Cinemas face a test after coronavirus lockdown

Cinema diehards will welcome the return of going to the movies with Covid-19 social distancing rules in place. Picture: Jason Edwards

Good news, movie fans! Next month most Australian cinemas will reopen as the country emerges from COVID lockdown. But there will be a few differences in the movie experience for those ready to venture back to the cinema.

Start times will be staggered to avoid big crowds outside the main cinema entry. Online booking will be encouraged over queuing and cash. Ticket numbers will be strictly limited. Enough will be sold to enable theatres to turn a profit but tickets will be limited to ensure physical distancing rules are adhered to. A two-seat buffer will be created with a separating row both behind and in front of each customer group. Cinemas will also be cleaned more fastidiously between shows and there will be the usual hand sanitisers and temperature measuring devices on entry that have become the norm.

Rather than hamper the cinema experience, it is apparent coronavirus might actually have done the movies a few favours. When you step back and look at the new provisions: less lines, cleaner, more spacious theatres, it would appear that, if anything, going to the cinema might prove to be a more enjoyable experience in July.

Of course, all that hinges on whether audiences will return to the big screen. Will people feel confident stepping back into their local multiplex and sitting relatively close to strangers? In the dark? For several hours? Or have they readjusted to watching movies from home and will reject the outdated attractions of cinema?

Wonder Woman is making a return to the silver screen.

We have been deluged in recent weeks with hyperbolic “new normal” articles predicting everything will change as a result of the lockdown and the dramatic impact it has had on consumer psychology and social norms. I have lost count of the articles predicting that shopping, working, media and a host of other human endeavours will change forever.

But these predictions miss one of the core facets of consumer behaviour — brute intransigence. Famed 60s advertising legend Bill Bernbach would always talk about “unchanging man” to anyone who claimed customers were going through sudden alterations. He noted it had taken millions of years for customers to develop their instincts and he advised all marketers to focus on what does not change if they wanted success.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, has made a similar observation. Wherever he goes, Bezos says, people ask him what will change in the coming decade. His response is that a more interesting question is what will not change, “because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time”.

John David Washington in a scene from Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Picture: AP

It’s a view certainly shared by the cinema industry. “Australians love going to the movies and we anticipate strong audience return over July,” Val Morgan’s managing director, Guy Burbidge, said “Cinemas have long delivered an unrivalled shared social and cultural experience, which has been truly missed by Australians in the last three months.”

And there is plenty of data to suggest Burbidge’s confidence is well placed. In New Zealand, where cinemas have been gradually reopening through June, ticket sales have been brisk despite the lack of new movies. A survey by Event Cinemas suggests this country will be no different — 94 per cent of cinemagoers confirmed they intend to visit the cinema as much, if not more.

This is great news for an industry that was, up until March and the advent of coronavirus, enjoying a resurgence. Despite the advent of streaming content and digital video, cinema audiences have been strong for more than a decade. Box office takings have doubled since 2000.

And cinema advertising has had a renaissance too. Traditional lTV has struggled to retain younger audiences and digital options have suffered from accusations of low viewability. The power of cinema to attract the younger demographics and show them ads they literally cannot ignore has seen a significant growth in cinema advertising interest in the past two years. Many predictions suggested cinema advertising would be the fastest-growing advertising media in 2020. Oh, how wrong they were!

Yifei Liu stars in Disney's Mulan. Picture: Disney

All of that was put on hold with coronavirus. And there were even suggestions the closure of most cinemas would finally break the century-long tradition of launching blockbuster movies in theatres ahead of home release.

In the US and the UK, the big kids’ movie of the season, Trolls World Tour, was launched into the few faltering cinemas left open back in March and, simultaneously, as a digital download at home.

But most movie studios recognised a cinema launch remains the best way to increase total movie revenues and the big-ticket films scheduled for release were pushed later into the year.

The new Wonder Woman movie, along with Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and the live-action version of Disney’s Mulan are seen as the holy trinity of upcoming releases. In a normal year each would be a smash. But all three are now faced with the unenviable task of pulling audiences back to the cinema for their first post-COVID film. If they do the business, then everyone can assume cinemas will quickly return to normal. If they falter, this could be a hard year.

Whatever impact coronavirus has on demand, it has already landed an unavoidable blow. Audiences were not the only ones who put their movie-going experience on hold back in March. The global production of movies was halted too.

No matter how quickly cinema audiences return, the effect of coronavirus on cinema will linger long after theatres reopen.