Europe’s Largest Movie Market Saw Business Down By 70% This Year

That would be France, where total box office receipts were more than $1 billion lower than in 2019. (For a year like 2020, those figures may not be so terrible.) Unusually, no French film was in the top five this year; equally unusual is that French movies had a higher share of domestic ticket sales than American titles for the first time in 14 years. – Variety

Ex-Ticketmaster CEO To Movie Theatres: Time To Reinvent And Here’s How

“This is the opportune time to review pricing strategies with the goal to both increase attendance and make the grosses larger. We all know that attendance has been static and the revenue growth in the industry in America has been from raising prices. Theaters will need to look at and embrace variable pricing. Lower prices on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and before 4pm on Thursday—ticket prices from $4-$7, might entice new customers to fill otherwise empty seats and change attendance patterns.” – Deadline

Is Substack The New Journalism?

“In its variety, the Substack corpus resembles the blogosphere. It is produced by a mix of career journalists, bloggers, specialists, novelists, hobbyists, dabblers, and white-collar professionals looking to plump up their personal brands. The company has tried to recruit high-profile writers, offering (to a select few) health-care stipends, design help, and money to hire freelance editors. In certain instances, Substack has also paid advances, often in the generous six figures, incentivizing writers to produce work without employing them.” The New Yorker

Bollywood Depended Even More On Ticket Income Than Hollywood Did. Here’s How India’s Finally Embracing Direct-To-Streaming.

The fallout from the pandemic reduced box office grosses by about 75%, “making it easier for streaming services to land new movies, even with some theaters reopened. … The investments by streaming services in Bollywood content have also led to a surge of creativity. Instead of the usual romantic or action-hero films with all-star casts, more shows and movies are now centered on women, war and other topics.” – The New York Times

Romance Novels Are A Massive Business. Why Do So Few Get Adapted For TV?

“Even as networks and streaming services slaver over intellectual property with prearranged fan bases, few mass-market romance novels have found their way to screens. Character-driven and story rich, they would seem to have a lot of what television wants. But showrunners have played hard to get.” Alexis Soloski explores why. – The New York Times

Why A Charlie Brown Christmas Is So Enduring

“Charles Schulz had what Maurice Sendak had: respect for children. He understood the way they think and feel, not the way adults want them to think and feel. He understood that there’s a point in children’s growing up when Christmas doesn’t work its magic as reliably as it once did. Schulz let them explore a taboo subject, Christmastime unhappiness, while still reassuring them that Christmas is a good and fun and wonderful thing.” – The Atlantic

Our Meta-Moviegoer Hearts Were Filled With A Void In 2020

And that’s because we couldn’t check the box office receipts obsessively. “Early on in the pandemic, I would feel a phantom curiosity every Sunday afternoon. Isn’t there something I’m supposed to do right about now? It was a tiny, unscratchable itch that has since numbed to almost nothing. But it’s still there. I miss the feeling of a continuous curiosity regularly sated, and I know I’m not alone.” – Fast Company

Prestige TV Just Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Nobody cared in 2020 about “good” or “bad” TV. It was there for something different. “I craved a slightly different definition of quality. I wanted shows that made me feel just a bit better about the world, through their kindness or their zaniness or their offering of nostalgia—shows that made me, physically isolated from so many of the people I love, feel a little less alone.” – The Atlantic