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Closed movie theater in California
Photo: Rich Fury / AFP
The virus continues to rage through the USA, while in China something like normality has been back for months.
This also has consequences for Hollywood and the US film industry as a whole.
It is a snapshot, but current cinema sales show that the pandemic is also shifting the balance of power in the cinema business.
With the historical drama »The Eight Hundred«, a Chinese production is even at the top of the list of the best-selling films in the final accounts for 2020.
The film about the Sino-Japanese war grossed a total of $ 473 million.
With »My People, my Homeland«, a second Chinese production ranks among the top 3 of the best-selling films worldwide.
More serious than the success or failure of individual films, however, are Hollywood's losses as a whole.
According to the market research company Comscore, cinema revenues in North America alone fell by a little more than 80 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic, from $ 11.4 billion in 2019 to just $ 2.2 billion.
To put it into perspective: Last year the blockbuster "Avengers: Endgame" alone grossed almost 2.8 billion dollars, significantly more than the entire US industry in the entire pandemic year.
The industry lasted so little money 40 years ago, reports the Reuters news agency.
Will the drive-in theater bring the rescue?
In many countries, cinema theaters had to close due to the pandemic fight.
The cinema crisis could still claim prominent victims: The AMC group, one of the world's largest operators of cinemas, is hit.
The company could face bankruptcy.
Experts like Paul Dergarabedian, an industry analyst at the American market research company Comscore, still see reason for hope.
At the beginning of the pandemic, even greater losses in sales were feared, and that Hollywood was still making sales in North America was due to the surprisingly successful comeback of drive-in cinemas.
Their development is "very encouraging for everyone who worried that the cinema might not come back at all," said Dergarabedian.
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beb / Reuters