#Shut in movie showtimes for free

Now, with film festivals closing down and the entire system at risk, the obscurity of the undiscovered grows ever deeper, and the struggle for ambitious and unusual work to be recognized at all grows ever more precarious. The past few years have, as a result, placed a special onus on critics, whose highlighting of out-of-the-way movies from the glut of the stream and the margins of one-off theatrical screenings became all the more crucial to help those films find an audience.

#Shut in movie showtimes for free

Producers were finding it harder to secure theatrical releases for their films, because fewer viewers seemed likely to take a risk on spending for tickets to the unknown when they could watch something reliably familiar at home for free (i.e., nothing above the price of a subscription).

Yet before the pandemic struck the United States, the movie business was in the midst of major changes already, ones that struck independent and international films particularly hard. This year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which had been scheduled for May, has been postponed and will almost surely be cancelled. Film festivals, which are crucial launching pads for most movies of artistic merit, may have trouble returning, not only because they involve large numbers of people gathering in theatres but because many attendees must travel to attend them. Bob Iger, to help deal with the current crisis and face the industry’s potentially long-term changes. AMC, which owns six hundred and thirty theatres in the U.S., is currently at risk of bankruptcy, while Disney, a business that depends mainly on public assemblies, from movie theatres to theme parks and cruises, recently brought back from retirement its longtime C.E.O. have been closed for four weeks, and, even with widespread talk of reopening the economy, it’s hard to imagine viewers gathering in close proximity in movie theatres again until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available. The changes that the cinematic ecosystem is going through as a result of the coronavirus are shaking the very core of the movie industry. As the coronavirus closes cinemas and film festivals, the obscurity of undiscovered movies grows ever deeper.