The wait for the longest James Bond film has been the longest, but this week British cinema finally got the blockbuster it needed to win over audiences after the blockade.

“This is the turning point. That’s when we get back to business, ”said Vue, CEO of Vue, the third largest operator in the UK with 2 hour and 43 minute cinema count. A Tim Richards said. i don’t have time to die..

“It’s a movie that everyone has been waiting for,” he told the Financial Times.

Theaters are encouraging viewers to come back after the blockade, despite a record number of consumers joining the streaming platform as pandemics and movie studios launch more major releases online. I hope to be a catalyst to induce.

“We can’t really underestimate [Bond’s] “Importance,” said Chris Bates, European Commercial Director of Odeon, the UK’s second largest cinema channel. “To have this blockbuster… All generations are going to come out for it, and we don’t have it yet.”

Between the tickets release on September 13 and October 1, Odeon sold over 450,000 tickets for Daniel Craig’s final release as a British secret agent. Spectrum.. About half of those tickets were for patrons who have not returned to the theater since they were allowed to reopen in the UK in May, the group said.

Vue said it sold more tickets i don’t have time to die The first 24 hours after the sale is over four and a half weeks of sale Spectrum.. “This is what we secretly wanted, [but] You never plan it, ”Richards said.

Such a request, according to operators, shows how tired the desire to return to the cinema is, despite months spent streaming movies at home.

But as more consumers turn to on-demand platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, will only blockbuster movies be the ones that turn customers back?

Tim Mulligan, Research Director at MIDiA Research, said:

According to MIDiA figures, UK viewers are spending more time streaming TV shows and movies from September 2020 to June 2021, three months after the UK’s blockade restrictions were first relaxed. During the period increased by 9.8%.

Mulligan insisted on it i don’t have time to die An acid test for cinemas to prove themselves after the collapse of the Covid. “What’s the value proposition for consumers who choose to pay three times their monthly subscription? [for a cinema ticket] They have no control over the environment and do they have to leave the house for it? This is the problem. “

Movie theater owners say nothing can recreate the experience of watching a movie with a live audience and continue to invest in reclining seats and better sound and screen technology, but is it cruel? It was the moon.

Cineworld, Britain’s largest cinema operator, is on the verge of bankruptcy $ 750 million emergency fund In November, Odeon’s US parent company AMC reduced Stopped It collapsed after raising $ 917 million in debt and capital in January.

Phil Clapp, CEO of the UK Cinema Association, said the recovery was progressing “steadily”, but “high and low scores along the way”.

Marvel movie Black Widow According to BFI box office revenue, this year is the UK’s highest performing film of all time, earning £ 6.8million over the opening weekend. This is compared to the £ 14.1million made by Spider-Man: Far From Home, The last Marvel movie before the pandemic.

Cinema executives point out Black Widow It was released on Disney’s subscription service the same day it was released to theaters.

Yet the path to recovery seems uncertain.

Major films Top Gun: Maverick When Mission Impossible 7 It was again postponed to 2022, reducing the monopoly period during which theaters had to show a film before it was released to audiences, in most cases from 90 days to around 45 days.

Jed Harmsen, vice president of cinema and content solutions at Dolby Laboratories, warned customers have higher standards than before Covid.

“I think people will come back, but when they come back they want the best and expect it to be different than what they see at home.”

Theater operators have said this summer’s audiences are still depressed in 2019, but loyal customers are “premium” with more comfortable seats, better sound and vision, or better food. He declares to have paid a more expensive ticket for the screening.

But just because Harmsen wants a more immersive and digitally enhanced experience doesn’t mean that action-packed blockbusters are preferred over arthouse movies. Declared.

He said that even a quiet movie can have a “fully immersive soundscape”.

In fact, “the main conversation that comes out of a pandemic is how to design different movies for your audience,” Clap said. In fact, film viewing is recovering rapidly in markets with high and low production of local films, such as Germany and Poland. Addiction to Hollywood releases.

But he added that so-called big event films, made with the big screen in mind, are still important to the survival of the theater. “The reason it’s called a big event is because it supports the structure. “