play an important role in our routines and during this crazy period that we are living as a society we were able to realize this more and more. To talk about the future and present of cinema we should introduce the origin and development of the cinema as we understand it today, which is associated with the invention of the cinematograph, in the 19th century, a device capable of capturing “motion images”, created by William Dickson, assistant to the American scientist and inventor Thomas Edison. In its first versions, the spectator of the kinetoscope had to observe the images inside a darkroom through a hole in which he placed one eye. In the year 1892, the Frenchman Léon Bouly managed, from the kinetoscope, to develop the cinematograph, a model that was able to record and project the light of the movement images on screen, in frames per second. The cinematograph ended up being patented by the Lumière brothers, who started, from 1895, to make several small capacity cinematographic productions and to exhibit them in special sessions for that. The first film screening made by Auguste and Louis Lumière took place on March 22, 1895. The film was entitled “La Sortie de L'usine Lumière à Lyon” (The departure of the Lumière Factory in Lyon) and recorded the departure of the employees of the interior of the company Lumière, in France. It was also with the Lumière brothers that the first “scenic directions” for cinema began and the first kinetoscope films already featured boxing matches, music hall attractions and short scenes. The 'scenic spectacularity' appears like that at the same time as the cinematographer. One of the main names in the illusionism of cinema was Georges Meliès, who directed “Le voyage dans la Lune” in 1902, achieving with this film truly impressive visual effects for the time. After the films by Meliès, there were the productions of D. W. Griffith, in the United States, those of expressionism and the “Camera Movement”, in Germany, of surrealism, in Spain, and Soviet cinema, especially with names like Vertov and Eisenstein. The ease provided by on-demand video services is so great that we even forget that this technology is relatively recent. Television has been gaining a prominent place in homes since the 1960s. Despite that, until about 10 years ago, access to films and series outside of television programming was only possible thanks to the rental companies. It is precisely from an evolution of the rental model that the first streaming platforms emerge, rethinking the public's relationship with entertainment. Today, it is almost impossible to imagine life without them or remember a remote time when we depended only on recommendations from friends to discover new films or directors that we liked. The algorithm is able to understand our tastes like nobody else and seems to always suggest the exact content we were looking for. Artificial intelligence scans the selection of films and understands which works promise to please each type of viewer and you can't deny that these recommendations are one of the best things between technology and entertainment. With the pandemic thousands of people lost their jobs and many sectors were affected, in the film industry it´s no different. Unlike the commerce that was able to try an outlet through e-commerce or beauty centers that sold vouchers for future purchases, the exhibitors had to watch this without being able to react, while the costs of employees and structure continue to arrive every month. It also looks like retailers will recover faster, once the isolation measures are relaxed, but who will be willing to enter a closed room in the dark with 200 more people for two hours? With the security measures to be taken, in the best of cases the rooms will be able to hold 40% of their capacity, that is, a potential reduction of 60% in the box office revenue and, consequently, in the bomboniere.
With that, small exhibitors suffer a lot, as
they will hardly be able to renegotiate their rents, and many will have to close their doors. To further complicate matters, the largest cinema chain in the world AMC Theaters, is going through serious financial difficulties, with a high level of indebtedness and a drop of more than 90% in its share price in the last 2 years. Fewer theaters to show means less box office and less revenue for studios, who even before the pandemic spent a lot of money to release a film and kept only 50% of the box office revenue. A film like Malévola2 that cost US $ 200MM for the studio and had a sale of tickets of US $ 500MM actually practically tied its costs, and later it would be profitable over the years in streaming, on- demand rent and on sale to TVs. With this uncertainty of how the cinemas will return, which studio will risk launching a film that costs US $ 200MM with the possibility of reducing its box office revenues by 60%? Not for nothing, films like Wonder Woman 1984, Black Widow and the new 007 had their premieres postponed. The studios have always complained about having to fulfill the 75-day “window” after the premiere of films in the cinema to make the film available for sale on demand. They would like to take advantage of the “buzz” upon the premiere of the film to make it available quickly to that viewer who does not go to the cinemas. To try to reduce the damage, and enjoying the children at home, Universal launched the movie Trolls 2 in the USA directly on video on demand, without going through the movie theaters. This model, in which the studio usually gets 80% of the turnover, worked for the studio, but was severely criticized by the exhibitors, who already threaten to boycott Universal's new films.Disney was not far behind and its new CEO, Bob Chapek, has already admitted that the company will rethink its launch strategy and may put some films directly on its Disney + service, as it will with Artemis Fowl.