New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will allow New York City cinemas to open with limited audience capacity for the first time in almost a year.
As part of the restrictions, cinemas will only allow a maximum of 50 people in any exhibition (restricting capacity to 25 percent). Participants must wear masks and sit in their designated seats. Theaters will also have to deploy advanced air filtration systems, according to Cuomo. Although cinemas outside New York City have been allowed to reopen in recent months, the sheer number of cases in the city has prevented people from going. Theaters originally closed due to the pandemic in mid-March 2020.
Allowing New York City movie theaters to open is big business, especially for studios like Disney and Universal, whose executives are probably concerned about the timing of major releases like Black Widow (May 7) and F9 (May 28). Ticket prices are much higher in major markets, such as New York and Los Angeles (where cinemas are not yet open). In addition, New York and California represent 21.5% of all US audiences. Not having these cinemas open, even in limited capacity and with higher ticket revenue, is catastrophic for films that could earn $ 1 billion in pre-pandemic days.
Although industry experts speculated that Disney could change Black Widow for Disney Plus as a Premier Access title and then launch the film internationally, where theater attendance is better, it also became increasingly apparent that Marvel Studios did not want to go that route. Black Widow it is a budget film of more than $ 200 million; moving it to Disney Plus, even as a $ 30 Premier Access title, would never generate the same initial revenue it could earn in a pre-pandemic theater.
Without New York City or Los Angeles, Disney would probably have delayed the film again. But with the reopening of New York cinemas, even with only a quarter of capacity, it probably gives studio executives hope that Los Angeles can come in the coming weeks, and there may be a better chance of a decent release for Black Widow (well, by pandemic standards). Add a recovering movie business in key markets like China, one of Marvel Studios’s most important demographics, and Black Widow could tie – potentially earning a small profit.
The alternative is a situation with which the American public saw Wonder Woman 1984. With a production budget of $ 200 million and an additional tens of millions in marketing budget, the film needed to generate at least a few hundred million dollars to break even. This would not happen in December 2020 with theaters in New York and Los Angeles closed, as well as with restricted capacity in theaters in other states.
Warner Bros. decided to move the film to a simultaneous release, debuting in theaters and on HBO Max in the United States on the same day. In late January, executives at AT&T (the parent company of Warner Bros.) told analysts that Wonder Woman 1984 pushed a range of new subscribers to HBO Max, increasing the numbers to 17.2 million accumulated activations, more than double the number of activations in the previous quarter of AT&T (8.6 million). The film ended up raising $ 159.9 million, with about 73% of that total coming from outside the United States. To compare, the first Wonder Woman The film grossed $ 821 million worldwide, with about 50% coming from the United States alone.
It is also a major victory for cinema owners, whose executives have asked Cuomo and California governor Gavin Newsom to open cinemas in New York and Los Angeles in recent months. AMC CEO Adam Aron thanked Cuomo when cinemas in New York State were allowed to open in October 2020, noting at the time that the company continued “to work closely with state and local authorities on the reopening of New York City, which we now look forward to with growing confidence is not far away. “
Still, studio executives and cinema owners cannot predict whether people will actually appear in theaters now. As more vaccines are implemented across the country, people can feel more secure about being in a theater with strangers, while maintaining an adequate social distance. For others, however, it may take some time before they are ready to watch a stranger from two meters away throw popcorn in their mouth or sneeze.