Many will point out the disappointing receipts as having to do with the film also playing on HBO Max at no extra charge for its subscribers. Who knows. Clearly, the streaming option greatly reduced the theatrical audience, but by how much? WW84’s opening weekend was somewhat impressive, given there is a pandemic going on, but did moviegoers only realize a week later that it was available to stream online?
In the U.S, theaters are continuing to struggle, with all films this weekend barely taking in a total of $13 million, and this during the Christmas holidays. Yikes. The current estimate only has 40 percent of domestic theaters open in the country right now. the estimable Tom Brueggemann over at IndieWire claims that WW84’s estimated total this weekend would have been at around $25 million if every single theater in the country were actually open for business.
Suffice to say, the outlook is currently very grim for movie theaters as we are starting to witness take shape a new paradigm. It doesn’t help that most forecasters don’t see any kind of return to normalcy until, at the earliest, next summer, or maybe even fall. To make matters worse, the theaters that are currently open will have difficulty remaining that way as there aren’t many big titles being released in the coming months with, to make matters worse, more scheduled movies this winter likely to be delayed. A few bleak months ahead no doubt and something we should pay close attention to as this could amount to the most catastrophic moment the movie industry has witnessed, maybe ever.
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