The dark rooms want to find the light. After the two years of health crisis, in 2020 and 2021, during which they remained closed for months, the some 200,000 cinemas in the world, including nearly 6,300 in France, have not yet found their previous attendance levels. To achieve this, they will have to once again seduce the millions of moviegoers who now prefer video platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney +, etc.). Between the young generation adept at streaming and trendy “home cinema” adults, cinema operators are looking for the martingale. Especially since virtual reality, capable of simulating, via a headset, a dark room with a panoramic screen in ultra high definition and spatial sound, could plunge them into an existential crisis.
The first reason for concern for exhibitors, world box office receipts (ticket sales) did not exceed 26 billion dollars (24 billion euros) in 2022. Admittedly, this is better than the annus horribilis of 2020 which had fallen sharply to only $11.8 billion, according to figures from the research firm Gower Street Analytics, but still very far from the $42.3 billion in sales for the year 2019, before the pandemic. And the global forecasts for 2023, although revised upwards, still show a serious shortfall of 10 billion dollars for theaters compared to the last peak before the crisis.
France, where the cinema was born nearly one hundred and thirty years ago, is not immune to this depression in cinemas: 152 million admissions in 2022. This is better than in 2021 (+ 59.2%) , but far from the pre-health crisis. The year 2023 remains fragile, even if the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC) noted in April – and “for the first time since the reopening of the rooms” in 2021 – a slightly higher number of entries than before the pandemic, but the trial was not transformed in May.
“During the pandemic, movie theaters remained closed for almost a year. This exceptional situation has heavily penalized the entire industry. But cinema attendance is gradually improving., notes Jérôme Seydoux, co-president of the Pathé group, the leading operator of cinemas in France via its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas, formerly Pathé Gaumont (870 screens). France is even doing better than its European neighbors. Nevertheless: video on demand platforms, especially by subscription (SVOD), have been the big winners of the health crisis. According to Digital TV Research, SVOD worldwide generated nearly $100 billion in revenue in 2022, compared to $88.4 billion in 2021.
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