Skip to main content

The End of the Show — Will Cinemas Survive?

It is little secret that cinemas in the UK have been through a bit of a tough time in the past couple of years. Last month, the Guardian reported that Cineworld's shares have plummeted by nearly 99% over the previous five years. Furthermore, the company is currently in around £4bn of debt. 


However, some hope may be left before the curtains draw to a close for movie theatres. The UK's box office takings from last year may have been down by 28% compared to before the pandemic, but the late 2010s saw British cinemas taking in the highest audience numbers in over half a century. Perhaps, therefore, the industry may sooner or later rebound from the post-covid slump. 


Furthermore, despite the challenges, in 2021, the country bore witness to its third and fourth most successful box office releases of all time (No Time to Die and Spider-Man: No Way Home, respectively). On top of that, according to Statista, the United Kingdom had 840 cinemas in 2019, but that number had actually risen to 860 by 2021. 


On the other hand, some have pointed to the rise in streaming services to blame for the struggles of cinemas. Last year, American filmmaker Steven Spielberg told The New York Times, "The pandemic created an opportunity for streaming platforms to raise their subscriptions to record-breaking levels and also throw some of my best filmmaker friends under the bus as their movies were unceremoniously not given theatrical releases." 


Nevertheless, Rafael Lourenço, 21, a keen and frequent cinema visitor from North London, explained: "It's nice to stay at home and watch a show or a movie on TV, but there's just something magical about the cinema. The darkness, the large screen being all that you can see, the sound that surrounds you, giving you an immersive experience."


"Some things are best experienced on the silver screen."


"I think that the rising success of streaming services have affected cinemas to an extent, but not to the extent that they're dying," He added.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Nicky's North London

  Hello and Welcome to Nicky's North London.  As you might be able to work out from the site's title, my name is Nicky and the blog is about North London.  At this point in time I don't really know what to write about, and that's kind of awkward actually. To make up for this, I've provided a short film I made about North London a while ago. I hope you like it.
Post a Comment
Read more

Arsenal Representative Speaks of Importance of Community Work.

A representative of Arsenal in the Community has spoken about the positive impact the project has had on people in Islington and the local area.   When asked about the significance of Arsenal's contributions to the local public,  Samir Singh, who has been with the organisation since 2007, said: " We’re a massive disruption to the local community on a match day, so we need to be a good neighbour." Samir continued: " “I’ll give you a good example: men’s health projects, I say this as a man. Stupid men won’t listen to their doctors or their wives but they’ll listen to Arsenal.  "If through our men’s health programme we can help men to lose weight or, to you know, check for prostate cancer, whatever it might be, that’s powerful.” Other forms of support offered by the project include providing children with numeracy and literacy tutoring, visiting hospital patients with players and promoting the inclusion of females in sport.
Post a Comment
Read more

Feature Writer Emma Garland on Her Path Into Journalism.

We have all, at some point, read an article by a feature writer. But what, however, does the journey to becoming a journalist of this nature look like?  For Emma Garland, who, up until January of last year, had worked at Vice for eight years and recently joined Huck as the magazine's new digital editor, the answer isn't quite as straightforward as the question might seem. Whilst giving a guest speaker talk at London Metropolitan University, She told students: "My pathway to journalism was very kind of unusual and non-linear."   "I've never done an internship, I've never done a placement anywhere, I've never had a mentor."  However, Emma said that whilst doing a B.A. in English literature and creative writing, she found a passion for blogging: "I started reviewing gigs and albums and interviewing bands and stuff like that."  "[It was] all unpaid, but like, because I wanted free access to shows and records and all of the fun stuff th
Post a Comment
Read more