It may be time to accept we won’t be seeing any more new movies this year.
Yes, we’ve all been holding out hope that the multiplex would return from it’s coronavirus induced slumber some this time summer and we could use some fresh blockbusters to distract us from the chaos of the world. But it may be time to stick a fork in those hopes as far as the rest of 2020 goes.
When major theatre chains across the entire globe closed up shop back in March to battle the spread of the novel coronavirus, major studios began an unprecedented shuffle of release dates. It was both the most amusing and frustrating game of scheduling hop scotch in Hollywood history.
But now, even those new dates are being scrubbed as things continue to look grim and the future dangerously uncertain.
The formula was simple. Major movie chains like AMC, Regal and Cineplex Odeon remained closed for public health reasons (quite often by law). As a result, studios moved major releases in accordance with the anticipated opening date of said movie theatres, which would re-open when health conditions allowed. It was the proverbial snake eating its own tail and in a perfect world, theatres would have re-opened just in time for a wave of blockbusters to draw movie goers back.
But hopes that major theatre chains will open any time this summer are looking more and more remote. And there’s a very good chance they may remain dark for the rest of 2020.
Despite the recent meteoric rise of China as a movie consuming nation, the United States remains the world’s biggest market at the box office. Without American theatres, Hollywood would become a penny pincher overnight and expensive epics like Titanic, Avatar, Star Wars and the entire MCU would disappear fast. And right now it looks like America is closed for business for the foreseeable future.
The situation south of the border is looking downright Biblical. Roughly 130,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, by far the highest in the world (there isn’t even a close second). That number is worse when you consider the United States didn’t record it’s first COVID death until February 29th. In the span of four months, COVID-19 has claimed over two and half times as many Americans as ten years of the Vietnam war.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top virulent disease specialist, recently told Congress that while the United States is recording around 40,000 new cases a day, he fears that number could easily jump to 100,000 very soon. The U.S. saw a record 50,000 new cases on July 1st alone. America is currently saying goodbye to at least a thousand (or more) of her citizens every day and there are genuine fears some numbers may be getting fudged for partisan political purposes.
Estimates that America’s COVID death toll could top 200,000 by Labor Day used to look like fear mongering stolen from dystopian science fiction science. Now they look conservative.
Many of the American states that managed to contain the virus (with significant sacrifice) are now barring entry to citizens from other parts the U.S and over a dozen states that rushed to open their economies following lockdown are now closing back up in the face of skyrocketing numbers.
The CDC recently admitted that COVID-19 was so prevalent, containment was no longer an option. Fears that there may be a dangerous second wave in the fall have subsided because it doesn’t look like the first wave is going to end any time soon. And that first wave is looking more and more like a tsunami.
The NHL recently announced that both of the hub cities it will use to complete its 2020 season will likely be north of the border. Until recently the NHL looked like it was planning on making one of those cities Las Vegas, but the staggering rise in cases convinced them they simply couldn’t guarantee their players’ safety anywhere in the United States.
Speaking of Canada, the U.S-Canadian border is currently scheduled to be closed until July 21st. But word is the Canadian government will be extending that, possibly to the end of the summer (with some thinking Ottawa may be looking to seal the border for at least another three months, meaning it could be closer to Halloween before the border is open to non-essential traffic).
Earlier this week, the European Union put the United States on a no fly list for the first time in history.
The United States has become the world’s biggest bio-hazard Red Zone and is quickly being quarantined from the rest of the world.
Worse yet, it seems like much of America isn’t even interested to getting better or beating COVID. Millions of Americans remain convinced the pandemic is a hoax or blown out of proportion despite the rising death toll and the pictures of mass graves. The simple act of wearing a mask has become the newest chapter in America’s ongoing culture wars and a recent poll revealed that as many as fifty percent of Americans would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available today.
Amidst all this doom and gloom, it’s impossible to see movie theatres reopening, regardless of any enhanced safety protocols. AMC recently took a lot of flak for claiming it wouldn’t enforce a mask wearing policy for customers. They quickly reversed course under pressure, but that begged the question how they could possibly enforce necessary safety measures and how much conflict said measures would cause (fights have already become a regular occurrence in American grocery stores).
With neither Los Angeles nor the entire state of New York (the two biggest movie-going markets in the biggest movie-going country on the planet) having the slightest idea when their theatres may open and China (the world’s second biggest movie consuming nation) having to shutter their movie houses several times after several false starts, well the writing seems to be on the wall.
Theatre chains are starved for money, with many teetering on bankruptcy, but reopening right now would be an expensive endeavour with no guarantee of how many paying customers they could expect once their doors re-open. Then there’s the inevitable and expensive lawsuits once someone contracts the virus after a visit to the multiplex. And given the current circumstances south of the border, that’s only a matter of time.
And if the theatres remain closed, the studios will have no venue to release their movies. Sure, some will try the video-on-demand avenue, but aside from the brief gloating Universal made about Trolls: World Tour, that road hasn’t exactly been a cash cow. Some could go right to streaming but would it be such a surprise if the big studios stuck a fork in 2020, crossed their fingers and hoped for the best in 2021? That’s been their plan so far and if they just pushed the goal posts further back. it would give them some breathing room to plan a new strategy in case America is just as sick in January.
The more you think about it, the more it makes a kind of grim sense.
And while that may make for an awesome summer movie season next year and in 2022, it means you shouldn’t get your hopes up to see Wonder Woman 1984 or Black Widow before Christmas. Who knows, maybe Disney will toss Soul on DisneyPlus just in time for the holidays.
But right now, it’s looking like there might not be any Oscars for people to bash next February.
