Perhaps the wait is over. At the opening of CinemaCon, the meeting in Las Vegas that brings together distributors and cinema owners, it was announced that the premiere of “No time to Die”, the latest James Bond film filmed in 2020 at a cost of 250 million dollars will be held in London on September 28th. Soon after the film will be released in theaters around the world, after three unsuccessful attempts over the past 18 months under the pressure of the pandemic.
È a significant signal of return to normality, waiting for other cassette titles frozen for more than a year to arrive in theaters, such as i remake of Ghostbuster and Top Gun, the jokers that Hollywood groups intend to play in the fall to close the blackest season in the industry, cornered not only by the pandemic but by the streaming competition which, under the impetus of Netflix, has questioned the very existence of cinema distributed in theaters, one of the most typical rituals of the twentieth century.
The war, still ongoing, is being fought at the box office, but also on the virtual fences of stock exchanges. To unleash the offensive was Walt Disney joined by Warner. The two entertainment giants have decided to shoot their best cartridges (Black Widow with Scarlet Johanson for Disney, Godzilla vs. Kong for Warner) both in theaters and, simultaneously, with their streaming services. An apparently suicidal move but which meets the suggestions of sector analysts: the value of media stocks on the Stock Exchange, according to the opinion of brokers, is now linked more to the number of subscribers to streaming services to be used at home, rather than from the viewing in the hall.
And it does not matter if the box office will lose out, as it promptly happened: The Black Widow grossed just over 80 million dollars in its first weekend, only to halve its collections in the second week. Meanwhile Disney+ was doing great business with subscribers: 60 million more receipts also thanks to the extra fee paid to be able to attend the premieres. The explosive blonde didn't take it well Johansson suing the Mickey Mouse house. The emolument of the diva, in fact, is largely linked to the takings in theaters, without providing anything for use via subscription. “It is a baseless claim” immediately commented the cartoon giant, committed to relaunching the theme parks closed during the pandemic.
But the move didn't go down well with the producers who, in the case of MGM and Universal for 007, they grit their teeth and endured heavy burdens in order not to give in to the temptation to cede the rights to some platform, a gesture worth an unconditional surrender to the enemy. And the American association of cinema owners has launched, from the Las Vegas arena, the challenge to Walt Disney: “The data – says the president of exhibitors John Fithian – show that their move has not paid off.
The most logical solution is to exploit the film in theaters first, then move on to domestic consumption” unless you want to strangle the sector and then buy the pieces cheaply. As the hedge managers have tried to do who, in the months of the closure of the halls, have flooded the lists of AMC titles with sales, the first cinema chain in the world, with the aim of forcing the company to raise the white flag. But to defend the colossus of cinemas, also strong in Europe, it intervened the cavalry of the Robinhooders, the individual traders who made the price of AMC skyrocket. In the meantime the new ceo fired the lethal weapon, worthy of a superhero: a giant bowl of free popcorn at the cinema for small shareholders. Judging by the market response to the accounts (+9%) the move worked: popcorn sales they have already returned to pre-pandemic levels. Of course, in the meantime the company is navigating a sea of debt that won't be easy to dry up in the coming months. But there is an unexpected novelty: in 2021, so far, AMC has placed a higher number of treasury shares on the market than the tickets sold at the box office. Nothing to say: it looks like the plot of a movie, other than 007.
