Gower Street CEO Dimitrios Mitsinikos took a key role in the latest CJ Cinema Summit, the regular webinar event presented by Celluloid Junkie and Filmgrail.
Hosted by J. Sperling Reich on Thursday Nov. 18, the event marked the 50th CJ Cinema Summit. Sperling kicked off in discussion with Thomas MacCalla, partner at Covergent Group, before introducing Dimitrios.
Dimitrios took the online attendees through a presentation looking at how the industry has been recovering in 2021. He introduced Gower Street’s key products (Forecast, Expert Sense and the State of the Market report) before moving on to show where the global box office currently stands in 2021 compared to the 3-year pre-pandemic average and Gower Street’s latest projection for year-end global box office in 2021. He also presented a look at our heatmap of 2021 play-weeks across major global markets, showcasing how certain titles impacted the recovery of different markets.
Following the presentation, Sperling introduced Warner Bros’ executives Andrew Cripps, President International Theatrical Distribution, Warner Bros. Studios, and Jeff Goldstein, Executive Vice President, Domestic Theatrical Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures. The two executives took questions from Sperling and Thomas on DUNE, GODZILLA VS KONG, ongoing distribution experimentation, genres struggling in the pandemic, what the future of the industry looks like, and more.
Andrew revealed that Warner Bros had grossed $1.5 billion at the international box office to date. “We’ll end up between $1.7-1.8 billion this year,” he added. Jeff said Warner Bros Domestic market was currently at around $600 million and would “probably get to around $750 million”.
Thomas then passed back to Dimitrios to show another set of slides focused on the Domestic market (including breakout looks at Texas, Florida, New York, California, and Ontario) and the top 12 International markets (UK/Ireland, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Spain, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, and Brazil). These featured our recovery and box office trackers, as featured weekly in our State of the Market report.
The panel then took audience questions, before returning to Dimitrios to present the “$50 billion question” – asking “Will global box office rebound to grow to $50 billion by the end of current decade?” – a question put to Andrew and Jeff.
A full recording of the event can be accessed here or by clicking on the image below.
