It Could Be Said #11 We Can't Keep Cinema's Lights On For Much Longer
Following our podcast debate, Steve Harwood pens a guest essay about the future of Cinema
During our podcast review of Black Widow, I and my good friend Steve Harwood got into a lengthy and heated debate about whether the exclusive theatrical window for new movies should be retained. This is her guest essay that outlines her argument in more detail.
Looking at the box office take for Black Widow, you might think that the grand streaming experiment has failed. Clearly, Scarlett Johansson believes that an exclusive theatre window would’ve improved the movie's numbers, given that she is now suing Disney over the same-day digital release.
And I have no doubt she’s right about the Black Widow box office take - she is, afterall, better acquainted with the industry than I.
And I don’t deny that the exclusive theatrical release may continue to benefit the movie studios (if by an ever decreasing degree) for some years yet.
And I’m quite sure that streaming platforms will always be much harder to make a profit from. I know that any streaming based movie studio would have to accept smaller profit margins on more modest projects - and the likes of Disney won’t want to do that.
...It doesn’t matter.
You’re still going to have to make your peace with steaming based movie releases, and say goodbye to the exclusive theatrical window-
Because cinema is dying.
And I say this as someone who loves the cinema.
All Good Things Must Come To An End
I’m part of a generation who grew up with the great cinematic experience, who genuinely believes that a movie is enhanced by seeing it on the big screen - on an emotional level, I can’t believe that there won’t be cinemas in my lifetime.
But this is how my grandmother used to talk about phone boxes. This is how my mother talks about printed newspapers and the highstreet. This is how I used to talk about physical music collections.
Clearly, something can exist for centuries, and be a part of the collective consciousness, and still succumb to decline.
Of course, there have been countless changes throughout the history of cinema that have threatened to end it - television, VHS, the advent of the internet. None of that is proof that it will prevail this time. Afterall, any institution that fell after hundreds of years had, by definition, already survived every challenge before that.
But yes, I accept that I may therefore have to go further to convince people that this time it’s different.
So, let's start with the cold hard numbers.
The steady increase in revenue in the last ten years, often cited as proof that cinema would surely prevail, had already shown signs of levelling out, and even falling, before the pandemic - down 5% in 2019 from the year previous.
But, more telling than that is the steady decline in the number of tickets sold - down 22%, or by 350 million tickets, from 2002. The only reason that revenue didn’t decline at that same rate is because the price of the average ticket went up by 100% in the same time period.
More worryingly, this decline is sharpest in the under 25 demographic.
Us millennial cinema fans have long comforted ourselves with the idea that people will always want to go to the cinema - because we can’t imagine a world without it. But there is already a growing number of people who have never formed an emotional attachment to cinema. And without that emotional attachment, they don’t necessarily see any reason to go, and if they never see a reason to go, they never form an emotional attachment, and so we go on.
This cycle does not bode well for the future of cinema. Firstly, because cinema - especially amongst young people - is a social experience, and even cinema fans are less likely to go if their friends aren’t interested. And secondly, because cinema is a cultural and habit based activity - there’s no reason to think that people will suddenly pick up this alien habit when they reach the age of thirty, forty, or fifty. Any art form will die if it can’t appeal to new audiences, and cinema is especially susceptible.
But rather than address this worrying slide, the movie industry has done the opposite.
It has raised ticket prices, when the ever increasing ticket price is a key factor in putting young people off - and not only because teenagers and young people tend to have less disposable income.
We also have to accept that buying habits and consumer expectations are changing. Especially for the younger generation, it’s the norm for thousands of hours of content to be covered by a minimal subscription fee or paid for by targeted ads. For many people, the idea of paying £15 for a single cinema trip is like paying £15 for every album you want to listen to - a relic of a past age.
This short term solution to fill the revenue gap may have killed off the long term prospects of the industry.
But it may not only be that. There may be other reasons that young people no longer like going to the cinema - and we’re ignoring those too, in favour of simply telling them that nothing compares to a big screen experience. But what if they just prefer to watch movies while scrolling through their phone, with the subtitles on, on their own sufficiently large, 4K TV? What if they prefer the entirely immersive experience they can set up at home, free from someone rustling a sweet packet or getting up to use the loo?
And what if, unlike twenty years ago, they don’t have to know a dodgy market dealer to get their hands on a camcordered copy of that movie - what if, like 40% of under 24s, they’ve already pirated one movie this week, and are waiting for a good reason to pay for this movie at all?
You will note that this essay does not make the claim that ‘piracy will kill the cinema industry’. The cinema industry could have seen off the threat of piracy, and the competition of cheap streaming services, in the same way it saw off television and VHS - if people still wanted to go.
What it cannot overcome - the challenge it has never before faced, in its (actually, relatively short) existence as an art form - is no longer being part of the great cultural experience. What is now happening for the first time is that a growing number of people don’t take the cinema for granted, have no personal history with it, and don’t have an immediate personal fondness.
That’s how we know this is really the end - and yes, easy availability of piracy is exacerbating that fact. It makes it even harder to push audiences into cinemas, and puts a lower price ceiling on everything you produce. It is yet another kick in the face for a fighter who was already on their knees.
But the far more important question is: what if it just never occurs to young people to watch the whole movie in one sitting in a darkened room with a bunch of strangers?
What exactly have we done in the last ten years to convince them that the cinema is worthwhile, or change the experience to better suit their preferences, or make it more available to them?
We’ve charged them more and more for a smaller choice in movies, in what is fundamentally the exact same experience that it was twenty years ago - and asserted to them that it’s ‘just better’.
Funnily enough, they don’t seem to be buying it. An ever smaller number of teenagers believe that a movie is best watched on the big screen - and even amongst those that do, going to the cinema still ranks lower than ‘watching movies at home with friends’ on their preferred way to spend time.
And, as the entertainment industry lacks the will and the ability to change that, the target market for cinemas can only dwindle until eventually, it dies. Literally.
More Bucks For Bigger Bangs
To make matters worse, movie studios are having to invest more, and provide more, in order to fewer, older people through the door. Hundred million dollar budgets are now taken for granted as the bare minimum of a cinema quality movie.
And, of course, increasing budgets mean increased risk - and decreased value for money, even on high earning movies.
The highest grossing movie of 1997, Titanic - at the time, one of the most expensive movies ever made - took $11 dollars at the box office for every dollar of the production budget. The highest grossing movie of 2017 - The Last Jedi - made $4 per dollar spent.
Or, for a more genre-specific comparison, take Men in Black, which made seven times its production budget at the box office in 1997. That not only makes it a better value-for-money investment than The Last Jedi, it made it as profitable as Avengers Endgame per dollar spent. And that’s without including the money Marvel had to spend on 22 full length blockbusters to get us into see Endgame.
Because reading through the top grossing movies on 1997 is enough to make you realise that cinema has already changed beyond recognition - from a place we used to go to watch movies, like Liar Liar, My Best Friend's Wedding, Good Will Hunting and As Good As It Gets (unbelievably, all Top Ten Movie material, back in the 90s) to a place where a smaller and smaller fanbase gather to watch the latest installment of their favourite ultra-high budget TV show.
There is not one movie in the worldwide Top Ten from 2017 that isn't a continuation of a franchise, or a remake of a classic film. Bohemian Rhapsody was the only original, stand alone movie to crack the top ten 2018, and even that relied on an existing fanbase. Again, none in the top ten for 2019.
And the fact that every movie idea from the Minions to the Muppets now has to be part of a ‘wider universe’ isn’t simply that everyone is jumping on the MCU trend. That trend only exists in the first place as a direct response to the death of cinema.
Watching the slow, year on year decline in ticket sales - and finding that, shockingly, doubling ticket prices did not reverse it - movie studios had to find some other hook.
So, for a time, the big studios have all had the same idea - limit risk by sticking with what they already know is popular, and stories that people are already invested in. And try to turn the cinema experience into ‘an event’ for people who have already spent a decade with this same show. And, to be fair, this did stave off the death of cinema for a while (even if it’s own mother wouldn’t recognise it now).
But, let’s be clear, it hasn’t been the answer. Actual ticket sales are still in decline.
Even at their current level, successful franchises like the MCU and Fast and the Furious aren’t reviving cinema - just milking the most out of its final years. Maybe even putting the final nail in the coffin, to do so.
Because every idea has a shelf life. Every genre starts to feel dated in the end. That’s why musicals, westerns, sitcoms and the like all have their peaks and falls, as they go from something new and trendy to something your mum likes to something vintage and cool again.
The problem with the creative model that we’ve now irreversibly committed to is that it makes it almost impossible for anything to come along to fill the gap. People will eventually get bored of The MCU, and superhero movies in general. There are only so many villains and side characters in classic Disney movies (although, personally, I hope the old lady from the Aristocats get’s her own live action origin story, before that well runs dry).
So, how will the next big thing ever get into the cinema in the first place?
We already know that it’ll have to be something epic and expensive. People just aren’t going to be convinced that they have to see a RomCom or a gritty drama on the big screen. Not after years of thinking that’s what a television series is.
We also know that, whatever new idea they invest $300 Million dollars into, they almost certainly won’t get it back - not on the first outing. Not now that they’ve spent a decade leaning into the idea that the reason, the only reason, to go to the cinema is that you’ve been watching this for ten years. Thanks to the relentless marketing of spectacle cinema and fandom experience, over 50% of under 25s say they simply won’t go to the cinema unless they're already excited about a particular movie - and they expect a lot of build up and a lot of special effects to get them excited.
Without that initial fan investment, the first outing of a new idea will almost certainly bomb at the theatres, and maybe the second outing - and maybe then you’ll see if people are getting into your now billion dollar investment, or if you have to start again.
I’m not sure even Disney can foot that sort of cost in the hope of starting a successful franchise.
Which is probably why DC think another go at Suicide Squad - a movie that bombed just five years ago - is less of a risk than an original movie idea.
And if studios can’t survive a couple of failed blockbusters, then cinema chains certainly can’t.
The cinema chains have to pay overheads just to offer a movie screening that no one is going to go to.
The cinema chains don’t get a cut of the streaming, merchandising and fandom profit that they’re helping to generate with their exclusive releases. The cinema chains were already on the wobble even before the pandemic kneecapped them. The cinema chains really can’t afford to screen a whole bunch of origin stories that no one is interested in yet, while Disney scrambles to figure out what their now fifty year old demographic will pay $40 a ticket to see.
And Disney has other options. They can sink their money into top quality television shows, theme parks and fan experiences - designing and selling their own virtual reality headsets, to replicate the cinema experience at home, if they like. A quick glance at the current situation suggests they’d be wiser to invest their money in these growth markets, as a way to secure the future of their company, which does exist outside of the cinema chains.
So, to be frank, it won’t matter if Disney would prefer a theatrical release, or if millennials would prefer a theatrical release, or if superfans would prefer a theatrical release, or if ScarJo would prefer a theatrical release-
If there are no theatres, I guess we’ll just have to move on.
Death of the Blockbuster
Which brings me to my final point - a rebuttal of the real reason that most cinema fans think it’ll survive this challenge like it has all the others.
Because they want it to.
And because they want the type of movie, and the type of entertainment industry, that relies on the cinema model.
Those people will argue that movie studios can’t carry on in their current form if they have to make do on streaming revenues, that epic movies won’t be made without the cinema format, that there simply isn’t an alternative business model.
And you know, I’m not sure there isn’t another business model, even if it's not one you like. Although I think the cinema is now, sadly, doomed, the movie industry still has any number of avenues to explore in terms of creating and distributing films. After all, there is nothing to suggest that people are any less interested in movies than they were twenty years ago. In fact, our average consumption of movies has gone up, the amount of money we’ve spent on auxiliary services and merchandise has gone up, the number of people who call themselves movie fans has gone up.
It’s very specifically the cinema that is dying.
So, if it wants to get its head out of its ass and really engage with the changing preferences of consumers, and work to create a culture that benefits it, then the entertainment industry could probably still find a way to thrive in a digital landscape - even if it can never regain its glory days.
But given that this is all it would’ve taken to rescue cinema ten years ago, I won’t hold my breath on that - I think, more likely, the movie industry will continue as a smaller scale, small screen, streaming only platform that probably won’t produce the epic products we take for granted today.
And even if you think that won’t work, that there simply isn’t a workable, small scale system. I’m sorry to have to tell you that there is no natural law that says the major movie studio, or the blockbuster, or even the film industry, must continue to exist.
Afterall, it’s been part of the collective cultural experience for far less time than vaudeville before it, or the travelling show, and look what happened to both of those things.
It’s not that long since record labels and recording artists were claiming that the music industry couldn’t go digital, because streaming and digital sales simply couldn’t support the music industry as it was in the 90s. They pointed to the big budget music videos and ‘blockbuster albums’ that simply couldn’t exist without the protected revenue stream of a physical music release. They said that, unless the physical album was protected, record label profits would be slashed, the music industry would become horribly risk averse, artists would have to shoulder more cost for their own careers, and product placement and touring would take priority over creative expression.
And, well, they weren’t wrong.
The group of Swedish recording artists who sued Spoitfy in 2013 were - like Scarlett Johannsen - quite correct when they said the new, digital consumer environment was hurting their income, and that they’d be better off without it.
You’ll notice that, since that time, Streaming hasn’t gone away.
And I don’t begrudge ScarJo the chance to milk as much as possible out of the dying days of cinema, seeing as all of the studio execs were happy to do so.
I’m just saying, it won’t change what is coming.
And maybe the movie industry as a whole can find a way to change and grow and even remain successful - even if it has to be at lower profit margins.
Or, maybe, in ten years time all movies will be lower budget dramas produced by Netflixizonulu+, designed to be viewed on the big screen - and maybe people won’t care, because by then the big budget superhero film will seem tacky and dated and silly, to them.
Or maybe…we just won’t have movies any more.
But the simple fact is that studios can’t keep selling fewer and fewer tickets, to an older and older group of people, for more and more expensive films - they simply can’t keep raising the price to compensate, and that has been their only tactic so far.
The independent cinema chains simply can’t carry on, based on an ever dwindling target market.
All evidence, from the qualitative studies to the cold hard numbers, show that cinema isn’t part of the great cultural experience for a growing number of people.
That’s a challenge Cinema has never faced before - and it’s a challenge it cannot overcome.