The Big Picture

On Tuesday at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, the opening ceremonies of CinemaCon 2022 got underway as they have in past years, with speeches by Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and John Fithian president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners. Both men praised the efforts that helped the cinema business begin to emerge from the ravages of the pandemic. Both were realistic about the motion picture industry’s present, and optimistic about its future. Rivkin’s main topic was the ongoing battle against content theft and, while he offered a long list of recent success stories, he acknowledged that the fight continues. Fithian’s main topic was simultaneous release which he insisted works for no one. But the overall theme of the morning was the understanding that this is a watershed moment in the entertainment business and over the next few years we will see the cinema experience redefined yet again.

India’s two largest move theatre chains – PVR and INOX – have announced that they plan to merge to form one giant entertainment company. Both PVR and INOX are public listed companies engaged in cinema exhibition, related food and beverages and allied activities. "The proposed amalgamation would be in the best interest of the transferee company and the transferor company and their respective shareholders, employees, creditors, and other stakeholders," the companies said in filing the merger plan.

For a very short time, a few years ago, the controversial subscription service MoviePass offered low-cost movie tickets to millions of satisfied moviegoers across the United States. That was, until it collapsed from its own weight. The question now is, can MoviePass make a comeback? At a major press event held last week in New York City’s Lincoln Center before a live audience of former subscribers and current employees, Stacy Spikes, one of the original co-founders of the ill-fated company, announced that he would restart MoviePass this summer. The event was simultaneously broadcast live on YouTube. As someone who was forced out of the company that started as his dream, Spikes did his best to hold back all the anger and frustration he must have been feeling at the time. He didn’t always succeed in that. And while he clearly conveyed a renewed passion for that dream, for movies, and for the entire movie business, his remarks were remarkably devoid of any real details. Most importantly, not once did he explain how this time, after everything that happened with MoviePass, he plans to make the business profitable.