Screendollars

This week's newsletter focuses on the ins and outs of re-opening theatres. Governments and communities are working together to lay out plans for safely re-opening business, including venues that provide public entertainment such as movie theatres. We highlight a new product called Cielo QR, a straight forward - and FREE - service to help exhibitors implement policies for enhanced cleaning and sanitization while informing and reassuring the public.

In our roundup of Industry News, Tribeca Partners announced last week its Tribeca Drive-In series, a partnership with IMAX and AT&T to offering Drive-ins access to show titles from a series of "curated" films, concerts and sporting events.  Content will be re-mastered using IMAX's proprietary technology to deliver state-of-the-art visual and sound quality.  An article from this week's BoxOfficePro discusses the phenomenon of exhibitors opening pop-up drive-ins in the parking lots of their traditional cinemas. We point to an exhibitor-sponsored streaming initiative, Alamo On-Demand. This streaming service is being offered by Alamo Drafthouse and targeted to their loyal customer based, offering on-line film rental of recently released films that have shown or new films that would have shown at Alamo's theatres.  Proceeds flow back to Alamo and the viewer also builds credits towards future purchases at Alamo theatres once they have re-opened.

Our report from Gower Street takes a stab at calculating the impact that the implementation of social distancing protocols may have on the actual box office at cinemas. Even when limiting maximum ticket sales for each showing and scheduling fewer showtimes per day to stagger start times, cinemas should still has enough capacity to operate profitably once demand from movie-goers re-establishes.

In the Hollywood Report, Martin Grove laments the gap left by the indefinite postponement of this year's Cannes Film Festival, which would have begun this week.  For those looking to reminisce, he highlights Henry Jaglom's 2001 comedy Festival in Cannes as a favorite film which was set at the festival in the seaside resort on the French Riviera.  Martin also notes the would-have-been box office for Mother's Day weekend 2020, when Disney/Marvel had originally planned to release Black Widow starring Scarlett Johansson.

Our film data tables include a calendar 2020 wide-release films scheduled through the end of the year, studio release changes announced this week, the MPAA's latest film ratings and a list of the upcoming major film releases on streaming and DVD.

Our 2020 Film Industry Survey continues in its second week. This 5-minute survey allows our readers to share your current experience of working in the industry and opinions about the future of film. The window to respond will conclude this Friday, and a summary of the results will be published in the Screendollars Newsletter for May 25th.  The survey is available here:  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/film2020survey.