When the pandemic spread around the world, cinemas globally started closing down, in the US this is still ongoing.
This biggest movie of the year in the US is Bad Boys For Life which has taken over $204 Million in the US, and no film will overtake that total this year, the film was released in January of 2020 and had a good run at the box office.
In context of this the biggest movie in the US was Avengers: Endgame which took over $850 Million.
To start with all blockbusters started putting their release dates to later in the year or to 2021, but as it became clear that the pandemic would last far longer than originally expected movies started to appear on streaming services.
The effect of this is all those big Hollywood blockbusters that could have, and would have, grossed close a billion either took far less on basically limited release, or nothing due to a DVOD release.
Tenet was the first movie with blockbuster potential to be release during the pandemic and although it grossed over $50 Million in the US it was a potential $800 million plus grosser.
Drive-in theatres gave a small lifeline but even a blockbuster in this arena was worth just over a Million.
With a vaccine being likely by year out to hopefully go into mass production for 2021 we can hope that 2020 will go down in history as a one off, although with companies like Disney suggesting it will release future movies on Disney+ as exclusives or day and date releases it could be bad news for the cinema industry.
