2020 Was a Year of Firsts for the Movie Industry. NewsWire

NEWSWIRE: 3/13/21

• The pandemic has turned the film industry upside down. The big blockbusters that used to rule Hollywood have mostly been delayed, leaving room for smaller and cheaper movies to shine. (The Economist)
• NH: Before the pandemic hit, big-budget superheroes and sequels ruled the box office. All 10 of 2019’s top-grossing films came from major American studios like Disney and Sony Pictures and featured returning characters.
• Fast forward to 2020. Six of the top 10 films were not in English, reflecting Asian countries’ faster return to pre-Covid normalcy compared to the West. (See "In 2020, Deaths In Japan Declined.") The #1 movie was the Chinese war drama The Eight Hundred, marking the first time ever the top-grossing film didn’t come out of Hollywood. 2020 also marked the first time that China overtook the U.S. as the world’s largest box office.
• Hollywood has recently begun lumbering back to life. Around 38% of movie theaters are currently open in the U.S., and major releases like Wonder Woman 1984 and Tenet made it into some theaters. But with revenue down drastically, many studios are taking a page from Netflix, which has long kept its viewer figures secret.
• Warner Bros, Sony, and Disney’s Searchlight Pictures are among those that now only report box office grosses weekly to the press (as opposed to in real time online) or not at all. Of course, the major studios don’t have the same business model as Netflix--and as we inch our way back to normal, the pressure will be on to get their old box office numbers back, too.

Did You Know?

• Shut Up and Sell Things. In mid-2020, amid the George Floyd protests, the share of consumers who wanted brands to fight racism and ensure “diverse and equitable” representation at their companies surged. But since September, those shares have fallen considerably—down 15 (to 50%) and 7 (to 64%) percentage points, respectively. In general, Americans’ sentiments surrounding corporate and CEO activism have weakened: In June 2020, for example, 67% agreed that how businesses react to “important social, political, or other issues” would permanently affect their decision to buy from them, but this has since fallen to 51%. Americans have also become more likely to agree that it is a company’s responsibility to focus on financial performance, even at the expense of other objectives (up 8 percentage points). Yet even as enthusiasm for corporate activism has cooled, the vast majority (82%) still say that businesses should stand for something beyond profit.