With theatres having partially opened in several parts of the country few days ago, many filmmakers and production houses are forgetting one important fact that could cripple their movies, especially after cinemas start admitting 100% audience. But before we go into it, let us look at the state of the current situation.
People have started to slowly trickle into theaters to get the theatrical experience they have been missing out on for months, amidst the limited seating and pandemic-based precautions. With no new big-budget movies set to release anytime soon, or even during this year, theatres are forced to show low-to-medium budget films, films that released during coronavirus lockdown (a handful, at best) and/or films that were released just before the pandemic.
Like it was mentioned a little while back, no big budget film is set to release any time soon. This is because big production companies are afraid to take the risk of releasing their film while theaters are barely admitting even 50% audiences; and this is already causing issues. Due to the lockdown, at least a hundred theatres in the country were forced to shut down and now, without the attraction of the big films to entice viewers, more theatres are going to continue suffering. Big cinema chains can survive somehow (hopefully), but your local movie theatres are becoming stagnant without any new material and in the long run this can hurt the big production film companies as well.
Here is the thing – once this pandemic crisis dies down, and eventually cinemas will admit 100% audience members, one fact still remains – there will be almost eight months worth of big budget movies left to be released. So how will they get released? Even if a tight schedule of movie releases will be set, with one or two weeks gap set aside, there are still TOO MANY MOVIES.
The competition for viewership will be ridiculous. Add to the fact that, these films have been collecting dust for at least 5-6 months, and with interest rates of the loans piling up for these movies, nearly all these films will need to be certified hits, if any of these production houses don’t want to go into bankruptcy.
There is also the fact that theatre owners were marginalized during this pandemic. No cinema owner will compromise and in some cases will demand more percentage cuts for either distribution or playing in their cinemas (chains), as the options of showcasing movies during that period will be high.
The smart thing would be to do what Warner Bros. did with ‘TENET’. Sure, it took nearly a month for the film to start making profits, but it has been running non-stop, without any competition to slow down it’s run. And with the Indian cinemas slowly re-opening, we can expect ‘TENET’ to gain a boost, and other filmmakers should capitalize in this scant market. Because if they don’t, there is a real chance of film producers closing down shop from just this one significant loss.
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