Forecast for ‘23 moviegoing, at the Pickwick and beyond: Cloudy with a chance of optimism
Welcome to “On Further Review,” a new regular conversation in column form, where we’ll host Chicago arts leaders, opinion leaders and others to explore issues of the moment. For this first edition, when it comes to movies, two questions are all over my mind right now, as a critic, a Chicagoan and a perpetually hungry pair of eyes.
First: What will moviegoing, in theaters, look like a year from now? Gasping? Recovering? Swinging between both extremes?
And second: If studio-fed streaming services, along with a pandemic and our sofa-centric viewing habits, force a severe contraction of moviegoing in theaters, vs. moviestaying on couches, then why are so many viable operators vying to take over the lease at the 900-seat Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge?
Pickwick owner Dino Vlahakis, who also runs four smaller movie houses in the same part of the same block in downtown Park Ridge, told me Jan. 2 that he’s hoping to announce a new tenant for the Pickwick on Jan. 12. That’s the night of his Pickwick farewell screening of “Gone with the Wind,” though the theater will screen some films, he says, through Jan. 16.
The Pickwick tenant prospects, he says, have been whittled down to five: two live entertainment operators; two film exhibition and movie palace experts; and a fifth bidder, proposing a hybrid of live and screen entertainment.
One of the movie theater specialists in the running is Chris Johnson, CEO of the family-owned, Downers Grove-based Classic Cinemas, the second-largest movie theater chain in Illinois.
Johnson owns the 1,000-seat Tivoli in Downers Grove. Classic Cinemas recently refurbished the multiplex tucked inside the 1925 LaGrange Theatre, one of its many properties in Illinois (plus one Wisconsin location). Additionally, CEO Johnson serves as president of the Illinois chapter of the National Association of Theatre Owners, a trade and advocacy organization.
The other film-centric contender is Music Box Theatre/Music Box Films, beloved by filmmakers and cineastes worldwide, owned by William Schopf. Brian Andreotti serves as acquisitions head of the Music Box Films distribution arm. He’s also programming director of the 700-seat Music Box Theatre on Southport Avenue.
Johnson, Andreotti and I met recently at the Music Box offices in the West Loop. Edited excerpts from our talk follow.
Phillips: OK, on further review … if moviegoing is really dying, this time for real as opposed to all the other times it was supposed to die, why are both your companies interested in taking over the Pickwick?
Andreotti: Well, cinema isn’t dying. But it’s more important than ever to have a formula that works. Event-izing cinema — that idea works very well for us, and for Chicago. Showing movies on 35 millimeter, on 70 millimeter film. Interactive movie events. Partnering with local organizations to get audiences out for every kind of film. It’s all highly labor-intensive, but it works. And when it works, we turn that large seating capacity to our advantage.
Phillips: How did those strategies help you get to where we are now, in the pandemic and in general?
Andreotti: This was a very good year for us. It was a combination of playing some strong films for extended runs — our No. 1 film of 2022 was “Licorice Pizza” on 70 mm for several weeks and “The Northman.” Prior to the pandemic we never would’ve played a film like “The Northman” that, at its widest point, was on 3,000 screens.
Phillips: It made sense at the Music Box in part because the movie was batty crazy, a truly eccentric kind of —
Andreotti: Right, and it had an auteur attached (writer-director Robert Eggers of “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse”). We’re selective. We love something unusual. And we have an audience willing to take a chance.
Johnson: That’s what the Music Box does exceptionally well. They’re tastemakers. The audience trusts their taste. Classic Cinemas got into the business by taking over old single-screen theaters in downtowns when downtowns were out of style and the malls were everything. We started out as discount houses, then went to first-run. And that’s where we are now. Our interest in the Pickwick? There’s a density of population there in downtown Park Ridge. There’s a beautiful theater. And I think there are ways to make it work.
The biggest challenge for Dino is that he has essentially two theater operations in one location — a huge single-screen operation and a four-screen multiplex tucked away behind the theater — and they don’t connect. Literally. You need a single entry point, day in and day out, so one goal would be how to restructure it for one point of entry, and upgrade the project, the sound and the seating.
Phillips: Chris, we talked several times during 2020, before and after you tried reopening in the summer of that year. A terrible year. That was before Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” opened in August 2020, and there was a lot riding on that film to somehow bring people back to theaters, even at limited capacities. If “Tenet” had been a different or arguably better film, would that have changed the course of things?
Johnson: No. It could’ve been the best movie in the world and it wouldn’t have mattered. Classic Cinemas closed in March along with everybody else, and we reopened for two weeks that summer. And then we stayed closed until April 2021. I would’ve reopened for “Tenet” if there had been any movies coming along right behind it. But there weren’t. You have to create some momentum, and it was hard to see any kind of flow.
Phillips: Dino Vlahakis at the Pickwick told me the same thing, essentially, a month ago. With just four big movies in December, very little coming in January 2023, and the trades predicting 80% recovery at best in terms of new releases in 2023, it’ll be 2024 before we see anything like a broad recovery. If there is one. So where’s the optimism?
Johnson: I brought some stats because I figured what the heck. (Takes out a sheaf of papers, and reads aloud.) “Movies released on 2,000-plus screens in 2019: 105. In 2022? It was 67. Average box office per title in 2019 was $89 million. The average in 2022? $89 million! Fewer movies, yes, but they made just as much. The audience is there. The movies aren’t. Not yet.
Phillips: The audience was there for “Top Gun: Maverick,” from Memorial Day all the way to Labor Day.
Johnson: I mean, look at “Spider-Man: No Way Home” a little over a year ago. It set records! And at home (in its streaming release), it set all sorts of records again. And I don’t think it would’ve done that without a huge theatrical run first.
Phillips: Yeah, well, tell it to Netflix. (The limited theatrical release of Netflix’s “Glass Onion” was successful enough to make Netflix CEO Reed Hastings admit his company blew it with its release strategy, leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table by confining the theatrical run to a single week.)
Johnson: I think Netflix is taking another look at its business approach. Amazon is worth looking at as an example for the future. That’s a company that isn’t in the movie business, though they own a studio (MGM). They’re primarily a consumer goods company. But they just committed a billion dollars to theatrical production. And the reason, I think, is something simple: Movies in theaters amplify the scale of the event. It’s not an “event” if you release something to your TV day-and-date (simultaneously) with theaters. “Glass Onion” sold out all over the place. People wanted to see that movie.
Philips: Brian, is streaming eventually going to kill the movies?
Andreotti: (laughs) Uh, no. We’re not afraid of playing Netflix films, because, for now, they’re maintaining some sort of window. We played “White Noise” and “Pinocchio” with a few weeks in between theatrical and streaming premieres. Also, Netflix offers lower film rental prices. And with “White Noise” and “Pinocchio” we showed them in 35 mm, which you can’t get at home.
Johnson: There’s one more thing that’s a cause for optimism: Virtual print fees are basically a thing of the past. (For the last 10 years, movie distribution companies both large, such as Paramount, and smaller, such as Music Box Films, were required to pay an approximate $1,000 fee, per screen, toward the reimbursement of digital projection equipment. The idea was to make the costly industrywide changeover from film to digital less onerous.)
The VPF money was there (for the exhibitor) to help the conversion from film to digital. The exhibitor had to pay for every theater showing their film, on every screen. The problem was, it practically destroyed the art house market and the smaller film market. If you had a specialty picture, it was hard to find a place to show it. But that’s done now.
For everyone, it’s been a really long, tough road. But to your original question: Why would we be interested in the Pickwick? Because if you go out to a movie once a month, even once every two months, to see a movie in a theater, we can absolutely make money in this business.
Postscript: After the conversation, Andreotti sent some additional thoughts by email.
Andreotti: 2022 was one of the best years we’ve ever had at the Music Box. That’s crazy when 2020 was our worst year ever, and 2021 was only marginally better … because we have a long history of showing repertory films from all eras and genres, and the patrons who cherish them, the scarcity of new films didn’t impact us as much. While chain theaters were reliant on a steady flow of new films, we had the entire history of film to draw on.
People want to return to a fun social environment after being isolated for so long. That’s true for Classic Cinemas, too. Both the Music Box and the Tivoli have a magical atmosphere. They create a communal experience you can’t get at home or at the national chains.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
