The future of cinema is premium

Announcing a cinema opening in the middle of a pandemic looks, on the face of it, like setting up a pop-up shop hawking woolly jumpers in July when the mercury is pushing through the 30C barrier.

But Odeon recently did it anyway, with one of its premium Luxe outlets as part of the £300m Londoner hotel development in Leicester Square. Well they do say that the best time to advertise is in the middle of a downturn.

Within the five-year-old Luxe concept lies a potential future for this embattled industry, a riposte to those who have called time on the cinema in the wake of the streaming revolution and the smashing of operators’ cherished exclusivity windows by the big, streaming-addicted, studios.

There are still plenty of sceptics around.

“Sorry we aren’t going back to the movies,” wrote Kara Swisher in The New York Times recently, opining that only her love of Vin Diesel would tempt her back, courtesy of the latest in his hugely popular crash, bang, vroom vroom, how the hell did that car get in space Fast & Furious franchise.

Disney’s Black Widow (available in cinemas but also via Disney Plus for an additional “premier access” fee) and the action thriller Gunpowder Milkshake (Netflix in the US) didn’t have the same pull for her. “I’m watching both at home because, for the most part, I now like it that way – and will more and more.”

How many Swishers are there out there? That’s a key question for the industry. Over here, box office returns and footfall have been running at a bit more than half their expected levels for this time of year.

Some of that will clearly be related to Covid-caution. Some may be down to indifference in the face of what’s been released. Potential blockbuster openings continue to be shuffled in the face of the pandemic. But Swisher, who describes herself as an early adopter, is probably not alone.

Cinephiles will point out that Widow was clearly designed to be watched on a large screen, and the larger the better. Most films still are. They are vastly improved through the format and that doesn’t just apply to big budget superhero flicks, the flaws of which are made less obvious by seeing them on the large screen. The recently released gem The Night House is a genuinely frightening horror. But I doubt it would have the same intensity in a front room.

For some, the sofa has become the most comfortable place for viewing and likely feels safer even in a majority vaccinated country like this one.

But Luxe offers the potential counter-weight. The five-year-old concept is now at the centre of Odeon’s strategy. Its seats, for those who haven’t experienced them, are a bit like Lazyboy chairs, or maybe the fancier business class airline seats. You can recline them to such an extent that you’re almost lying down. I confess I got so comfortable I almost fell asleep in one during a family trip to see Pixar’s Onward, although that’s partly because the film simply didn’t connect with me like it did with most audiences and critics.

This, as well as other such initiatives, and the challenge of tempting punters in a Covid world in which billions of dollars have been poured into streaming, would certainly seem to signal the end of the hurry them in, sell them an overpriced bucket of popcorn, then rush them out multiplex, which was the industry standard for a while. No one will mourn its passing.

The buffing up of the product has worked well for other forms of media faced with electronic competition; vinyl records and books, for example. I recently wrote abut the companies battling to revive blu-ray through lovingly produced premium special editions (Arrow, Anime UK, Criterion, Studiocanal, the BFI etc).

The Luxe format is another example of the trend. It comes at a cost to the consumer, of course. All that investment demands a return, and the recliners also inevitably reduce capacity. As a result, the premium over a standard seat is quite substantial. The cost to a family of four is considerable.

But the format has clearly gained traction with the cinema going public or the company wouldn’t be continuing to expand it, or open new outlets based on it. And it’s hard to fault investing in one’s product as a response to disruption, competitive pressure and online threat.

I’m not as sceptical as Swisher. I’m happy to stream, but the experience of watching a new film in a movie theatre is still worth paying for, all the more so if it’s in a better-quality cinema.

We may still see closures over the months ahead but reports of the silver screen’s impending demise are hopefully exaggerated. Hopefully.