Theatrical Experience Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

What’s going to happen with the future of the film industry? It’s a question that has a million different potential answers. Ultimately, it boils down to whether or not cinema as we know it can survive in a world where people have access to thousands of hours of content over various streaming services at the tip of their fingers? Right now, the answer is unclear.

When it was announced that AMC Theatres was going to adopt a new ticketing structure, dubbed Sightline, reactions were largely negative. (I might have ranted a bit myself.) Basically, the plan feels like a new way for AMC Theatres to punish its frequent customers by raising the prices on the “best” seats while offering a discount on what are clearly terrible seats that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The theatrical industry is in shambles. There are really no two ways to say it.

Let’s be honest folks, just because “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” were able to become monster hits and earn well north of $1 billion each, the cinema chains are still struggling, mightily. Sure, franchise films and blockbusters can potentially do really well, but by and large, films are seeing diminished box office returns in an era where streaming is omnipresent and there are more choices than ever before.

The issue of the exclusive theatrical release has been discussed quite a bit in 2021, especially as we watched Warner Bros. release so many films day-and-date on HBO Max and in cinemas.

After a year of delays and the HBO Max day-and-date release, “Dune” has finally hit theaters and (so far, at least) been a great success for Warner Bros. So much so, Legendary and WB have already greenlit ‘Part Two,’ which will hit theaters in 2023.

Every year, theater owners from all over the world gather at CinemaCon to watch as movie studios show exclusive peeks at future films that will be gracing the big screen. It’s seen as a celebration of film and the theatrical experience.

No matter who you believe, whether it’s the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) saying theaters are being destroyed by streaming or perhaps studios trying to explain how streaming and theatrical release models will benefit everyone involved, the truth is that the theatrical experience is changing in a big way. And some, like John David Washington, are concerned about the survival of the big screen experience.

Before COVID-19 crippled the film industry in unprecedented ways, the writing was on the wall— movie theaters were in trouble. Sure, there were record-breaking grosses for films, including “Avengers: Endgame” grossing more than any other film ever, but cinemas and studios began to rely more and more on tentpole films, pushing mid-level features to streaming and theaters were starting to notice year after year of profit declines.

Right now, the idea of a theatrical exclusivity window is thrown out the window. With COVID forcing many theaters to remain closed, while others are just desperate for new content to tempt customers back through the doors, studios are able to release whatever films they want in theaters and on streaming or PVOD on the same day.

There are filmmakers working today that not only see themselves as storytellers, but they see themselves as the folks carrying the torch in the fight to push the medium of film forward into the future. You have James Cameron inventing technology and doing ridiculous special effects work in his films, such as “Avatar” and the future sequels.

If you believe reports and speculation that is consistently floating around social media and general film discourse, you may believe that Netflix is the biggest enemy of the theatrical experience and the streaming platform is hellbent on destroying the big screen and forcing us all to watch films on our smartphones. Well, in a new interview with THR, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings takes issue with that presumption and actually explains what Netflix truly aims to do—present options.