent, to $2.2 billion from $11.4 billion in 2019. The global box office take decreased by 71 percent to $12.4 billion from a record $42.5 billion.

If not for the pandemic, which shut U.S. movie theaters down on March 20, the movie business was on track to a record domestic and global year. When theaters went dark 10 months ago, the box office was running ahead of where it was at the same point in 2019, Dergarabedian said.

“That is when we suddenly saw the beginning of this new unfortunate era for the box office,” he added.If there is some good news from the annus horribilis that just ended, it is that when big movies did open, they did fairly well.

Of course, those in the industry did have to recalibrate their thinking of what made a hit, Dergarabedian said.

“When ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ opened at almost $17 million while being simultaneously available, albeit on a paid service, HBO Max, to have that kind of box office was cause to be optimistic for the future of the business,” he said.

The sequel to 2017’s hit film from Warner Bros. Entertainment in Burbank, “Wonder Woman 1984” was released on Christmas Day and brought in $7.5 million on that first day. Another $9.2 million came in over the following two days.

Taken in the context of the current marketplace, where theaters in New York and California are not even open, Dergarabedian sees that first weekend for the DC superhero film as a win.

In fact, the $16.7 million that “Wonder Woman 1984” earned made it the highest grossing opening weekend film for the entire year.“Now the movie dropped pretty heavily, but that may be more because the reviews were tough on that film,” Dergarabedian continued. “But at least in terms of the experiential part of a going to a movie theater and seeing a brand-new blockbuster, that still has a lot of appeal for people.”  More evidence of the appeal of seeing movies on a big screen is in the from of box office revenue for drive-ins. They went from a range of 1 percent to 2 percent of box office take to a whopping 80 percent to 90 percent range as they were the only game in town for movie goers who wanted a communal, big screen experience – albeit from the safety and security of their car.

“That again showed the desire of people to see movies on the big screen,” Dergarabedian said.

As for the new year, the first big movie comes out on Jan. 29 – the Warner Bros. suspense thriller “The Little Things” with Denzel Washington and Jared Leto. That is followed by “Cinderella” in wide release on Feb. 5 from Sony Pictures. Other films getting a wide release in the next few months include “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Feb. 12), the animated/live action “Tom & Jerry” (Feb. 26), “The King’s Man” (March 12) and “The Soprano’s” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” (March 12).Dergarabedian, however, is skeptical that some of these dates will stick.“I am not a betting man, but I will bet many of these dates will still change, especially the ones that are earlier in the year,” he said.

Movie studios and theater owners are used to a very structured timeline when it comes to releasing films. There generally is a long lead time given to a new film, but last year there were examples of movies being moved weeks, sometimes days before they were to hit the theaters, Dergarabedian said.

“What was once an unthinkable way of doing business became the norm,” Dergarabedian explained. “Every time the pandemic shifted in terms of its impact, it affected the entire movie schedule.” The release schedule is among the challenges the film industry faces in the new year.

Another challenge is making sure there are enough theaters available to show new films.

Last year, some of the titles that were never released – including Marvel Entertainment’s “Black Widow,” now set for May 7 and the latest in the James Bond franchise, “No Time to Die,” coming out April 2 – faced the combination of a very limited theatrical marketplace and limited capacity in theaters that created a massive void, Dergarabedian said.

Without a lot of new content coming out, the studios were stuck, he added.

Many of the films, particularly the potential blockbusters, were pushed to this year and other films were released just to get them out. In many cases, that meant shifting them from a theatrical release to a streaming platform or having a shortened release in theaters before going to streaming, he said.

“All of these scenarios that would have been unthinkable a year before were becoming the norm,” Dergarabedian said.