Back in April, I wrote the piece titled “The 2020 Summer Movie Season is Most Likely Canceled,” in which I wrote the obit for summer movies. Well, I am here now to tell you that, based on the way things have been going, the entire year is most likely going to be a wasteland of nothingness, theatrically speaking.
From Kanye going for the Presidency and then literally losing his mind on Twitter, to the Black Lives Matter riots/protests, to the catastrophic pandemic that has invaded our planet for the past 5 months and counting, all I want is for this nightmare to be over, but closure won’t be coming any time soon. We’re in this for the long haul.
2020 has been one hell of a bad trip.
There will be no “Dune,” there will be no “Tenet,” there will be no “Wonder Woman 1984,” there won’t even be a chance to catch Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.” All of these movies were meant to be seen on the largest screen possible. The fact that we are now in the midst of a media onslaught of virus-shaming means that anyone who dares release a film during this pandemic will run the risk of being assaulted with an endless wrath of shame.
But for the most part, we’ll have to settle with watching worthy indie films on our televisions. I can’t wait for you all to watch Miranda July’s acerbically unique “Kajillionaire,” Roy Andersson’s visionary, “About Endlessness,” Sean Durkin's slow-burn, “The Nest,” or Anthony Hopkins gunning for that Best Actor trophy with his brilliant work in “The Father.” All of these films have already screened at pre-pandemic film festivals and, to gain a larger audience, all of them stand a good chance to go digital come the fall.
Some film festivals truly believe that they can pull off public screenings. The Venice Film Festival is setting up major social distancing protocols to have their prestigious event go on as planned, and the Toronto International Film Festival has gone from an annual event of 300+ movies to a measly 50 with, supposedly, the first five days of the festival dedicated to actual public screenings of films. Good luck with that. I sincerely mean it, but there is just so much panic-porn being created by the media that the pressure would likely lead to TIFF backing out from having this happen.
TIFF 2020 should really be a straight-up showcase for movies that need to be seen and bought. This could easily be done through digital screenings for journalists, industry people and paying audiences. “Ammonite,” which is supposed to be one of the biggest titles at TIFF, has a Canadian distributor that won’t allow it to stream digitally for press; they are saying either screen it publically or we pull out.
If anything, 2020 will be the year Netflix finally got what they wanted and conquered the film industry. The streaming giant has one hell of a fall lineup waiting to be discovered by cinephiles worldwide: David Fincher’s “Mank,” Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” Aaron Sorkin’s “Trial of the Chicago 7,” Ron Howard’s “Hilbilly Elegy,” Ben Wheatley’s “Rebecca,” Antonio Campos’ “The Devil All the Time,” and many more Oscar contenders are waiting to be revealed in last 5 months of the year. Maybe Pixar’s “Soul” could still end up on Disney+ by year’s end. Maybe “A Quiet Place: Part II” will be sold to Netflix.
And so, you can put it in the books, the movie year is canceled. Every Oscar contender that comes out of this year’s mess will be a digital release. There’s no way around it. With next January’s Sundance Film Festival already announcing that they will be expanding to other cities and going digital, Cannes 2021 could very well be the full return of cinema, but that’s another 10 months from now.