Analysis. What after-effects will persist in the cinema after the pandemic? Perhaps actors masked on the screen will no longer surprise anyone, but the more devious economic effect of Covid-19 has resulted in a shock wave that does not affect people in the same way. various professionals in this sector.
The most visible impact concerns the closure of the rooms, which, after the first confinement, once again lowered the curtain on October 30, 2020. A break unprecedented in history for 2,045 establishments, which have a total of more than 6 100 screens (listed in 2019). Never have the attendance figures reached such a low low, due to the drop of 69.4% of admissions in 2020, to 65.10 million. Revenues, which pranced at 1.44 billion euros in 2019, also collapsed in the same proportions.
The future of operators is still unclear as long as no reopening date is set. That, aborted, of December 15, 2020 has rekindled the anger of many of them, who, scientific studies in support, ensure that it is much less dangerous to go to the cinema than to take a train or a metro. … They were not heard.
Films continue to accumulate among distributors. Never seen. There are no less than 420, between the French and the internationals. This foreshadows an unparalleled traffic jam as soon as spectators can return to the cinema, and risks being fatal for the most fragile auteur films. For independent distributors, it will be about saving the furniture, trying to show films, making them meet their audience despite frightening competition. Low-budget films should launch as soon as theaters reopen – the expected date of which, in May, remains hypothetical – while the gauges will be very degraded, at 35% for a month, then at 50% for another four weeks, before a return to normal.
Battle between small and big films
At that time, Hollywood studios, which have been holding back their blockbusters for months, should release them on the market. The bloodless theaters could show the most promising films at the same time on several screens, hoping to “recover” an economic health. The battle promises to be sufficiently violent between small and big films that an ex ante opinion from the Competition Authority on a possible concerted schedule of releases is eagerly awaited in April. All the more so since the National Cinema Center (CNC) has no way of forcing the main circuits to keep arthouse films on display.
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