With a few exceptions – including one big one called China – the entertainment industry remained in a nervous, wait-and-see mode on Monday, March 2, about the impact the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus will have on business.
“The Motion Picture Association and its member companies are closely monitoring reports from public health officials about the coronavirus and protective measures to limit its impact,” the trade group that represents Hollywood’s major studios said in a statement that echoes those of most production and exhibition entities regarding the disease. “The wellbeing of our global customers and employees is our top priority, and we will continue taking the necessary precautions to ensure their health and safety.”
In China, where the virus first broke out and has claimed the most lives and infections so far, movie theaters, like theme parks, are among most public spaces that have been shut down for much of the year. The trade publication Variety reported Monday that that ticket sales in the second largest moviegoing market on Earth have plunged by nearly $2 billion compared to January and February of 2019 as a result.
Production in China has ground to a halt as well, and plans to hold splashy premieres in the country for the upcoming James Bond film “No Time to Die,” Disney’s live-action “Mulan” and other Hollywood blockbusters have been canceled.
The Bond movie’s cast also dropped plans to visit nearby, corona-struck countries Japan and South Korea. Italian releases of “Mulan,” “The Grudge” and “Onward” have been delayed, as has production on the seventh installment of Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” action franchise that was scheduled for Venice. Netflix has reportedly scotched plans to shoot some of its big-budget action thriller “Red Notice” with Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, in corona-hit Italy as well.
About half of that European nation’s movie theaters have been closed – and they’re starting to close in northern regions of neighboring France, where the world’s most famous art museum, Paris’ Louvre, has also shuttered. As of Friday, that nation’s Cannes Film Festival, arguably the best-known event of its kind, was still preparing to start in mid-May, but like most other industry gatherings was monitoring events. However, a documentary film festival in Thessaloniki, Greece has had its scheduled start postponed from this Thursday until May or June.
“Public venues such as cinema chains, theaters, sports venues etc. have been closed to the public in numerous markets, with cinemas closed during the key New Year period in China,” noted Richard Broughton, research director for the British media metrics-measurer Ampere Analysis . “A number of [movie] releases have been postponed as a result of this in China. We would expect to see some bounce-back in box-office once the situation returns to normal and films are finally released, but it is highly unlikely to compensate for the impact on attendance from during the closure periods.”
In the U.S., however, despite a jump in coronavirus cases and the first deaths from it reported in the last several days, both patrons and the people who bring them the product are, with few exceptions, still going at it.
“In North America, all the theaters are open and this past weekend it was clearly business as usual with ‘The Invisible Man’ overperforming a little bit and other movies doing well,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior box-office analyst for the Sherman Oaks-based media measurement firm Comscore, who added that he attended an unusually crowded Sunday evening showing of “Invisible Man” at the Westlake Village Cinépolis. “So while it seems that while individuals are being cautious – and smartly so – they’re still going out to the movies in big numbers.”
The fate of this year’s CinemaCon, the big industry trade show put on by the National Association of Theatre Owners each spring, could be telling about the domestic box-office’s fate.
Still on for March 30 through April 2 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, a message in bold type at the top of the event’s homepage declares “Our show is moving forward as planned.”
Click to an announcement posted on Feb. 26, however, and the following can be seen along with a number of other cautions as well as reassurances:
“We fully respect the decision of any potential attendee not to attend the convention,” the CinemaCon site reads. “Most of that impact will come from some international attendees. We have already seen this from those areas hardest hit in China. Nonetheless, our weekly registration numbers are tracking evenly with where we were at this time last year. On the trade floor, those Chinese companies who were to be on hand have all made a decision not to attend CinemaCon 2020, primarily because of travel bans that are in place. This amounts to approximately two dozen attendees. We know that some other delegates contemplating attending the show may choose not to attend or may not be able to. We want to assure those affected participants that any organization or individual based in a country with travel restrictions due to the Coronavirus will receive a full refund.”
Obviously, the perceived health of the convention will send a signal to moviegoers nationwide, and NATO does not want it to meet the same fate as a game developers conference scheduled for this month in San Francisco that’s been canceled after a number of electronic game companies pulled out due to pandemic concerns.
Or Facebook’s Developers Conference or the Hong Kong Filmart, both altered to the point of near-cancellation. Meanwhile, Twitter has pulled out of this month’s multimedia South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, and though 17,000 have signed an online petition to cancel the whole event, the film festival portion of the show was still starting March 13, as of this writing.
So far, it’s mainly been concerts at Asian venues by groups such as Green Day and Korean Pop sensations BTS that have been canceled.
Still, all of this should theoretically be a boon for home entertainment, as more people decide to stay home in hopes of not catching the bug.
Impact on television production has been even more sporadic than in the movie sector.
CBS has temporarily suspended production on the next season of its globe-trotting reality show “The Amazing Race” three episodes in. As of this writing, the Tokyo Summer Olympics are still on track to open in July, though a final decision on that may be issued in May. On Monday, deadline.com reported that TimeWarner Media had told its News and Sports divisions’ employees that international travel would be curtailed to only that deemed essential for coverage and had to be approved by CNN boss Jeff Zucker.
As for other, rank-and-file entertainment industry workers:
“”We’re actively monitoring the situation as information comes out,” said Jonas Loeb, director of communications for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, adding that no virus-related guidelines had been set yet for the thousands of entertainment industry craft workers represented by the union.
However bad it gets, one can safely expect that Warners’ HBO Max, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and other new video streaming services will roll out in the coming months as planned.
“With the public directly or indirectly encouraged to stay at home and avoid venues with many other people present, it is almost inevitable that attendance rates even in markets without large-scale cinema closures will fall,” Ampere’s Broughton noted. “By contrast, domestic entertainment media – broadcast TV, streaming video, gaming – are likely to see uplifts in terms of viewing/usage time.”
Don’t be surprised, though, if public entertainment comes roaring back after the crisis passes.
“My take on this, and I don’t know anything about the medical side of it, is that obviously the longer it goes on the more it’s going to affect the global box-office,” Comscore’s Dergarabedian reckoned. “It’ll also affect production, as we saw with ‘Mission: Impossible’ having to suspend shooting. But if this situation gets resolved sooner rather than later, I think there will be a tendency for people who have been reticent to go out to be very enthusiastic about doing that.”
"some" - Google News
March 03, 2020 at 08:44AM
https://ift.tt/39lbpDc
Coronavirus hits entertainment industry — and some shows may not go on - LA Daily News
"some" - Google News
https://ift.tt/37fuoxP
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Coronavirus hits entertainment industry — and some shows may not go on - LA Daily News"
Post a Comment