Five years on: how COVID has reshaped cinema

COVID-19, universally remembered for sweeping through the country in early 2020 and leaving its mark on every aspect of public life, had a notable, undesired and deeply damaging effect on the film industry as a whole.

Comscore reported that £322.9 million was generated in 2020, compared with £1.35bn in 2019, and that there had been a 76% Box Office loss during that first pandemic year. In terms of actually getting any films out, only 441 new titles were released in cinemas in 2020, compared to 938 in 2019. Suddenly, the humble movie theatre's role in our day to day lives had shrunk, fizzling out as it became somewhere almost entirely inaccessible.

But what has that meant for the cinema industry in the last few years? For starters, streaming has soared to new heights, with even popular movies opting to be released on platforms rather than having showings on the big screen. Even those that do come out in cinemas often only have limited runs, before being shifted straight into a medium that will allow the rest of the world to watch it from the comfort of their own home.

As a result, people still aren't going to the cinema enough, with Statista reporting that in 2023, movie theatres across the UK sold around 124 million tickets, more than the 117 million movie tickets a year prior, but still not up to pre-pandemic standards - over 176 million tickets in 2019. Ticket prices have increased and seem unlikely to go back down due both to rising cost of living and under attendance to local cinemas.

The problem? This in turn puts more people off, stranding places like Vue and CineWorld in a constant cycle of upping prices to make enough money, and alienating people who used to enjoy a reasonably priced film on a weekend.

Habits like disengaging with films and second screen watching have also developed as a result of decreased cinema viewing and the shift towards online watching. Movies are watched with less rigour when there isn't somebody telling you over the loudspeakers to 'switch off your phone and switch off from the outside world' and that more so than anything is proof that we have to ensure that cinema doesn't die out entirely.

COVID set a dangerous precedent of convenience over experience, because there was simply no experience to have, but that isn't true anymore. However, numbers are going up again, and we just need to get them to stay that way so we don't lose a staple of human life and community entirely.