With Sony having moved its entire Summer slate to either the Fall or 2021, and with Universal delaying its July family juggernaut “Minions: The Rise of Gru” by a year this morning, it’s now looking more and more like the Summer 2020 movie season is effectively over.
Historically this is the annual season that’s the most profitable stretch for the film business, the studios making 40% of annual revenues between May and August when new installments of their biggest properties arrive. The four-month frame brings in roughly $4 billion in box-office domestically each year.
However the coronavirus public health crisis, one that is currently estimated to result in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States alone, has made many come to the understanding that this pandemic will not be solved quickly. As a result the film industry has already fully abandoned April and May, and is now making its way out of June and July with only a handful of releases now remaining.
Specifically Paramount’s “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run” (May 22) and “Top Gun: Maverick” (June 26); Universal’s “Candyman” (June 12), “The King of Staten Island” (June 19) and the fifth “The Purge” (July 10); Warner Brothers’ “Tenet” (July 17); Disney’s “Artemis Fowl” (May 29), “Soul” (June 19) and “Jungle Cruise” (July 24); 20th Century Studios’ “Free Guy” (July 3) and “Bob’s Burgers” (July 17); A24’s “Green Knight” (May 29) and Searchlight’s “The French Dispatch” (July 24) all remain on the schedule.
For now August is still untouched bar the delayed “Wonder Woman 1984” setting up shop there on August 14th. The only other big releases for the month are “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard,” “The One and Only Ivan” and “Infinite” and delays aren’t expected there for a while as none have begun their marketing campaigns and so have a good amount of breathing room.
Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations, tells Variety: “When Sony pulled the plug on their films, that signalled the end of any hope of a summer movie season. If magically a vaccine comes out in June, then maybe that won’t be the case, but I don’t really expect that to happen.”
Even when things do get back to a more normal footing, there’s going to be a logjam of not just releases but productions that have been put on hold and have to resume. Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution tells the trade: “There are lot of moving parts. It’s not about just dating a movie and we’re done. You’ll see titles moving around to accommodate all kinds of things – production delays, financing. We’re still trying to figure out what the domestic film landscape will look like.”
Studios are also going to be wary of releasing their major films with a limited number of screens available, so don’t expect tentpoles or wide releases until all theaters nationwide are not only back but relatively busy.
It’s also expected to be more tempting for companies to release low-mid-budget movies on home video platforms after a few weeks in theaters, such as with “The Invisible Man” and “The Gentleman”. Analysts believe many of the films that debuted on-demand early due to cinema closures have done robust business and have given studios leverage to shorten the window of exclusivity in which all films screen in multiplexes.
Peter Csathy, founder of Creatv Media says: “The windows have been closed and may stay closed even after the industry gets started again. This is something a lot of people in the industry have wanted to do for a long time, and now they’ve had an excuse to do it.”
