I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s a low-budget mumblecore effort hitting arthouse cinemas this weekend. It’s called No Time to Die – why not mention it in conversation to impress your friends? Yes, OK, you might well be a bit 007-ed out by this stage, what with the deluge of reviews, interviews and thinkpieces about how Bond is the perfect avatar for fuel-crisis Britain. Still, it’s impossible to deny that this is easily the biggest moment for cinema since the global pandemic hobbled it more than a year and half ago.
It does feel we’re rapidly nearing a tipping point for the cinema. Even before the world changed in early 2020, the industry was wrestling with the ever-increasing threat from streaming. Some film studios had been arguing for a reduction to the “theatrical window” – that period when a film is shown in cinemas, before it gets released on DVD or video on demand – while streaming services such as Netflix were happily sidestepping the idea of a theatrical release altogether. Then the pandemic hit and supercharged the entire debate. Even hulking great blockbusters like Wonder Woman 1984 were suddenly appearing online the same day as they were released in cinemas, if they were released in cinemas at all.
As the pandemic has slowly abated, a degree of normality has returned to cinema: blockbusters are receiving wide releases across the world, and people are showing up to see them. (Last weekend Marvel’s snappily titled Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings became the highest grossing film in North America since the emergence of Covid 19). Still though, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle: release windows have remained shrunken – Free Guy, a film that first hit cinemas just over a month ago, is already available for Disney+ subscribers to watch at home – and an ever growing number of movies don’t ever receive a theatrical release.
Into this changed landscape steps No Time to Die, whose success or failure will provide a strong early indication of whether cinema is truly “back”. I’m sure there will be plenty of people nervously checking box office figures over the weekend. Blockbusters on the gargantuan scale of Bond can’t really succeed without cinema takings (reportedly No Time to Die needs to make $900m to break even), and the alternative is fairly apocalyptic: take the reports that Paramount, once a reliable source of mega-budget tentpole movies, is looking to pare down on such releases in favour of making more TV, which, as well as being cheaper to make, will produce far more hours of material – crucial for bolstering streaming libraries – than films ever can.
If cinema struggles to bounce back from its pandemic-era lull, you suspect plenty of other studios may well follow Paramount’s lead. That’s unlikely to affect Bond or Marvel – name-recognition franchises with built-in audiences – but it might mean that studios are even less willing take a punt on blockbusters that aren’t sequels, prequels or reboots, let alone riskier smaller-budget films – a worrying thought given there’s so little original thinking in Hollywood already. And fewer tentpole releases will surely spell bad news for cinemas themselves, already in all manner of trouble thanks to Covid.
So, whether you’re excited by 007’s return or thoroughly bored of Bond, let’s hope that No Time to Die enjoys a bumper weekend. Cinema as we know it might depend on its success.
If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday.
