Gower Street’s Director of Theatrical Insights, Rob Mitchell, discussed the short-term and longer-term future of the global movie exhibition industry with The Well News this week. The Washington DC-based independent US news organization also featured Gower Street’s latest data on the market share of global cinemas open as well as global box office data from our Global Box Office Tracker (GBOT), featured in Gower Street’s Road To Recovery reports.
Interviewed for the article by The Well News’ Sara Wilkerson, Rob suggested that, in the short-term, limited capacities would likely change release habits: “This [limited capacity], in turn, will limit space for competition – with big titles likely to use a greater amount of screens for a longer period of time in order to accommodate a greater audience.” But he suggested that only in the longer term, once capacity restrictions could be safely lifted and a steady pipeline of new products were on a more stable release calendar, would it be possible to fully assess any “impact on the numbers of audience returning and whether those are getting back to normal pre-crisis levels.”
