Will Audiences Return to Movie Theaters?
What the Sundance Film Festival’s market says about that…
The film market has changed, and that is a fact everyone knows. How much and if the change is permanent needs to be clarified. Variety Intelligence Platform tries to answer these questions. The magazine analyzes what happened at the Sundance Film Festival, the annual gathering for the indie cinematic industry. After two years of an online form, in January the festival was on in person in Park City, Utah, and the market side of the event sent clear signals: “The biggest price tags to come out of the fest so far were for psychological thriller Fair Play and relationship drama Flora and Son, which sold for $20 million each to Netflix and Apple, respectively,” says Kaare Erikson in the report. “That price alone exceeds what more than half of the films up for multiple nominations at the Academy Awards have grossed domestically in theaters, including some major studio releases.”
After Covid, movies are an “at-home” business.
“Paramount’s Babylon and Universal’s The Fabelmans significantly struggled alongside other awards hopefuls to stand out at the box office during the holiday season, as some critically adored films have fared even worse,” continues the article. “Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to 2017’s Three Billboards from the same distributor, will be one of the most recognized films at the Oscars, with nine nominations, an amount shared by Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Banshees has yet to break $10 million domestically, well below the haul Three Billboards once earned.”
Still, some exceptions are notable: genre films are doing quite well at the box office, especially horror and sci-fi/fantasy movies. Take A24 Studio, for example. Its Everything Everywhere All at Once by the Daniels earned more than $100 million globally at the box office, and most of A24’s 2022 theatrical gross comes from horror movies like Gen-Z thriller Bodies Bodies Bodies and Ti West’s dual slasher movies X and Pearl.
Is it enough? Will audiences return to movie theaters anytime soon?
Kaare Erikson is still pessimistic, concluding with: “If streamers continue to outbid such films and take home the biggest awards, as Apple did by earning best picture at the Academy through CODA last year, it’s unlikely the situation is going to get any easier for prestige theatrical films.”
Source: Variety
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What the Sundance Film Festival’s market says about that…
The film market has changed, and that is a fact everyone knows. How much and if the change is permanent needs to be clarified. Variety Intelligence Platform tries to answer these questions. The magazine analyzes what happened at the Sundance Film Festival, the annual gathering for the indie cinematic industry. After two years of an online form, in January the festival was on in person in Park City, Utah, and the market side of the event sent clear signals: “The biggest price tags to come out of the fest so far were for psychological thriller Fair Play and relationship drama Flora and Son, which sold for $20 million each to Netflix and Apple, respectively,” says Kaare Erikson in the report. “That price alone exceeds what more than half of the films up for multiple nominations at the Academy Awards have grossed domestically in theaters, including some major studio releases.”
After Covid, movies are an “at-home” business.
“Paramount’s Babylon and Universal’s The Fabelmans significantly struggled alongside other awards hopefuls to stand out at the box office during the holiday season, as some critically adored films have fared even worse,” continues the article. “Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to 2017’s Three Billboards from the same distributor, will be one of the most recognized films at the Oscars, with nine nominations, an amount shared by Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Banshees has yet to break $10 million domestically, well below the haul Three Billboards once earned.”
Still, some exceptions are notable: genre films are doing quite well at the box office, especially horror and sci-fi/fantasy movies. Take A24 Studio, for example. Its Everything Everywhere All at Once by the Daniels earned more than $100 million globally at the box office, and most of A24’s 2022 theatrical gross comes from horror movies like Gen-Z thriller Bodies Bodies Bodies and Ti West’s dual slasher movies X and Pearl.
Is it enough? Will audiences return to movie theaters anytime soon?
Kaare Erikson is still pessimistic, concluding with: “If streamers continue to outbid such films and take home the biggest awards, as Apple did by earning best picture at the Academy through CODA last year, it’s unlikely the situation is going to get any easier for prestige theatrical films.”
Source: Variety
Share:
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