Opinion | Film in flux: entertainment industry adapts to digital age
Ryan Neuner, senior film studies major
The pandemic took a toll on all of our interpersonal relationships — even those between Hollywood executives and their top talent.
With last year’s COVID-19 restrictions keeping movie theaters shuttered across America for the majority of the year, the film industry’s biggest players decided they had waited long enough to turn a profit on their recent productions. Warner Bros. became the first major American studio to adopt a day-and-date release model with HBO Max, choosing to debut every film on their 2021 slate in theaters and on the streaming service simultaneously. This bold move did not sit well with Christopher Nolan, who had been Warner Bros.’ biggest in-house director for 15 years.
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” Nolan said to The Hollywood Reporter last December in the wake of Warner Bros.’ announcement. He abandoned the studio altogether Sept. 14 in lieu of financing his next film through Universal Pictures.
Other studios were more patient, preferring to delay their franchise films until declining case numbers allowed for a greater reopening of theaters. Disney, however, opted for a hybrid approach.
The $307.4 billion dollar studio released “Black Widow” — a film that simply serves as a vehicle for Scarlett Johansson — a year after its original release date with the option to watch either at the multiplex or on Disney+ Premier Access for $30. Johansson subsequently sued Disney, claiming the company was attempting to avoid paying her the large box office bonuses she was contractually entitled to by making the film available on streaming.
Even so, the Marvel picture still reigned in over $375 million at the global box office. Nevertheless, audiences made clear their preference to see blockbusters on the big screen. For those of us that swear by seeing films in theaters, it appears that our patience will finally be rewarded.
The coming months will see the large backlog of high-profile films that studios have stockpiled over the last year and a half finally arriving in theaters. Long-anticipated releases such as Daniel Craig’s final James Bond film, “No Time to Die,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” adaptation, Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” Marvel’s “Eternals” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake, another “Matrix” sequel and Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” all have concrete release dates, and audiences are beginning to get excited.
While streaming and television may have taken ascendency in the entertainment industry, the enthusiasm with which audiences have returned to the cinema has assuaged my fears that the inability to see films in the theater would be a long-term causality of the pandemic. If anything, people seem more motivated to get out after being cooped up at home watching content on their television, phones and computers.
Will theater attendance in the United States ever reach the same heights it did in the 1930s? Certainly not. Yet studios’ willingness to sit on their films until they can be properly enjoyed by audiences gives me hope for the future of film exhibition even as the industry enters the increasingly crowded streaming market. In our increasingly polarized world, the cinema remains a sanctuary where audiences can experience films the way they were made to be seen.