‘We’re in the hands of people without a plan’: is there any hope for Britain’s cinemas?
Yet again, cinemas must shutter up and hoist the curtains drawn, for at least these four weeks of currently scheduled lockdown. It’s another enormous setback for these businesses, after months of hard work, safety innovations, and creative programming to lure customers safely back through their doors. This has been a period in which major distributors have barely offered any help, opting instead to postpone all their biggest releases to the middle of next year.
Forced closure is especially galling after the steady growth Britain’s independent cinemas have seen in the past month, making the most of what’s come their way. Every weekend has been more promising than the last. Kevin Markwick, owner/manager of the two-screen Uckfield Picturehouse in East Sussex, says these signs of recovery in October have made the sudden clampdown all the more disheartening.
“October’s been a big improvement, actually. We’ve been showing a lot of event cinema’s greatest hits, as well as new stuff. The Frida Kahlo documentary sold out, and a lot of the NT Live reruns. We sold out on Saturday night with Halloween. The family stuff has been doing well too, because people are desperate to bring the kids to the cinema – they want to get the hell out!
“It felt like we were really getting somewhere – people felt safe and enthusiastic. The restaurant that we’ve got has been doing very well.”
He mentions all the events that were in Uckfield’s pipeline for November, including a number of filmmaker Q&As, and curated screenings with the likes of Edgar Wright, Ben Wheatley and Corin Hardy in attendance. He says these were “selling like gangbusters” and now has to resign himself to “another round of refunds and credit. Money that was in the bank, and now has to come out again.”
The government funding promised to cinemas in September – an initial package to help with Covid security measures, and a larger one designated as the “cultural recovery fund” – has been slow to turn up. Markwick says he only got notified about the Covid part of the grant on Friday, and has already spent the money fixing the cinemas up with safety protocols. There is no word yet on the larger grant.
“Thank God they’ve extended furlough,” he sighs, “because we’d have been in real trouble in November otherwise.” The only other positive is having all the safety measures now in place. “We’ll be ready to reopen, unlike in July, when reopening was a lot of work. Now we can turn it back on again at the flick of a switch. But the frustration is not knowing if December 2 is an actual date you can work towards.”
While some of November’s theatrical releases will simply be postponed – such as Harry Macqueen’s Supernova, starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, which StudioCanal are hoping to reschedule for January – there are others that are gone for good. David Fincher’s Mank, for instance, will simply go to a Netflix-only premiere now, bypassing the big screen altogether.
“It’s not going to engender confidence in film distributors,” Markwick adds. “We’re holding out for things like Katherine Jenkins’s Christmas special! And reruns of The Nutcracker, which always fill up.”
“We can do only so much juggling until the studios start to step up again,” he explains. Disney have already postponed Death on the Nile, which he calls “right in our Telegraph-reading wheelhouse, as it were. We were hanging our shirt on that for October”. Then it got postponed until December 18, now an ominously dicey date.
“It’s the uncertainty that becomes really wearing. And the rudderlessness of it. If you feel like you’re in the hands of people with an actual plan, it might be better. But I don’t think we are.”
As for No Time to Die, which was meant to be everyone’s salvation in November, the postponement to next April came, to Markwick, as an especially bitter blow. “It seems counter-intuitive, but I invested some money on that, to reseat one of our theatres and make it really high-end, with big electric recliners and double tables. We’re going to bring you food, and reduce the seating capacity.
“I figured it was worth a go for Bond, because the farther you are from people, perhaps the more confident they’ll feel. And to make it an even more attractive proposition to come to the cinema.
“The seats are actually due to be installed on Thursday,” he says, letting out an understandable gallows laugh. “Of course, it will still all be there when we come back. But I don’t believe December 2 is going to be party time.”
