An excellent NYT piece courtesy of Brooks Barnes (For Disney, a Stricken Empire) has shaken up the movie industry to its core. You see, with its movie studios (they have eight of them) controlling a staggering 40 percent of the domestic box office last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has completely liquidated the Mouse House’s earnings this year and put numerous high-profile productions to a halt.
This stagnation comes after a decade of landmark growth for Disney, what with its colossal reign over the box-office with Pixar, Marvel, and the “Star Wars” franchise becoming conglomerate behemoths. They were supposed to continue that success this year, but two of their most anticipated movies of 2020, Marvel’s “Black Widow” and Pixar’s “Soul,” have been postponed, while their live-action version of “Mulan” was rescheduled from April to July.
“From great to good to bad to ugly,” Michael Nathanson, a leading media analyst, told Brooks in the piece. Adding, “Recession will cause further pain.” Analysts are expecting quarterly losses in the company’s per-share profit to stumble to 88 cents, down 45 percent. Disney has also furloughed an estimated 100,000 employees and even took out a $5 billion line of credit a few weeks ago. Suffice to say, the pandemic has completely thwarted their plans for continuing industry domination and caused the bigwigs in charge to hit the panic button.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek praised theatrical moviegoing today during a conference call, but said “case by case” decisions will have to be made on how certain films will be made available during the pandemic. However, it’s this particular quote that caught my attention. Chapek tries to describe what kind of climate will greet the release of “Mulan” in July:
“We’re going to get a pretty good idea about that because there’s a competitive movie that opens up one week before ours,” Chapek said, referring to Warner Bros.’ and Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet.” “At that point, we’re hoping that there’s some return to some semblance of normal in terms of the number of screens that are opening and the number of showtimes. … Our fingers are crossed.”
Chapek’s comments about “Tenet” and “Mulan” being released are laughable. Is he wilfully lying to us? There is no way that in two months’ time movie theaters will go back to a “semblance of normal.” The two biggest markets, NY and LA, are still in severe lockdowns. Even in rural areas, which have been hit less hard by the virus, the social distancing measures will result in selling a fraction of the seats in order to avoid health hazards. Imagine having a theater take your temperature upon entry, block every two to three seats in the cinema, and giving you mask and gloves to wear while watching a movie …
I hate to say this, but I just don’t see movie theaters going back to “normalcy” until there is a vaccine, which would not be available until late 2020 or early 2021. This will likely give Disney no other choice but to release some of their films straight to Disney+, much like they did with “Artemis Fowl” a few weeks ago.
If “Mulan” does indeed go direct-to-streaming then we will no doubt be witnessing the breaking of a dam, as other studios will follow suit, and theater chains will falter to the brink of extinction. That’s what’s on the line here, the theatrical experience. Unlike the threats, AMC and Regal exclusively aimed at Universal for having “Trolls World Tour” and “King of Staten Island” skip theaters in favor of VOD, they will be left powerless in the face of Disney - threatening to boycott a studio that gives you almost half of your yearly earnings is the definition of economic insanity.
As I wrote a few weeks ago:
“We all knew it was coming, that the theatrical experience would eventually end up being in danger due to streaming, but we didn’t expect it to happen this soon. What the Coronavirus pandemic has done, much as it has with almost every other industry in the country, is fast-tracked the inevitable. Movie theaters, but, more specifically AMC, were already in dire straits before the pandemic, but now all the problems have just been hyper-realized. There’s no going back. Taking a cue from a Kubrick classic, it’s time to stop worrying and love streaming.”
The man doesn't stop. James Gunn has confirmed he's already hard at work writing his next film, even as ‘Man of Tomorrow’ makes its way toward theaters next summer.