Downton Abbey sequel a litmus test for Irish cinemas after Covid

Cinema owner Graham Spurling is threatening to hang up the phone.

Not for the first time, it seems, he has been asked if Irish audiences used to lockdown living are eschewing a return to the big screen in favour of a sofa in front of Netflix or Amazon Prime.

"Streaming hasn't replaced the cinema," he shouts down the line from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where cinema operators from around the world have gathered for this year's Cinemacon, the industry's largest conference.

"Maybe in a one-horse town in Nebraska, streaming has a huge effect. But not in Ireland. It has its place in the world, and good luck to it, but it's just a glorified television station."

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Spurling isn’t worried about once again packing out his Movies@ chain of multiplexes dotted around the east coast, after three chaotic years of closed curtains or limited seating for the country’s cinemas.

Quite the opposite; he is bullish. Having just recently opened the family-run company's fifth outlet – a 13-screen complex in Tallaght in Dublin, including two "VIP rooms" – he hints at plans for a sixth.

Despite his outward optimism his Movies@ chain, in common with other cinemas, struggled during the pandemic. Company accounts show revenues almost halved in 2020 to €4.8 million, from €7.9 million the previous year. It posted losses before tax of €544,000.

There were bad days, admits Spurling but pressures were “alleviated by smart people in the company, tweaking things”.

About half his pre-pandemic staff have returned to work at his cineplexes in Dundrum and Swords, he says, and audiences too are returning, if not yet to levels seen before the outbreak of Covid.

“We are getting close to normality, but it is way too early to say if we are trading at pre-pandemic levels.”

It is also too early, cinema owners agree, to determine if numbers will fully ever return. Meaningfully comparing cinema audience figures over time is fraught with peril. Box office sales are “product driven” – product being industry-speak for films.

Then, there is the battle for the "leisure euro" – increasing competition for people's entertainment spending. A big Leinster rugby home fixture, say, will lure would-be viewers from the cinema in Dundrum to the game in Donnybrook.

This bank holiday weekend, all cinema owners' eyes were glued on ticket sales rather than the silver screen. The opening of Downton Abbey: A New Era, the second cinematic spin-off from the hit British TV series, will be a post-restrictions "litmus test".

The period drama will also test if older audiences – some perhaps still reticent about the ongoing threat of the virus – are yet happy to sit in a confined, enclosed space with hundreds of others.

Ireland has slipped down the league table of most fervent cinema goers in Europe over recent years. But we remain the sixth highest for ticket sales per capita behind Estonia, Denmark, France, Netherlands and Norway, according to market data researchers Statista.

It will likely take the first full summer season in three years to fully test any predictions about a further demise in that status as a result of cinemas closing or opening to 50 per cent capacity during pandemic restrictions.

A welter of heavyweight titles for release over the coming weeks, including Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, the Doctor Strange sequel Multiverse of Madness, and the remake of the Stephen King horror FireStarter, will also offer a gauge.

Back in October 2020, Mark Doherty, who owns the Century Complex cinema in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, was concerned about the future of his eight-screen 1,000-capacity multiplex which draws audiences from throughout the sparsely-populated county.

Losses were “raking up” and the only certainty was that it was not sustainable.

Fast-forward 18 months and he says “of course there were dark days, we didn’t think we could ride it out”.

“I have spent my life building up this business and seeing it closed… it was a trying time, but it was nothing compared to people who really suffered through illness and losing loved ones.”

Even now, Doherty is afraid to look at the finances.

“The accountant said to me recently ‘you don’t want to know’. I just walked away, but at some point I will have to look at it.”

While Government supports were a lifeline, not every cinema survived, he points out. In Co Kerry, locals are hoping Dingle's The Phoenix can reopen through a community buyout after shutting last year. But so far in Donegal "things have been very good since we were allowed to reopen", Doherty says.

“We are still slightly behind 2019 levels, but we are seeing ticket sales climbing,” he adds.

The Batman and the newest James Bond spy thriller No Time to Die had "stellar performances" in terms of ticket sales. The video game movie sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has also been "incredibly encouraging".

Unlike some, Doherty believes online streaming services are “only going to have a positive impact on film and the cinema industry”.

“It means more opportunities for film studios to sell their wares. That will simply produce more product and help cinema in the long term. Film companies with more money in their back pockets will invest in more films,” he says.

Donald Clarke, film critic for The Irish Times, is sanguine about the survival of cinema post-pandemic, but, perhaps, not in the rude health we once knew.

“Having heard various negative noises, my feeling about the predicted death of cinema at various times is that it will survive, unfortunately as a business hanging around a relatively small number of massive tent-pole films,” he says.

A tent-pole film is one that is heavily marketed, has merchandise and other spin-off money-making potential, to support the film studio.

Think Spider-Man: No Way Home, for example, which became the fourth highest grossing film of all time earlier this year, without even taking into account the sales of everything from comics to coffee cups associated with the franchise.

“The issue with cinema, for years now before Covid, is attracting audiences to middle-ranking films, which maybe cost €10-€20 million to make – they just don’t attract audiences,” says Clarke.

"If you go back to the 1970s, the 10 top grossing films show a wide variety. Take 1972, say: The Godfather was the best-selling [movie]. Others in the top 10 included What's Up Doc?, Deliverance, [and] Jeremiah Johnson. None are sequels.

“The top 10 now are always sequels, always a franchise. Middle-ground films made for adults do exist, but do not attract audiences. They are rarefied.”

A “certain drift in tastes over decades” away from cinemas cannot be blamed solely on streaming services, he insists.

"They are picking up some of the slack cinema isn't providing but you can't say Netflix or Prime is packed full of films like The Godfather. When Disney Plus launched, it incorporated the [20th Century] Fox back catalogue. But All About Eve isn't on it."

While a "decent amount" of older films can be seen on Google Play and Apple Play, there is no great variety, he says.

Cinema-owner Spurling remains defiant.

“We’ve seen off TV, we’ve seen off video, DVD and Blu-ray,” he says.

“Now we have seen off a pandemic. We have come through the worst three years in the history of our business and we are still here. We deserve a bloody good pat in the back for having got through it.”