Can Scarlett Johansson save Hollywood from terminal decline?

Hollywood is gearing up to strike back against streaming services and the pandemic with a flood of superhero movies over the next 18 months.

The US film industry has faced near obliteration as cinemas shut down for months, many permanently, ratings for the Oscars plummeted, and the Golden Globes was cancelled over a lack of racial diversity.

In 2020 box office takings in North America came in at just $2.1 billion, down over 80 per cent from $11.3 billion in 2019. So far this year the take stands at less than $500 million.

Amid fears audiences will not return studios plan to pump out a rapid succession of superhero extravaganzas that will be best experienced on a big screen.

There will be at least 16 such movies between this summer and the end of 2022.

It all kicks off just after the July 4 holiday with the release of Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson, which cost Disney over $200 million to make.

Disney will need it to gross $400 million just to break even as ticket sales are split with cinemas.

"No pressure," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. "Black Widow, no question that's going to have huge attention.

"Maybe superheroes will come to the rescue. The superhero movies are going to be really important in bringing audiences back.

"It's going to be blockbuster-oriented, it's the blockbusters that fill the seats and revive theatres."

He added: "For some streaming was a luxury and now it's become hard to live without it.

"But people listen to music on their iPhones, and still want to go to the concert to get the full effect. That's what the movie theatre is."

The slew of upcoming superhero blockbusters includes Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Batman, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Thor sequels, and Morbius starring Jared Leto and the British actor Matt Smith.

In addition, this autumn will see releases of the long-awaited Top Gun sequel starring Tom Cruise, and the delayed next James Bond film.

Hollywood is also looking to China, where cinemas are faring better than in the United States.

Marvel Studios will launch its first Chinese superhero later this year in Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

A recent audience survey of people who go to the cinema at least once a year in the US showed only 57 per cent plan to return in the near future.

Analysts expect the annual box office for 2022 to be around 10 per cent lower than in 2019.

Meanwhile, subscriptions to online streaming services including Netflix and Hulu have skyrocketed, reaching over 300 million in the US, up more than 30 per cent from 2019.

Globally, subscriptions have passed one billion, up 26 per cent in a year, according to the Motion Picture Association.

For many American cinema operators it has spelled catastrophe.

Those that paid the price included Pacific Theaters, which operated 300 screens in California including the iconic Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

Its concrete geodesic dome has been featured in movies including Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Pacific Theaters announced last month it was shutting all its cinemas for good.

It said: "Despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options the company does not have a viable way forward."

The Arclight Hollywood cinema, which was popular with may professionals in the movie industry, is also not reopening.

Across the United States 64 per cent of cinemas are now open, and some in Hollywood have expressed optimism that the industry can recover, especially with such a raft of delayed releases already in the can.

The first big Hollywood film to come out in socially distanced cinemas this year - Godzilla vs. Kong - has performed better than hoped, and has grossed nearly $100 million at the box office since its release in March.

Mr Dergarabedian described Hollywood as a "sleeping giant coming back to life".

He said: "It's definitely on the mend. The box office total weekend gross, if it goes over $50 million as it did on April 23, that's considered a great weekend at the moment, but one movie used to do that.

"There is a pent up store of films to come out though. Help is on the way."