Patty Jenkins Says Movie Theaters Could Close ‘Forever’
The remainder of the 2020 theatrical release calendar looks bleaker than the planet’s prospects at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1. Almost every single remaining blockbuster that was scheduled to open in theaters between now and the end of the year has already been postponed to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. One of the few remaining holdouts is Wonder Woman 1984, the DC Comics superhero sequel starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins. Originally scheduled to premiere back in June, the movie has already had four different 2020 release dates — and the odds are way better than 0 that it gets bumped again.
In the meantime, Jenkins is doing press for the film. Speaking with Reuters she said that the financial crisis facing many movie theaters is getting so severe it could result in permanent closure, warning “If we shut this down, this will not be a reversible process. We could lose movie theater-going forever.”
Jenkins also claimed that the theatrical industry could become the music industry in the early 2000s...
It could be the kind of thing that happened to the music industry, where you could crumble the entire industry by making it something that can’t be profitable. I don’t think any of us want to live in a world where the only option is to take your kids to watch a movie in your own living room,” she said, “and not have a place to go for a date.
It’s still surreal that movie theaters have remain closed (or open but mostly empty with almost no new films to show) since mid-March. When 2020 films first began getting delayed to the fall, that seemed like a wildly conservative estimate on when things would get back to normal. Now they look way too optimistic, to the point where I would be legitimately surprised if Wonder Woman 1984 came out as currently scheduled on Christmas.
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