As the Covid scare is slowly dying down and the film industry slowly getting back on it’s feet, movie productions are in full swing while theaters have started accepting customers, with government’s permission. And some of the theaters in the U.S. have been open for a couple of months now. But with the government restrictions, potential blockbusters are suffering and movie production companies are pushing their films’ release dates, especially after witnessing what their domestic market had done to Christopher Nolan masterpiece ‘TENET’.
Christopher Nolan has been producing hits since his Batman days, way back in 2005. After his ‘Dark Knight Trilogy’ and ‘Inception’, Warner Bros. basically just gives him a blank check and lets him make anything he wants (and with good reason). Anything Nolan creates is (cinema) gold and his movie TENET was no exception. Themed around “time”, Nolan created a complete time based action-spy thriller in the form of TENET.
And for it’s part, the feature film has grossed $300 million globally this weekend; finally starting to make profit. But the domestic reception for the film has been poor, with under $50 million grossed throughout the entire country. It seems, people don’t feel safe going to theaters yet, and hence movie attendances are still low in the United States.
And these results have made production companies, especially Warner Bros. running scared. It makes sense in a way – if their best “product” ‘TENET’, is only getting profits after almost 20 days of running, then their other films probably will not start getting profits anytime soon after their release, that is if the films do not flop.
Films like ‘The Flash’, ‘Batman’, ‘Matrix’, ‘Shazam! 2’ and ‘Dune’ have all been given updated release dates while films like ‘Black Adam’ and ‘Minecraft’ have had their release dates removed. This decision has caused the second largest U.S theater chain, Regal to temporarily shut down their 663 theaters for a second time during the pandemic, in both the United States and Britain (it’s parent company Cineworld’s theaters). Late last week, Daniel Craig had announced that the latest James Bond flick ‘No Time To Die’ will be postponed as well.
If even theater chains are unable to keep their theaters open, we don’t see much small-scale theaters staying open for long. In India, Tamil Nadu alone has had to shut down almost a 100 theaters due to the lockdown. These solo theaters don’t stand a chance, especially if blockbuster films get removed from their release dates.