2020 will officially go down in history as the worst year for the world at large. It took a pandemic for us to realise the ephemeral nature of everything we take for granted.
Year 2020 turned out to be especially harsh on the entertainment industry, which found itself reeling from setbacks, financial disasters, untimely shocking deaths, and what nots. We, at Binged, have compiled a list of all the events, happenings and shocks that brought the mighty entertainment industry — the abode of glamour and all things nice and sweet — to its knees.
Here goes –
1. The theatre shutdown –
As the pandemic reached staggering proportions, theatres were the first public spaces shut down by governments everywhere. The move proved catastrophic for film industries across the globe. Important films such as Laxmii Bomb, ’83, No Time To Die, Black Widow, Fast And Furious 9, among scores of others, had to cancel or put off their theatrical release. Numerous films opted to release on streaming platforms instead of waiting for theatres to reopen. However, that again proved counterproductive. None of the movies released on streaming were able to strike a chord with audiences. All were roundly bashed, save for a very few such as Tamil film Soorarai Pottru which released on Amazon Prime Video.
But this is not the only way that big budget, big ticket films like Laxmii have suffered. The loss of revenue for them is massive. If Laxmmi Bomb, renamed Laxmii, would have released in theatres, it would have easily minted a minimum of 200 crores in ticket sales alone. Not to say, the huge revenue earned by theatres in the sale of food and beverages such as popcorn, samosas and cola. Yes, the shutdown of cinemas is the worst thing that could have happened to the entertainment industry; and so, yes, 2020 is the worst year ever for the industry.
2. Permanent closure of single screen theatres and several bigger theatre chains –
Theatres are struggling to stay afloat amidst the theatre shutdown and subsequent lack of revenue. While bigger chains like PVR and Inox have pulled through the worst case scenarios, smaller theatres have borne the brunt of the pandemic. Faced with financial crunch, many standalone theatres have permanently downed their shutters. The popular, 50-year old Shanti theatre, and the Galaxy theatre in Hyderabad shut down permanently, along with three other well-known theatres. The 84-year-old Central Plaza theatre in Mumbai also shut down permanently. MBO Cinemas, the third largest cinema chain operator in Malaysia, closed down forever.
3. Untimely deaths of popular Bollywood and Hollywood stars –
2020 will be notorious in the history of cinema for taking away scores of top stars, both in Hollywood and Bollywood. While we in India lost gems such as Irrfan Khan, Rishi Kapoor, S P Balasubramanyam, Soumitra Chatterjee, Saroj Khan, Vadivel Balaji, Chiranjeevi Sarja, Nishikant Kamat, Wajid Khan, Rahat Indori, Jagdeep, Nimmi, Kumkum, fashion designer Wendell Rodricks, Telugu actors Jaya Prakash Reddy and Kosuri Venugopal, Hollywood lost stalwarts such as Sean Connery, Chadwick Boseman, Naya Rivera, Kirk Douglas, Kelly Preston, Nick Cordero, Caroline Flack, among others, as also NBA star Kobe Bryant. Some beloved stars we lost to Covid-19, others to disease, and quite a few to stress-related cardiac events.
4. Shocking suicides in showbiz –
2020 will be remembered as the year that saw the devastating deaths by suicide of scores of entertainment industry celebrities. While all the deaths were shocking, the most calamitous of them all was that of popular and well-loved Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput. It is a loss we can never come to terms with or recover from. Manmeet Grewal, Asif Basra, Sameer Sharma, Tamil actor Thennarasu, Telugu TV actress Sravani Kondapally, Tamil actress Chitra, digital personality Byron Bernstein, reality TV star Caroline Flack, Japanese stars Hana Kimura, Haruma Miura and Yūko Takeuchi, among others, were some of the other celebrities we lost to deaths by suicide in 2020. The year proved to be a disaster for those with mental health issues, aggravating their situations beyond repairable measure.
5. The Quibi Implosion –
Quibi became the only streaming platform ever, to launch with huge fanfare, and then fold up within six months of launch. The platform had the backing of big names, bigger money and tonnes of goodwill. Yet, it went belly up sooner than anyone could have expected. And the blame for it lies somewhat on the crappy year that is year 2020. Designed as an app that delivered short, under-ten-minutes pieces of content to be consumed on the go, the idea failed to take off amongst consumers who were all stuck at home, self-isolating in the pandemic. No one was on the go, and thus, no one was interested in Quibi. And soon enough, poof! Quibi had imploded on its own grandiose plans. However, it was a deafening implosion, the repercussions of which will be felt in the times to come.
6. Shutdown of streaming platform HOOQ
Indian OTT viewers were left in the lurch when popular streaming platform HOOQ abruptly filed for liquidation and shut its operations around the end of April. HOOQ was the only platform that streamed well-loved CW shows such as Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, Legends Of Tomorrow, etc in India, along with exclusive content from Miramax, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures. None of these shows has been picked up for streaming in India by other streamers, thus leaving fans of the shows to watch them on conventional TV, as and when they arrive.