Four years ago we looked at how incoming American President Donald Trump might impact the movie industry. Trump was the unlikeliest winner in Presidential history and his victory sent shockwaves through every corner of the globe. And every business.
So it’s only fair we ask how newly inaugurated Joe Biden and his administration will affect Hollywood. None of us could have imagined the world we currently find ourselves in four years ago. Not even the biggest naysayers and “never Trumpers” foresaw a global pandemic that paralyzed the entire world and ruined its economy. Having said that, no one person on the planet has more power to affect the situation-good or bad-than the President of the United States. Their decisions, policies and actions will determine how the world shapes itself and what path it takes moving forward.
If it moves at all.
Bio-Hazard Warning
The COVID-19 Pandemic isn’t merely the elephant in the room; it’s a herd of wooly mammoths. While the west was still largely ignorant of the novel coronavirus, the movie industry was suffering massive losses from day one. By the middle of January, movie studios were seeing Chinese box office revenue evaporate as theatres in the Middle Kingdom closed in a desperate bid to control the new virus. Most Chinese theatre chains were completely shuttered before the average North American had even heard of COVID-19. Hollywood was already losing billionss of dollars before a single North American theatre was closed.
Nearly a year later things are even worse. Health officials and scientists the world over criticized the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States (and Canada, if we’re being honest) is worse off than when the pandemic started last March. The United States has become the epicentre of the worst global pandemic the world has seen in over a century. When Joe Biden took his Presidential oath, 400,000 Americans had lost their lives to COVID-19 since the U.S. recorded it’s first coronavirus related death last February. Thousands more join them in the graveyard every day.
The United States has been brought to its knees and the movie industry is just one of many casualties.
Around 60% of North American theatres remain closed, including the ones in New York city and all of California. Even in the places where theatres are open, nobody is going. When studios tried to tempt customers back with a few new releases (looking at you Tenet), they couldn’t convince movie-goers that movie theatres were safe again.
President Biden has promised to get 100 million Americans vaccinated in the first hundred days of his presidency. While that may be overly ambitious, all signs point to a co-ordinated campaign to get the the pandemic under control.
There will inevitably be speed bumps and unforeseen complications. Shipments of the vaccine have already been sabotaged, some of Biden’s political opponents will try to slow progress and there will be a hefty chunk of Americans who will simply refuse to be vaccinated. Biden would have an easier time pushing a boulder up a mountain of ice.
Much of Hollywood’s survival is tied to Biden’s ability to pull off what is going to be the largest vaccination effort in human history.
So you know, no pressure.
It’s The Economy Stupid
Hollywood usually weathers tough economic times better than other industries. While people love to complain about the price of admission, a night at the movies costs a lot less than your average vacation. People still need an escape during bad times and with vacations off the table for many, you might think movies would corner the market on escapist entertainment once people start going out again.
But this economic disaster is unlike any other in history. Sweeping city and statewide lockdowns have crippled the American economy in ways it was never built to endure. Tens of millions of Americans immediately found themselves out of work. With little to no safety net waiting for them, an untold number of people were choosing between paying their rent or buying food.
Last year the United States faced an eviction and homelessness crisis unparalleled in its history. While the Biden administration is promising swift measures to prevent the situation from worsening (including a multi-trillion stimulus aimed at struggling Americans and small businesses), the economic damage will be felt for years and no one is even guessing when a recovery may take place.
America’s biggest movie chains have spent months skating on the edge of bankruptcy. Dozens of independent theatres have closed permanently. None of the big chains have any idea when they’ll be able to re-open all their locations. And when they do, how many paying customers will return? If people are still forced to choose between essentials and entertainment when the movies are an option, the choice will be painfully simple.
Rest assured, if the bulk of theatres remain closed come May (the traditional start of the uber-profitable summer movie season) or if most of their seats remain empty regardless, the big chains will have no choice but to go to the government hat in hand. The Trump administration refused to give them any bailout cash. Will the Biden one follow suit?
Recent studio decisions to experiment with new distribution models that don’t include movie theatres add yet another unwelcome wrinkle to their fight for survival. If movie theatres close (or contract) and Hollywood loses it’s biggest revenue stream, the big budget blockbuster we’ve become addicted to could very well become an endangered species.
Made For China
A strong Chinese performance can make the difference between a bomb and a blockbuster. Strong Chinese performance can launch an entire franchise, even if a movie only does so-so in the rest of the world. A strong Chinese performance can save a studio executive’s job. Or an entire studio.
Now here’s an interesting twist. Despite a few false starts, Chinese theatres have been open for business for several months. But Chinese audiences are largely ignoring American fare in favour of domestic titles. You might think that’s because Hollywood has been sitting on a year’s worth of tent-pole releases while theatres across the world were closed for business. Yet a handful of films (including some potential global blockbusters) have managed to find their way to the big screen, with studio heads hoping that Chinese interest (and dollars) would compliment domestic streaming numbers. But that hasn’t happened.
While the pandemic raged across the United States, there was a lot of anti-Chinese rhetoric in America’s halls of power. President Trump and many of his officials publicly referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese plague” or the “Kung flu.” They often accused China of deliberately unleashing it on an unsuspecting world. That sentiment was soon echoed by many of President Trump’s allies, supporters and sympathetic media.
This wasn’t lost on China. The Chinese government and financiers stopped promoting Western movies-even ones they were invested in-and even started campaigning against some (Mulan). There soon seemed to be a conscious decision on the part of many Chinese customers to avoid western films as a result of the repeated China-bashing by American leadership. It didn’t help when conspiracy theorists recently made China a bogeyman for baseless American election fraud allegations.
Will the tone change under President Biden? Or will he take an equally tough (though less verbally abrasive) stance? How long will it take any political temperature change to be reflected in Chinese consumption of Western movies? Even though China and the United States have always shared a tense relationship, Hollywood has always enjoyed a profitable and manageable partnership (with the Asian superpower (though one full of complicated ethical questions). That partnership is strained thanks to toxic political rhetoric. Billions of Hollywood dollars are riding on whether or not it can be repaired.
Image via www.cbc.ca
