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A mixture of optimism and mistrust has characterized today’s ScreenDaily Talk: “What long term for cinemas in the UK?” While the main figures of the exhibition in the UK discussed the key problems affecting the sector as cinemas begin to reopen in the Covid-19 era.
See the full query below.
Crispin Lilly, CEO of Everyman Media Group, spoke about the undeniable relief of “waking up with workplace admission reports” this week for the first time in four months. Everyman Group opened six of its sites last Saturday. Trolls World Tour, his best-performing film, followed throughout the 1990s The Shawshank Redemption.
“I don’t think there’s any escaping the fact that the numbers are much lower than before,” Lilly said.
He stated that the admissions were between 80 and 85% “below the standard”, but that this figure was higher than expected. He also expressed relief that older customers and families, “the two demographic groups that brought us involved us the most,” are returning to theaters.
But Allison Gardner, executive director of Glasgow Film, which runs glasgow Film Theatre and the Glasgow Film Festival, has issued a stern warning about the independent sector she now faces.
“It will possibly be five years before we return to an equivalent base,” he predicted. “The margins are so narrowArray … it will be difficult to involve those audiences around equivalence, diversity and inclusion.”
Gardner suggested, for example, that the Glasgow Film Theatre’s programmes for people with dementia will now be in trouble. “This larger audience will not return to TFG in the short term. That’s something we’ll have to put on hold.”
As coronavirus infection rates in the US continue to rise and the release dates of Mulan’s major US studio films on Tenet are delayed, Phil Clapp, CEO of the UK Film Association, declared the demanding situations faced by British and European operators “highly dependent.” American products.
“We’re very likely to have a vital dominance of open and business-ready cinema, and because of things that are absolutely out of our influence in the world, we don’t have enough content to bring other people back,” Clapp said.
“We never imagined it would go out,” he said of the situation cinemas face: there’s no normal stream of Hollywood box office hits to display there.
“There is a discussion about the medium- and long-term vision of the British film industry and [there is room for] a more balanced list of films that takes great films but also discovers space for and encourages greater diversity of British content,” Clapp suggested.
Stakeholders agreed that any additional delays in exiting larger securities through their U.S. suppliers can undermine the sector’s long-term recovery.
“I fully feel the preference to expect a global release date. I’m completely hacked. I fully sense all those challenges, but if you expect a global release date, you can wait a long, long time,” Lilly said. . “At some point, you have to recognize that you won’t get 100 percent of the profits from those movies you expected five months ago.”
He called on study managers: “Look at the overall footprint and if you think you can get 75%, go ahead. This, in its own way, will help to follow the path [of recovery].”
“If we wait for the stars to align, there may not be a European film sector that can be achieved when we get there,” Clapp agreed. “What we will lose in doing this is much, much greater in the grand scheme of things than a marginal relief in the source of income around a specific value.”
“I fully perceive that the evolution towards a global day and date is driven through marketing spending; is motivated through piracy and a diversity of other things. But without it sounding too apocalyptic, and now I’m going to do it, we’re talking here about the survival of the sector. Spending on piracy and marketing is a little irrelevant.”
Lilly highlighted the challenge operators face in protecting consumers and staff and not damaging the film experience. “Cinema is something special,” he says. “Cinema will have to be as close as possible to what it was before. That’s what other people want. Everyone’s been watching movies for three or four months. They don’t come to see a movie. They faint to enjoy the cinematic experience. »
The UK government this week brought VAT relief on cinema tickets and, in all likelihood, in food and drink. Exhibitors explained why relief will help save staff.
“I will be fair and frank. The goal is not to transfer savings [to customers],” Lilly said. “If we passed it directly, I would do very little. I don’t think other people show up at an Everyman, or don’t come to an Everyman this weekend, depending on whether our tickets charge 14 euros or 12.60 euros.”
He added that VAT rebate “will allow us to keep licensed staff longer; this will allow us to open more cinemas earlier.”
As for the mask factor, there is still no consensus in the UK on this factor. However, in England, Clapp said, “there is no legal liability for visitors or to wear a mask … in terms of the rules that Public Health England has given us, there is no legal liability.”
“That would possibly change,” Clapp acknowledged. “We’ve received some criticism about this, but ‘professional film organizations assume secondly that public fitness experts’ aren’t [the title] I want.”
“I’m not going to come here and pretend I’m a virologist or question the recommendation they gave us,” Agreed Lilly of Everyman.
It showed at the convention that cinemas in Northern Ireland can open from tomorrow Friday 10 July.
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