German cinemas to reopen in second half of May

[Carsten Kurz]

German cinemas are on track to reopen within the next weeks. In some states, as early as May 15th, in others, from May 30th. Others are about to follow with announcements over the weekend. These and other opening allowances (e.g. for restaurants) may be revoked if a certain number of new infections is registered for a given area. So the idea is to have some sort of a stop-and-go system.
Not yet clear how distributors will react to this patchwork.
German theatre associations had tried to work towards a combined nationwide schedule for reopenings, but, obviously, failed so far.
There are some titles that did not make it through their full release window when cinemas had to close, while some releases had been set on hold. So, there is certainly a decent amount of titles to play during the first weeks, but few new titles have been scheduled for the next months so far.


Other european countried have also just announced plans to reopen cinemas - among them, Norway, Finnland, Spain, while Austria decided two weeks ago not to open cinemas before the end of august...

[Marcel Birgelen]

In the Netherlands, the target date is the first of June, but obviously, this date is subject to change, pending further developments. Belgium has announced that restaurants will open no earlier than the 8th of June, it's unclear if cinemas are considered with this as well.

[Carsten Kurz]

Pfff, that's weird - some of our states are allowed to open today, some now scheduled openings to the end of July, some are not willing to set ANY date. Now, how are distributors expected to start releasing movies into that patchwork?

[Marcel Birgelen]

It's a patchwork all over the place. In Europe every country has their own agenda, in Germany, it's even on state-level. The same problem in the U.S. too. No studio/distributor is going to release any major tentpoles in this market, so I guess we're stuck with marginal B-releases, some indie releases taking a shot and classic stuff. Then again, when was the last time you'd see that at a first-run theater?

[Mark Lane]

We have tried showing older and classic movies and they did not do well for us. Things might be different now with the current situation, but I question if people will want to come out to watch an old movie after sending two months at home watching Netflix.

Once we can allow people in the seats, we might book some live entertainment and continue keeping the concession stand open to see if people will still be willing to buy popcorn to take home. There are some presentations that will work with venues and might even have a presentation for free, such as MUFON. We are looking into a medium and some comedians have expressed interest in performing during our transitional time at reduced rates.

We did a run through on different situations based on laws for restaurants and theaters in other states and at worse we will need to have an employee for every seven customers. Depending on the rules, opening might not be profitable.