Despite a booming summer season, we’ve seen quite a fall at the Box Office- literally. While it was more than expected, with a still-spare slate to offer and many of the ‘best’ potential earners either being held for the Festive Season or for later releases with an eye to the Oscars, it will drag down the more buoyant predictions for 2022. Additionally, Cineworld’s bankruptcy woes have highlighted that not all theater chains have yet recovered their financial positions. All the same, exhibition is still on an upward swing. The key question now is when it will once again match pre-pandemic levels. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, offers an opinion on this critical benchmark.
Cineworld Look Up
While news of a bankruptcy filing is never really good, Cineworld has actually managed to push out rather encouraging interim results for the months ending in June this year. We saw overall revenue at $1.5B (vs $292.8M in 2021), adjusted EBITDA of $364.2M (vs negative $21.1M) and operating profit of $57.3M (vs operating loss of $208.9M). Definitely a positive turn! Additionally, they report rising admissions numbers, with 33.6M through the door in Q1 and 49.2m in Q2, an overall 487% improvement on 2021. However, it is also only 61% of the same 6 months in 2021.
In Cineworld’s case, however, it is not enough to offset a worsened debt position, sliding $0.17B further into the hole in the same annual period.
The Wider Picture
Of more concern than just one company, however, there is a dearth of releases scheduled for 2023 and 2024. While some of this is as a result of companies with streaming platforms choosing to feed those at the expense of theatrical releases, the industry is also still recovering from the enforced set shutdowns and backlogged production cycles of the pandemic.
So we see great interest from audiences in new releases- albeit mostly the blockbusters that hammered us this Summer. Still, as niche and mid-tier films like Elvis have proved, there’s plenty of interest across the spectrum from audience goers. But that interest cannot easily be fed. And film schedules are still not back on track. Until this issue is corrected, the Box Office will continue to lose momentum- as the Fall season has proven all too well.
So the real answer to this question is quite complex- but the key issue will remain. Audiences are keen to get back to theaters. Surprisingly, despite Cineworld’s woes, many theatrical chains managed to make it through the tumult of the pandemic to emerge ready to cater to them. We’ve even seen a huge influx of new models to help sweeten the deal, make theater going into a valuable pastime, and increase accessibility. But until there’s much, much more content to show, there will still be a lag. So there is a simple answer to the question, “When will we see a pre-pandemic Box Office again?” When we have a content cycle that matches pre-pandemic theatrical output. When that will be, however, is still up for debate.
