One Matinee Ticket for Coronapocalypse, Please

I’ve probably spent the better part of my adult life in the continued embrace of the cinema. Whether its heading off to a brick and mortar building to watch or rent a movie, or popping in a classic at home, its the remedy for just about any ailment. Have a bad day at work? Why not let Will Ferrell cheer you up. Feeling a bit nostalgic for the days of a bygone era in your life? Take a DVD trip to the old Sandlot and make a s’more. Whatever the diagnosis turns out to be, there’s probably a movie readily available for prescription to chase away what ails you. And while that sentiment definitely still holds true in our current climate, the virus, in more ways than one, is very different and the symptoms are changing the proverbial game in major ways.

I honestly don’t really know what day of quarantine we are presently in at this very moment. To be honest I’m having a bit of trouble remembering the date without checking my phone or really thinking about it. Essentially the way of life I knew just a few weeks ago has halted before my very eyes in ways I’ve never witnessed. There’s a real pull for it to scare me but the resolve has to be deeper. It’s easy to lean on the power of positive thinking or pithy little posters meant to keep our spirits up in uncertain times. But resolve isn’t something you just manufacture to chase away the peripheral shadows trying to darken our days. Resolve can be a great many things. Resolve is a kind word to a stranger that brings a smile. Resolve is a helpful (recently washed and heavily sanitized) hand in the right time to make somebody else’s load a little lighter, if even for just that extra mile. Whatever form or fashion we choose to identify exactly how resolve carries us on to the next stage, we have it. But as a Cinemaster I’m sitting here right now and I’m very curious what the next stage my magical world of motion pictures will look like in the rear view mirror of this current trial. I suppose I should look around and examine the changes that I’ve already witnessed to try and gather where any clairvoyant notations might be hiding.

First off is a pretty big one for me. I can’t actually go to a theater right now. I mean, I could probably drive over to the parking lot of one if I felt particularly desperate but as it stands, I’m not to that level of mourning just yet. But even if I were to make such a burdened trek, the parking lot is as far as I would get. There is no admittance. There are no ticket sales. There’s no popcorn, candy or soda machines in operation. You couldn’t find a uniformed teenager, apathetic, overtly polite or otherwise, to save your life. The entire operation has been suspended until further notice and this is really the biggest and first step in changing the way this picture gets painted. People have been conversational about how the movie theater experience is on the decline. And while I would agree in some instances, we’ve been phasing out newspapers for a couple decades now and they don’t seem to be erased from the lexicon just yet. So I do still have faith in my multiplex. I don’t know how things will continue to change and evolve even after this crisis ends. I was just reading earlier this evening about how China has actually begun the process of reopening theaters in several areas, about 500 or so at present. Attendance is dismal, as one would expect. Just because the doors are open does not mean that fears have been completely eradicated just yet. And I’m not totally sure what would even be playing, given the convoluted nature of production studios and their global endeavors right now. In the days ahead I do wonder if the ways we are getting creative to bring content to the masses in the duration will continue to evolve our delivery methods and move towards a real thinning of theaters.

‘No Time To Die’ pushed to November

While I lament the fact that my theaters are closed at the moment, it does create a very unique vacuum of alternatives to muddle through in consuming content from the Hollywood beast. With the unprecedented closure of our traditional venue for new releases, many studios are finding alternative methods of giving the people the products they’ve already promised. In the early stages of this Coronapocalypse I was genuinely shocked when I found out that James Bond, the preeminent spy himself, was seeking out a whole new release date much further down on the latter half of the 2020 calendar. “No Time To Die”, which was schedule for release on April 10th in a nearly worldwide delivery, was the first casualty I believe I remember on the cinematic front. I was sitting at my desk when I read the first reports of this news and was taken aback. The pandemic was still mostly a somewhat contained virus and the daily news on it seemed preposterous on many fronts. As I remember sharing news of James Bond’s vacation of initial release for a Thanksgiving spot in the lineup, I spoke with a few people who were high on the list of fans to get some real emotional responses. Global viral outbreak was in its infancy as a concept so some of these kinds of measures just seemed superfluous and arbitrary. Looking for a precise date of this news on the calendar, its funny and a bit eerie to realize this was just three weeks ago. We’ve gone from the first few flicks to find their way into alternate release schedules, to total theater shut down until some point in time on the cosmic calendar we aren’t currently privy to at this juncture. But this was certainly a departure from the norm and the first twinges of curiosity swept over me when I got the news on that fateful Wednesday.

They are taking their first run flicks, typically reserved for a Thursday-Sunday opening weekend in an actual theater, and sending them straight to streaming devices for rental in this time of uncertainty.

Now its not the weirdest thing in the world for a studio to push a release. There’s a number of reasons that it can happen on a fairly organic basis. Sometimes studios realize that their competition is going to be too steep on a particular weekend and one film decides not to play chicken and search out a more favorable time frame to hit theaters. Sometimes there are edits to films or other cultural phenomenon that occur that cause studios to move releases. After the shooting in Las Vegas a few years ago, the updated “Death Wish” reboot got pushed from a fall release to the following spring to avoid propagating gun violence in the wake of a tragedy. So its not like studios never push back films for any number of reasons. It did just seem odd that it was because the implication was there would be no audience in theaters at the time of release due to mass illness or precautionary measures against such a phenomenon that would keep people from attending theatrical releases. It had this off putting sort of feeling that made things seem a bit more dire than they had previously. As a layperson in the developing catastrophe we find ourselves in at this time, it felt like the outlook at that time was not so intense. So with these people in major decision making roles calling out options like this to move films, it seemed both premature and the slightest bit ominous. However, moving films to more favorable dates on the calendar was still a call from the playbook we were at least somewhat familiar with at that point. It wasn’t long for other studios to get a bit more creative.

In response to some studios simply moving pictures out, Universal decided they were going to change the frontier and blaze some new trails. I don’t, by any means, believe that these trails were anything but entirely ready to be trod by major film studios. It was merely who was going to make the call. Traditionally films are sent out to the theaters and have around a 90 day window to exhaust that format. After that time frame came to its close, the home video version would be made available to the public. From VHS and Betamax to Blu Ray and 4K, it’s been an ever expanding empire of physical media for the consumer to bring home and enjoy on their own screen. In recent years we have seen a significant push towards digital media as a sort of replacement. Many are forgoing the cumbersome collection on shelves and entertainment centers and opting for an all or nearly all digital catalog for home viewing. While physical media has definitely been a shrinking medium, it’s not necessarily on the same path to extinction. In very recent years we have seen a decent expansion from the high definition realities of the Blu Ray revolution into the even crisper resolution of the 4K DVD. DVDs still permeate the market as well but there is definitely an ever growing interest in the digital medium as a primary means of owning your own personal theatrical collection.

The digital revolution also changed that 90 day time frame a bit. While the physical medium still usually hits shelves right at about 3 months after a theatrical release, the digital download has a standard 2 week advance debut. There are even instances I have seen a 3 or 4 week advance in certain special occasions for a digital release. I do believe that the rising costs of going to an actual movie theater and how that has gone from a leisure activity to a very specific planned family outing, are really providing much more of a laissez-faire approach toward leaving the house to go catch a flick and simply waiting for the digital copy to become available. Sure, there’s still plenty of folks heading to the multiplex for the big releases at prime weekend times. But outside of some of the high traffic times, theaters are not strangers to slow nights and nearly empty screenings during the weekdays. Even with pricing incentives, there’s many time that a weekday showing is sparsely attended, if not empty entirely. So the appeal and application of digital media in our modern age has definitely found a ranking for movie fans.

Let me circle back to the point I was making with Universal Studios, now that I’ve danced all the way around the birth of the Video On Demand (VOD) release. While some studios are simply prolonging their formal release of movies to later in the year, Universal has brought a bit of a game changer to the table. They are taking their first run flicks, typically reserved for a Thursday-Sunday opening weekend in an actual theater, and sending them straight to streaming devices for rental in this time of uncertainty. There have been a handful of attempts at something like this in recent years. I remember reading about one or two studios dabbling in the idea of simultaneous release of theatrical and home digital rental. The problem was the exorbitant cost of the digital rental. If memory serves correct, the initial rental fees were somewhere around $50 or north depending on the film. I didn’t pay too much notice as the reality of it seemed ridiculous, especially to someone who greatly enjoys catching a big release in a crowded theater on an opening Friday or Saturday night. There’s just something about enjoying a movie in that kind of prepped and primed crowd that adds something to the experience. Its a certain kind of magical. But while those efforts had failed in the past, this present environment of social distancing and the daily shut down of more and more “non-essential” businesses paved the way for the digital rental of first run films to find an interesting new home.

‘ Onward’ (Now available for purchase on VOD)

I can say that presently I have purchased the latest Disney/Pixar entry, “Onward” for my digital collection. Not only can we NOT go see these movies in theaters, but also with self-quarantine so high on the list of to-do’s for everyone, we are all cooped up inside much of the time and need ways to watch time pass. Universal blazed the trail by announcing several of their current and upcoming releases would not be delayed but presented for in home viewing. 48 hour rentals would be made available at the regular opening day of the film for a modest $19.99. While I’ve seen some individuals object to this price point, which is clearly higher than even some of the more extreme ticket sales across the nation for a single ticket, this is definitely quite a financial flex for families. Universal put heavy emphasis on their upcoming Trolls sequel set for an April release and with many parents home for one reason or another and schools and daycares closed down, the kids are home as well. So $20 for the family to get to catch a brand new flick in the comfort of their own home that entertains the kiddos is a big deal. I do think we will see some of the biggest movement on this digital front with the Trolls movie. I’ve not looked at any of the Onward digital numbers but anecdotally I do feel like they are helping what was rather poor box office performance otherwise for this film. How this gets reconciled with the mix of what would have been box office dollars and what would have been home video dollars may just be a wash for 2020. But I do applaud the studios for leading the way with providing digital movies for rent in lieu of theatrical releases in what we are coming up on to be the ever encroaching “Summer Movie” season. It used to be for movies that came out in summer. Now it seems that even if you’re late April, you might just get a pass and qualify for the seasonal moniker.

The next wave to follow this new release rental business has come in the last week or so. Despite the typical 90 day home video release window, studios are still cautious to delay the news of home video release. Much of this is due to battling that mental will of getting people to the cinema versus that lackadaisical approach of just waiting for the home video. While myself and some of the other Cinemasters are far more in tune with digital and DVD release schedules, the multitude of casual film goers are relatively oblivious to the time frames by which movies are released both in theaters and on disc/digital. By keeping a lid on the date, it implies that heading to the local theater is the only way to catch a flick if you’re in need of some film therapy. If you knew that it was only a couple weeks away from home release, it would be easy to delay the expenditure at the box office for a much less costly digital rental. One of the adaptations I’ve seen changing on the landscape of movie releases is a much more abbreviated release window for home ownership and not just rental. As of tomorrow both “The Gentlemen” and “Birds of Prey” are finding their way to digital release for home ownership. The physical media will still meet normal release windows but these two movies are just at, and not quite two months old. Ben Affleck’s “The Way Back” joins them in an early digital release. Sonic the Hedgehog, the surprise sweetheart of February, is heading to digital media on March 31st. Thats barely 45 days after its Valentine’s day theatrical release. While I don’t think this shortened window will be one of the tenets that sticks around after theaters start opening back up, it’s definitely noteworthy as it really is a considerable departure from the status quo of home video releases.

‘The Lovebirds’ coming to Netflix April 3rd

The final change I’ve noticed as of late is not a widespread venture just yet but I’m curious to see if it doesn’t catch on more if the quarantine persists into the summer months at all. “Lovebirds” is an upcoming comedy staring Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae. While these might not quite be household names just yet, both of these comedic stars are on the rise. Kumail has been appearing in more and more films over the last couple of years and Issa Rae is on her second theatrical release of 2020 with this film. If you don’t know the names, I suggest learning them because these two have a considerable amount of talent and could easily be major names in comedy markets especially in years ahead. Rae’s other feature film opposite Lakeith Stanfield was another Valentine film,”The Photograph”, though much smaller than the aforementioned Sonic the Hedgehog. This one was much more dramatic and romantic in nature. Kumail also has the MCU’s “Eternals” slated to come out this November. So both of these actors will have ever growing plates in the years ahead is my hunch. But their upcoming film “Lovebirds” was set for an April 3 release. Instead, Netflix has negotiated a buyout of this film and will debut it on their streaming service at a later date that is yet to be disclosed. With a great many smaller films that studios already have prepped and ready to go, I would not be surprised to see some of these end up on the auction block for the major streaming services to gobble up and release to gain whatever market share they can. Its a very curious time for movies and their release methods indeed.

Kudos to you if you’ve made it this far with me. I know we covered a lot of ground in this particular write up but there’s a lot to say and know about the developing theatrical landscape of how we will consume movies through the rest of 2020 and which of these new additions to delivery methods will persists beyond the Coronapocalypse and which ones will retire as necessities for a trying time in our country’s history. I am eager to get back in theaters and return to some of the norms that I’m comfortable with but simultaneously I must admit that I’m excited to bring a number of films to my home digital collection a little earlier than I had previously anticipated. So I’ll do my best to stay knowledgeable about developments on the digital front and bring whatever information I can to the people who enjoy our slice of cinema. All this being said, I’ve enjoyed hopefully entertaining you with this read. As always, I’m your Cinemaster to the North, Adam Peterson. I’ll catch you on the flip side.