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    In 2023, Movie Audiences Wanted Comfort, Not Superhero Spectacle

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    Movie audiences flocked to Taylor Swift, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” but were cooler toward returning superheroes like the Flash, Captain Marvel and Aquaman.Hollywood’s movie factories run on conventional wisdom — entrenched notions, based on experience, about what types of films are likely to pop at the global box office.This year, audiences turned many of those so-called rules on their heads.Superheroes have long been seen as the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, the Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to excite moviegoers. Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, arrived to a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. Overseas moviegoers chipped in another $80 million.In the meantime, the biggest movie of the year at the box office, “Barbie,” with $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, was directed by a woman, based on a very female toy and spray-painted pink — ingredients that most studios have long seen as limiting audience appeal. An old movie-industry maxim holds that women will go to a “guy” movie but not vice versa.“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” collected $1.36 billion, a second-place result that also stunned Hollywood; studios have a troubled history with game adaptations. “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, rounded out the top three, taking in $952 million and contradicting the prevailing belief that, in the streaming era, films for grown-ups are not viable in theaters.“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” stunned the film industry by bringing in $1.36 billion.Nintendo/Nintendo/Universal Studios, via Associated Press“Without question, change is afoot — audiences are in a different mood,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “The country and the world are not in the same place. We’ve had seven years of divisive politics, a severe pandemic, two serious wars, climate change and inflation. Moviegoers seem less interested in being overwhelmed with spectacle and saving the universe than being spoken to, entertained and inspired.”The biggest box office surprises of the year fell into the “spoken to” category. “Sound of Freedom,” a crime drama that cost $15 million to make, catered to the far right, an audience largely ignored by Hollywood, and generated $248 million in ticket sales, on a par with “The Eras Tour,” which targeted Taylor Swift fans and also cost about $15 million.“Sound of Freedom” came from Angel Studios, an independent company in Provo, Utah, that supported the film with an unorthodox “Pay It Forward” program, which let supporters buy tickets online for those who otherwise might not see it. In a big break from Hollywood norms, Ms. Swift cut out the middle company (a studio) and made a distribution deal directly with AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater operator.“Our phone has been dancing off the hooks since the day we announced the ‘Eras Tour’ project,” Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, told investors on a conference call in November, referring to “alternative content” opportunities.Comscore, which compiles box office data, projected on Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would reach about $9 billion, a 20 percent increase from 2022. (Before the pandemic, North American theaters reliably sold about $11 billion in tickets annually.) The average price for an adult general admission ticket in the United States was $12.14, up from $11.75, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.Worldwide ticket sales are expected to exceed $33 billion, an increase of 27 percent, partly because of a surge in Latin America. (Before the pandemic, worldwide ticket sales easily exceeded $40 billion annually.)Hollywood’s climb back from the pandemic is expected to stall in 2024. With fewer movies scheduled for release — studio pipelines were disrupted by the recent strikes — ticket sales will decline 5 to 11 percent next year, depending on the market, according to projections from Gower Street Analytics, a box office research firm.Reading box-office tea leaves is like pontificating about symbolism in works of fiction: Any halfway plausible theory works. But studio bosses need something, anything, to guide them as they make billion-dollar judgment calls for the seasons ahead.Here are five takeaways from this year:Moviegoers want comfort.People reach for nostalgia in times of stress, and movies that reminded audiences of the past — while also managing to feel fresh — have been succeeding. “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wonka” and the retro-feeling “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” allowed people to revisit their childhoods. “Insidious: The Red Door” hit pay dirt by bringing back the franchise’s original stars.“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” could have tapped into nostalgia to become a hit. Instead, a huffing and puffing Harrison Ford, 81, simply reminded Indy fans that they, too, are getting old. “Dial of Destiny” cost Disney $295 million to make and took in a flaccid $384 million. (Theaters keep roughly 50 percent of ticket sales.)Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan in “Creed III.”Eli Ade/MGMArt film has a pulse.Sophisticated dramas with modest budgets and aimed at older audiences have been showing signs of life after two years in the box office I.C.U.The streaming era has forever shifted the bulk of prestige film viewing to the home, analysts say. But theaters found a modicum of success in 2023 with offerings like “Past Lives,” a wistful drama with some Korean dialogue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated “The Boy and the Heron.” The bespoke “Asteroid City” managed $54 million.Early box office results have also been promising for Oscar-oriented films like “Poor Things,” a surreal science-fiction romance, and “American Fiction,” a satire about a writer who puts together a fake memoir that turns on racial stereotypes.Bigger is not better.For the past decade, Hollywood has kept audiences interested in sequels by making each installment more bloated and often nonsensical than the last. Bigger! Faster! More!That strategy may need rethinking — it’s just too expensive, analysts say, especially with Chinese moviegoers souring on American blockbusters. “Fast X,” the 10th movie in the “Fast and Furious” series, cost an estimated $340 million and took in $705 million worldwide, including $140 million in China. By comparison, “Furious 7” in 2015 cost $190 million and collected $1.5 billion, including $391 million in China.Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick.”Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesTom Cruise’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” spectacle, released in July in the wake of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” cost roughly $290 million to make and collected $568 million, including $49 million in China. The sixth “Mission: Impossible” in 2018 cost $178 million and generated $792 million, with Chinese ticket buyers chipping in $181 million.Increasingly, franchise sequels and spinoffs need to feel fresh to succeed. Lionsgate, for instance, delved deeper into the High Table underground crime organization in “John Wick: Chapter 4” and introduced “Hunger Games” fans to a new story line (and cast) in the prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” Both movies were hits. Lionsgate even revived its “Saw” horror franchise by shifting the narrative back in time.“Each of those movies did something different than the prior,” said Adam Fogelson, vice chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “It wasn’t just ‘spend more, make it bigger, make it louder and cram in more action.’”Some audience patterns remain intact.Horror continued to be a reliable performer, with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “M3gan” starting new franchises for Universal and its Blumhouse affiliate. Together, the two films cost $32 million. They collected a combined $469 million. Also notable was “The Nun II,” which cost Warner Bros. about $22 million and took in $366 million.Superheroes may be down, but they’re not out. Marvel’s rollicking, well-established “Guardians of the Galaxy” series returned for a third chapter and generated $846 million against a $250 million budget. Sony’s bold, anime-influenced “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” cost an estimated $150 million and collected $691 million.Stars matter.The conventional wisdom in Hollywood has been that movie stars are essentially part of the past. A celebrity name above the title no longer carries that much weight with ticket buyers. The underlying “intellectual property” is what fills seats.People pay to see Barbie, not Margot Robbie.Except that Mattel and various studios tried for at least 20 years to turn the toy into a live-action movie star. It took Ms. Robbie in the role (and Ryan Gosling as Ken) to finally make it happen. Other movies that benefited from star power in 2023 included “Wonka,” with Timothée Chalamet, and “Creed III,” anchored by Michael B. Jordan.Stars don’t have heft? Try telling that to the producers of “Gran Turismo,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Dumb Money” and “Strays,” all of which disappointed at the box office and arrived when their casts were barred from promoting their work because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. More

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      Movie Tickets Veer Away From One-Price-Fits-All

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      Anyone buying a ticket for a concert, baseball game, Broadway play or flight has experienced it: Seats are now priced with dizzying complexity, with costs in some instances changing minute by minute, based on demand.But movie theaters? In many ways, they have been trapped in pricing amber. A seat has cost the same no matter where it is or when it is bought.No more.As they struggle in a fast-changing business, multiplex operators — some carrying astounding debt because of pandemic shutdowns — have started to experiment with pricing in ways that have startled moviegoers. AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, is testing “sightline” pricing, giving seats at evening screenings different costs depending on their location. (Discounts of $1 to $2 for the neck-craning front row, increases of $1 to $2 for the center middle, status quo for the rest.) Chains have also started to charge more on opening weekends for expected blockbusters like “The Batman” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” with plans to ramp up the practice.“It’s a taste of what’s coming,” said Stacy Spikes, who co-founded the subscription ticketing service MoviePass, which he plans to reintroduce nationwide this summer. “The big theater chains are gaining the technology to implement variable pricing on a wide scale. This may have near-term financial benefits, but it may also reduce attendance of younger customers who are more price sensitive and key to future growth.”Increasingly, theaters have been pushing customers toward premium-priced specialty tickets. On Saturday evening at AMC Lincoln Square in New York, for instance, patrons interested in the boxing drama “Creed III” could choose from three IMAX screenings (a $7 to $11 surcharge, depending on seat location), three screenings with Dolby audio and visual technology and reclining chairs ($8 to $12 more), and two standard screenings ($18 for a regular adult ticket).“I’m going to go, no matter what, because I love it, but sorting through all the options is starting to feel like a nuisance,” said Chris Ordal, a tech executive in Los Angeles. “I understand why chains are doing this, but they’re not doing a good job of communicating how it helps the consumer.”Theaters have increasingly been pushing premium-priced specialty tickets for movies like “Creed III.”Eli Ade/MGM, via Associated PressThe move toward pricing complexity adds risk as theater owners look for ways to get people back into the ticket-buying habit after three pandemic-battered years. IMAX has been experimenting with live events, including concert simulcasts. Fathom Events has premiered episodes of a religious TV show, “The Chosen,” in theaters; episodes have generated $20 million at the box office since November, despite being available free online.Prices may actually be going down for certain types of movies — ones that have struggled to attract ticket buyers in the streaming age, including comedies, conventional dramas and art films. Last month, theaters lowered opening-weekend prices for the octogenarian comedy “80 for Brady” to attract value-sensitive older customers. Tickets for evening screenings cost the same as a matinee, a discount of up to 30 percent, depending on the location. Some theaters offered the same deal for “A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks.“In a business where the only innovation in pricing has been to go up, this is a good first step,” said Chris Aronson, the president of domestic distribution at Paramount Pictures, which released “80 for Brady” and urged theaters to lower prices.Inside the Media IndustryRupert Murdoch: The conservative media mogul acknowledged in a deposition in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit that several Fox News hosts promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.Dropping ‘Dilbert’: Hundreds of newspapers across the country will stop running the comic strip after its creator, Scott Adams, said that Black people were “a hate group.”Carlos Watson: The founder of the troubled digital start-up Ozy Media was arrested on fraud charges, punctuating one of the more precipitous falls in the annals of online journalism.Vice Media: The departure of Nancy Dubuc, the chief executive of Vice, highlights the fallen fortunes of a group of digital media companies that not long ago was talked about as the future of the industry.“We’re hopeful that others will follow,” Mr. Aronson added, “and that this is hopefully the beginning of alternative ways of looking at pricing.” (Antitrust rules prevent studios from setting ticket prices themselves.)Theaters offered lower ticket prices for “80 for Brady,” hoping to attract value-conscious older customers.Scott Garfield/Paramount PicturesParamount spent about $28 million to make “80 for Brady,” which has so far collected about $40 million. Roughly 15 percent of the film’s target audience, women over 50, had not been to a theater in more than a year, according to exit surveys.Charging less for certain kinds of movies and more for others has long been a Hollywood third rail, with filmmakers panicking that it will send a message about quality. Just try telling Martin Scorsese that tickets for his next prestige drama will cost less than ones for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”The difference now is that the theatrical marketplace has become so difficult for certain genres that many filmmakers may have no choice. Do you want your film to be seen in theaters? Or are you fine with it going straight to streaming, where it could get lost in the digital maw? If the answer is theaters, you may have to accept a discounted price.The average movie ticket cost $11.75 in 2022, according to EntTelligence, a research firm. In New York, prices reach $28, depending on the format. A small popcorn at AMC Lincoln Square costs $10 with tax. (Fun fact: The average movie ticket price in 1969 was $1.42, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. Adjusted for inflation, that ticket would cost $11.93 today.)Because multiplex chains make most of their money from popcorn and soda, it is in their economic interest to keep ticket prices low; concession counters rely on foot traffic. But there isn’t much room to raise the price of popcorn anymore, prompting some operators to look at “creative” ticket pricing for growth.It has been a tough stretch for theaters. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesCinema attendance had been declining for decades, with people citing a variety of reasons for going less often: 50-inch TVs at home, streaming services, rude patrons who text on their phones when the lights go down. But the pandemic caused ticket sales to collapse in 2020 and 2021. More than 500 movie screens have closed since the start of the pandemic. Cineworld, the world’s No. 2 chain, filed for bankruptcy in September, and dozens of its Regal multiplexes in the United States have closed.A recovery has been slower than expected. Cinemas in North America sold $7.5 billion in tickets in 2022, a 34 percent decrease from 2019, according to EntTelligence. This year, domestic ticket sales are running 24 percent behind the same period in 2019, according to Comscore.The gap is expected to narrow this summer, largely because the flow of new movies is normalizing. Movies delayed by pandemic bottlenecks are finally ready. Studios are also rerouting fewer movies to streaming services. Twelve movies costing at least $100 million to make will arrive in theaters from May to July, up from six during that period last year.“If you squint hard enough, it is possible now to see a return to the better days,” Robert Fishman, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who follows the Cinemark multiplex chain.Cinemark has comparatively little debt, but the hole for other theater companies is deep. AMC, which according to security filings has more than $5 billion in debt, said last week that it generated $990 million in the fourth quarter of last year, a 15 percent decline from 2021, and lost about $288 million.To shore itself up, AMC has offered $5 movie tickets on Tuesdays, introduced home popcorn products in partnership with Walmart, enhanced its Stubs loyalty program, announced plans to turn some theaters into Zoom conference rooms for corporate events and invested in a struggling Nevada gold mine. (Yes, really.) Last month, AMC announced its pricing experiment with seat location, which it calls Sightline.Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, characterized that move — charging a bit more for the best seats — as less a moneymaking gambit than a way to avoid broader price increases.“In these inflationary times, we are coming under pressure to raise prices,” Mr. Aron said in an interview. “We could have raised prices on every seat in the house. Instead, we are holding the line on 75 percent of the seats in the house.” (Also, subscribers to AMC’s premium loyalty program, Stubs A-List, can book a “preferred” seat at no extra charge.)Wall Street responded favorably. But cinephiles had a conniption. In a column, The Chicago Tribune’s film critic, Michael Phillips, called Sightline “a bush-league pickpocket move” and “the latest tiny nail getting tap-tap-tapped into the coffin currently under construction for an entire era of filmgoing.”AMC has pushed back, noting that some European cinemas have charged a premium for prime seats for years. Yes, prices are high in New York and Los Angeles, Mr. Aron acknowledged. But he said 30 percent of AMC customers paid less than $8 a ticket.“When you change the way an industry has priced itself for 100 years, it is not surprising that there is going to be lots of reaction,” Mr. Aron said. “It is our expectation that consumers will adjust to this very quickly.” More

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      ‘Glass Onion’ and ‘Matilda’ Test Netflix’s Approach to Theatrical Releases

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      The company agreed to some exclusive theatrical distribution for “Glass Onion” and “Matilda the Musical,” but it’s not clear exhibitors will get much more.“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” the much-anticipated follow-up to the 2019 sleeper hit directed by Rian Johnson, was supposed to be the moment Netflix crossed the Rubicon.Rather than give the film a perfunctory theatrical release — a strategy designed to ensure most viewers ultimately watch a movie on the streaming service — Netflix, in a first, would give the film a traditional, exclusive run in a large number of cinemas.It didn’t happen.After much back and forth, and contrary to the wishes of some Netflix employees and Mr. Johnson, a theatrical release for “Glass Onion” that at one point some people inside the company hoped would reach up to 2,000 screens ended up at 638 in the United States. The movie, which was released on Wednesday and has received positive reviews, will run in theaters for just one week before becoming available on Netflix on Dec. 23.What was supposed to be the moment to prove the value of theaters to the streaming giant will not come to pass. Yet the company is also involved in another intriguing theatrical experiment this weekend, one that could end up providing Netflix with even more valuable feedback.On Friday, “Matilda the Musical,” financed and produced by Netflix, will open on more than 1,500 screens in 670 locations across the United Kingdom and Ireland. The movie, starring Emma Thompson as the villainous Miss Trunchbull, will be released and promoted by Sony Pictures, which, in a unique one-picture deal, licensed the rights to Netflix on the condition that Sony could hold onto the United Kingdom for a theatrical release. (“Matilda,” which is based on a stage musical that itself is based on a children’s book by Roald Dahl, is beloved in the United Kingdom. The musical has been running in London’s West End since 2011.)“It will be a good example of what could be done,” said Tim Richards, founder and chief executive of Vue International, a London-based exhibitor with theaters in countries including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and Italy. “If there was ever a film made for the big screen, it’s ‘Matilda.’”Sony Pictures, which declined to comment for this article, bought the film rights to “Matilda the Musical” in 2015, with the show’s director, Matthew Warchus, set to oversee the adaptation. At the same time, Netflix was trying to bolster its roster of family films and had its eye on the Roald Dahl estate. (In 2021, Netflix ultimately purchased the entire Dahl estate, giving the company the ability to adapt books like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The BFG” into films and television shows, while also controlling the publishing rights.)At the end of 2019, the companies entered into an arrangement whereby Netflix would finance “Matilda the Musical” and produce it in conjunction with Sony and Working Title Films, a U.K. producer. Netflix would control rights to the finished product worldwide, excluding the United Kingdom and Ireland, where Sony would own the rights and release the film theatrically. “Matilda the Musical” will not appear on Netflix in the United Kingdom or Ireland until next summer, though it will be available to stream in the United States and other countries on Christmas.“Matilda the Musical” is receiving a traditional theatrical release in the United Kingdom.NetflixSo far the film has received positive reviews. The Independent deemed it “a frothy, whimsical delight,” while The Guardian called it “a tangy bit of entertainment, served up with gusto.” It has a 100 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and could do the kind of business that the original “Peter Rabbit” did at the British box office, where it sold $54 million in tickets.Whether the box office performances of “Glass Onion” and “Matilda” have any long-term impact on Netflix’s approach to theatrical distribution is a big question. According to three people with knowledge of Netflix’s inner workings, numerous executives in the company’s film group would like Netflix to embrace a more traditional strategy regarding film releases, but the co-chief executives, Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings, remain focused on streaming. “There is no question internally that we make our movies for our members, and we really want them to see them on Netflix,” Mr. Sarandos said on an earnings call last month, adding, “Most people watch movies at home.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Netflix declined to comment for this article.Discussions about a significant theatrical release for Netflix’s biggest movies began in earnest in April, after the company’s stock dropped 35 percent following a dismal first-quarter earnings report, according to the three people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. “Glass Onion,” one of two “Knives Out” sequels the company purchased for $450 million in 2021, seemed to be the perfect candidate. The original grossed an impressive $165 million domestically — a notable feat for a movie not based on any well-known intellectual property.Spencer Klein, the company’s distribution director, went to the theater owners’ trade convention in Las Vegas to inform eager exhibitors that in light of Netflix’s subscriber slowdown, the company was considering wider theatrical releases. The issue was again brought up at a retreat for senior management in May and discussions continued in June, the people said, when there were preliminary talks about pushing back the streaming debut of the action-adventure film “The Gray Man” to allow for additional time in theaters. (This idea, specifically, never gained much traction.)Each conversation ended the same way, the three people said, with Mr. Sarandos adamant that a theatrical model was a confusing distraction and that the company’s best films should debut on Netflix. It wasn’t until September that Mr. Sarandos re-engaged in the debate, allowing his film team to use “Glass Onion” to test the market to examine two things: whether big-budget Netflix films could make money in theaters, even with the added marketing and print costs required; and whether those additional marketing costs would ultimately improve the film’s performance on the streaming platform.Netflix is releasing “Glass Onion” in more than 600 theaters, but that’s below what some in the company’s film group wanted.Netflix, via Associated PressScott Stuber, Netflix’s film chief, was hoping to put “Glass Onion” into a wide release, anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 screens, according to the people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Sarandos wanted 500. They agreed to more than 600 with a 30-day window between the film’s theatrical debut and its appearance on streaming. Mr. Sarandos demanded that it play for just one week and that the exhibitors promise not to release the box office numbers to the news media. For the first time, the two largest theater chains in the United States, AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas, agreed to a deal with Netflix, along with other smaller chains. AMC’s chief executive, Adam Aron, said in a statement at the time that the deal showed that “both theatrical exhibitors and streamers can continue to coexist successfully.”That enthusiasm was short-lived, stifled when Mr. Sarandos emphasized his commitment to streaming during last month’s earnings call.Some of the large exhibitors were considering backing out of the deal after his remarks, according to one of the people familiar with the company’s inner workings. They remained only because they hoped a success story would change the top executives’ thinking. It helped that Netflix had committed a healthy budget to marketing “Glass Onion,” running commercials during “Sunday Night Football” and “Saturday Night Live,” and showing the trailer in theaters before movies like “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Ticket to Paradise.” “We want as many people as possible to see it in theaters,” Mr. Johnson, the director of “Glass Onion,” told The Hollywood Reporter this week about the film. “And then we want it to do incredibly well when it hits Netflix — so lots of people see it and so it demonstrates to everybody, most of all Netflix, that these two things can coexist.”Mr. Sarandos’s thinking runs counter to what other major studio heads now believe. “I’ve seen the data,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Media Discovery, said during a recent investor conference. “A movie that opens in the theater performs five times as well as a movie that you put direct to streaming.”Yet, releasing films theatrically is far from a sure thing these days. The U.S. box office is down some 32 percent compared with 2019, and the pandemic significantly altered moviegoing habits. Older moviegoers have yet to return to the cinema in big numbers, and studios are making fewer films, 36 percent fewer, in fact. One exhibitor said that if the three big streaming companies — Netflix, Amazon and Apple — released roughly 20 movies in theaters each year in total, that would help make up for the deficit and potentially return the business to a healthy place.Until then, theater chains are hopeful that releases like “Glass Onion” and “Matilda” will convince the companies to try more like them.“I’m hoping that ‘Glass Onion,’ even though it’s a very limited release, will deliver sufficient numbers that will certainly tweak some interest into doing something more in the future because they’ve got some amazing movies coming up,” Mr. Richards of Vue International said. “They’re moving slowly but I’m hopeful that there will be a change in thinking.” More

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      AMC Stock Sale Raises $587 Million as Meme Traders Buy Shares

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      The theater chain altogether raised more than $1.2 billion in capital this quarter, thanks in part to Reddit traders, but cautioned that the stock could still sink.It was a conflicted sales pitch: We’re selling new shares of stock, but don’t buy them unless you can afford to lose all your money. Also, free popcorn. More

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      ‘It’s Magic What We Do.’ Movie Theaters Get Starry-Eyed Once More.

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      The industry was decimated by the pandemic, with theaters shut across the country and new films delayed by Hollywood studios. But now cinemas are ready to fill up their seats again. Will audiences follow?LOS ANGELES — It’s time to go back to the movies! Now!That was the message sent on Wednesday over and over and over again when all five of Hollywood’s major studios, their independent subsidiaries and the stand-alone indie labels like A24 and Neon gathered in person at an AMC theater to show off their coming summer films and remind moviegoers who have become used to streaming their entertainment during the pandemic why they liked going to the movies in the first place. More

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      Can a Brash Executive in Kansas Save Movie Theaters?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdam Aron, the chief executive of AMC Entertainment, has been regarded in his industry as both a traitor and a trailblazer.Credit…Barrett Emke for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexCan a Brash Executive in Kansas Save Movie Theaters?For Adam Aron, who runs AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest movie theater chain, the past year has been filled with twists and turns. And no one knows the ending.Adam Aron, the chief executive of AMC Entertainment, has been regarded in his industry as both a traitor and a trailblazer.Credit…Barrett Emke for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 22, 2021Most of the time, the 116-year-old movie theater business is rather humdrum.Tickets get sold. Images get projected onto screens, sometimes in 3-D. Every now and then, change-phobic cinema operators get excited about an innovation. The armrest cup holder, for instance, was patented in 1981.But these are not normal times at movie houses. Just ask Adam Aron.A year ago, Mr. Aron, who runs AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest multiplex chain, was feeling unusually invigorated about his antiquated industry. Even with streaming services proliferating — and attendance in North America declining — cinemas worldwide collected $42.5 billion in 2019, a record high. “We see dramatic growth in the size of the domestic box office not so far away,” he said with flourish in late February.By mid-March, the coronavirus had forced Mr. Aron to furlough 35,000 workers, including himself, and close every AMC theater: 10,700 screens in 15 countries. As the coronavirus surged and retreated and resurged, AMC reopened most of its theaters, re-closed many of them and, lately, started to reopen some of them again. To keep the debt-saddled chain alive, Mr. Aron and his chief financial officer, Sean Goodman, who joined AMC just a couple of months before the crisis, have done financial back flips, narrowly averting bankruptcy four times in nine months. AMC has raised more than $1 billion in fits and starts and has secured another $1 billion or so in rent deferrals from landlords.AMC has struggled during the pandemic and said in a recent filing that liquidation or bankruptcy was “likely” without another infusion of cash.Credit…Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressIt has been one of the wildest corporate rides of the pandemic, which has severely tested chief executives everywhere. And it is not over yet.With some film studios now predicting that moviegoing will not begin to recover until midsummer — and postponing releases yet again as a result — Mr. Aron has said AMC needs to raise another $750 million to squeak through. So far, AMC has raised $204 million toward that goal. AMC said in a recent securities filing that, without added cash, liquidation or bankruptcy restructuring was “likely.” One potential new lifeline involves a financing package tied to Odeon, a European theater chain owned by AMC.“Many have repeatedly underestimated the sheer will of our management to power through this crisis,” Mr. Aron said in an interview, adding a bit of the droll brashness that is his trademark: “We have not yet begun to fight!”The pandemic has also thrust Mr. Aron, 66, to the front lines of the streaming wars, where, over the past six months, his industry has blasted him as a traitor one minute and followed him as a trailblazer the next.Mr. Aron, a relative newcomer to the multiplex business, broke ranks with other chains in July and agreed to drastically shorten the exclusive window that AMC receives to play Universal films. The studio, home to the “Despicable Me” and “Fast and Furious” franchises, now has the right to make movies available in homes through premium video on demand after just 17 days in AMC theaters — down from roughly 90 days, long the industry norm. In return, Universal agreed, for the first time, to share a portion of the premium on-demand revenue with AMC.Mooky Greidinger, who owns Regal Cinemas, the No. 2 chain in North America, dismissed Mr. Aron’s deal as “the wrong move at the wrong time” in an August interview. He cited the usual reason: People will be reluctant to buy tickets if they can see the same film on their living room television set or iPhone screen just a few weeks later.“This is not a business that you are shaking up that easily,” said Mr. Greidinger, whose family has operated cinemas since the 1930s.Consider it shaken: Regal is now in talks with Universal for a similar arrangement, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. Two other chains, Cinemark Holdings and Cineplex, have already followed AMC.Given the initial blowback, Mr. Aron should be taking a victory lap. Instead, he has found himself back on the defensive.The future of moviegoing has been called into question as some studios have embraced streaming.Credit…Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Aron has been sparring with Warner Bros., which is owned by AT&T, over streaming. Warner recently vowed to release 17 coming films without giving theaters any exclusive play time — or any financial sweeteners. To play a Warner film with no exclusivity, AMC initially demanded up to 80 percent of revenue from ticket sales, according to two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. Warner rejected that request.Ticket sales are typically split 50-50 between studios and theaters.The two sides struck a deal for at least one film on Thursday, with AMC beginning to sell tickets for “The Little Things,” a Denzel Washington crime thriller that Warner will release on Jan. 29 in theaters and on HBO Max. AMC declined to comment. Warner did not respond to a query.Even if he does manage to steer AMC through the pandemic, Mr. Aron faces bone-chilling challenges on the other side. At best, the company will emerge deep in debt. Moviegoing could surge with pent-up demand. Or the masses, now trained to expect instant access to major films on streaming services or online rental platforms, could be reluctant to return. Nobody really knows.How much fight does Mr. Aron really have left in him?Darryl Hartley-Leonard, who ran the Hyatt Hotel Corporation in the 1980s when Mr. Aron served as chief marketing officer, laughed when asked that question.“Let me explain Adam to you this way,” Mr. Hartley-Leonard said. “Had he been the band leader on the Titanic, not only would he have gone down with the ship, he would have looked over the side as the dark, icy water got closer and asked, ‘Do you think we have time to write another song?’”Blunt and quoting ChurchillMr. Aron, left, was the chief executive of the Philadelphia 76ers, among other jobs, before he entered the movie theater business.Credit…Tim Shaffer for The New York TimesAdam Maximilian Aron is not well known in Hollywood. He lives in a distant land called Kansas, where AMC is based, and arrived at AMC in January 2016 by way of the hotel business.After breezing through Harvard University in three years and earning his M.B.A. (also from Harvard, with distinction), he went to work for Pan American World Airways in the marketing department. In his early 30s, he became Hyatt’s marketing chief and subsequently held the same job at United Airlines. Then he began making a name for himself as a turnaround artist, serving as the chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line, Vail Resorts and the Philadelphia 76ers. For a time, he was a senior operating partner at Apollo Global Management, the private-equity powerhouse. Before AMC, Mr. Aron ran Starwood Hotels.He can be marvelously blunt. “The quarter was simply a bust,” Mr. Aron told AMC analysts in 2017. More often than not, however, he drifts into monologues and voluminous lists. “Before turning to your questions, I’d like to comment on eight important specific topics,” he said on AMC’s most-recent earnings call. Bad puns delight him, as do folksy interjections. (“Whoa, Nelly!”) He has a tendency to grandstand, quoting, for instance, a wartime Winston Churchill to sum up AMC’s pandemic mind-set. “We shall fight on the beaches,” Mr. Aron told analysts with flourish in November. “We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight on the fields and in the streets.”Mr. Aron is usually one of the more colorful attendees at the annual National Association of Theater Owners convention in Las Vegas. One year, citing a bad knee, he zipped around Caesars Palace on a Rascal mobility scooter. Another time, he made his staid competitors reach for their smelling salts by brainstorming — in front of reporters — ways to reverse a worrisome decline in young ticket buyers.What about allowing smartphone use in the back of certain auditoriums?What about exploring dynamic pricing for tickets (the way airlines do it)? Or selling subscriptions (a certain number of screenings for a flat monthly price) like MoviePass was doing?“Adam has never been interested in just running a company,” Mr. Hartley-Leonard said. “He has always wanted to change an industry — to challenge that lazy, this-is-how-we-have-always-done-it mentality that can settle in.”Excoriated for the smartphone idea, Mr. Aron quickly dropped it. But he pressed forward with the contentious notion of subscriptions: For $23.95 a month, AMC Stubs A-List members can see up to three movies a week at any location.Tapping his experience with hotel and airline loyalty programs (he created Pan Am’s frequent-flier program in 1982), Mr. Aron improved AMC’s version, Stubs, which has 25 million members, up from two million in 2016. He also moved AMC into the video-on-demand business by starting an iTunes-style online store.“In terms of innovation, Adam has done a great job,” said Eric Wold, a senior analyst at B. Riley Securities.Even so, Mr. Wold noted, AMC shares have struggled. The company’s market capitalization in March, just as the pandemic started, was $780 million. It was $2.2 billion when Mr. Aron arrived.AMC shares hit a 52-week low of $1.91 on Jan. 5, down 45 percent from a month earlier, when Warner announced its streaming plans. Shares were trading at about $2.90 on Friday.“You are painted by the stock price as chief executive, and by that measure his tenure has not been strong,” Mr. Wold said. “If he can steer them out of this current nightmare, of course, that changes everything.”‘Stare change in the face.’AMC has seen growth in Saudi Arabia in recent years, though moviegoing in North America is weakening.Credit…Tasneem Alsultan for The New York TimesIn some ways, Mr. Aron is trying to push a boulder up a hill. Moviegoing is growing overseas — AMC has been making inroads in Saudi Arabia — but attendance in North America, the world’s No. 1 movie market, has been weakening for nearly two decades. Admissions in North America peaked at 1.6 billion in 2002.The thrill of big screens and super-salty popcorn has been undercut by fancy home theater systems. Shopping malls, which house many theaters, have fallen out of favor. Some people complain about sticky theater floors and disruptive patrons. Others say moviegoing has become too expensive — concessions, tickets, babysitters — especially given the growing array of low-cost, at-home entertainment options that are already part of a household’s budget. Disney+ subscriptions are $7 a month. A single trip to a theater to see a Disney film for a family of four would run $50-plus (not including snacks) in bigger cities.AMC entered the pandemic with pre-existing conditions, including considerable debt, the result of a modernization campaign that started in 2012 when Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate, bought AMC from a group of private equity companies. It began to replace worn seats with La-Z-Boy-style recliners; install enhanced projection and sound systems; and experiment with alcohol sales.Mr. Aron supercharged the initiative. The strategy: Find ways to raise prices for existing customers and, hopefully, win some new ones.He also went on a shopping spree, paying $3.3 billion to buy several competing chains and transforming AMC into the world’s largest cinema company.But the spending added up.AMC had $4.8 billion in debt when the pandemic started, up from $1.9 billion when Mr. Aron arrived in 2016. Debt now totals $5.5 billion — not including rent payments that have been deferred during the pandemic — a colossal sum for a company that generated $5.5 billion a year in revenue when running as normal.“Go back to the Jack Welch school of management,” Mr. Aron said when asked if his acquisitions made sense in retrospect, referring to the fabled General Electric leader. “You pick up economies of scale, and being No. 1 gives you other enormous advantages, including, in our case, negotiating with studios from a place of greater strength.”Mr. Aron will need all the negotiating leverage that he can get. Most of the conglomerates that own movie studios are downsizing their theatrical slates and routing more movies toward their own streaming services, which need exclusive content to grow. This paradigm shift is one reason that Mr. Aron engaged with Universal about shorter exclusivity periods.“Some of my competitors, the ones caught up in the past, are saying that I’m the worst human being alive on the planet,” Mr. Aron said shortly after announcing the Universal deal. “But sometimes you have to stare change in the face, recognize that it has or soon will arrive, and reshape it to one’s own benefit.”Has the conservativeness of the multiplex business surprised him?“It’s shocking actually,” he said. “Shocking.”Hoping for another magic trickMr. Aron turned around Vail Resorts by expanding it beyond skiing. Time will tell whether he can pull off a similar turnaround in the movie industry.Credit…Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesChallenging the status quo — and upsetting competitors in the process — is the thread that extends through Mr. Aron’s career. “What separates successful leaders from unsuccessful leaders is boldness, and I have always tried to be the opposite of timid, to fundamentally change a company or an industry for the better,” he said.When he was running Norwegian in the early 1990s, Mr. Aron made waves in the conservative cruise industry with a marketing campaign about sex. (One tagline: “There’s no law that says you can’t make love at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday.”) When he arrived at Vail Resorts in 1996, he outraged traditionalists in what was then a stubbornly static business by dramatically expanding the company beyond skiing. He bought other winter resorts and a chain of luxury hotels; opened dozens of restaurants and retail stores; and plunged into condo development. By the time he left Vail in 2006, competitors were copying his strategy.“Instead of sitting around whining, Adam says: ‘These are our cards. How the hell are we going to play ’em?’” said Harry Frampton, a major Colorado real estate developer. “Anytime that happens, you make a couple of people mad along the way.”“Vail was tired around the edges, and Adam’s approach — it’s not just about skiing — was transformative,” Mr. Frampton added. “He called it the Vail Renaissance, which I thought was silly branding at the time. But I was wrong.”Time will tell whether the movie theater industry comes to view Mr. Aron the same way. If nothing else, his tenacity in avoiding bankruptcy has certainly been noticed.“During this crisis, Adam has been like Houdini,” said Richard L. Gelfond, the chief executive of Imax. “Every time I start to doubt that he can do something, he somehow pulls off another magic trick.”For his part, Mr. Aron is optimistic that AMC, founded in 1920 and standing for America Multi-Cinema, will find the needed rescue funding and enjoy a “renaissance” as people emerge from the pandemic.“If you want to know my mood, I’m very encouraged that multiple vaccines are rolling out globally,” he said. “To use a bad pun, it’s a real shot in the arm.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More