Category: media

The Northridge Earthquake didn’t even stop box office reporting. But COVID-19 has, as almost all movie theatres have closed. – Los Angeles Times

Er, maybe move online this year, film festivals? “Cannes organizers are looking at the possibility of postponing the event by about six weeks, until late June, in the optimistic hope that the contagion will have abated and that cinephiles will once again feel comfortable taking long flights and sitting in crowded theaters elbow to elbow with coughing strangers. Yes, that’s one of the many signatures of Cannes, infinitely less glamorous than the red-carpet premieres and black-tie dress code: Nearly every screening is accompanied by a surround-sound cacophony of wheezes and sniffles.” – Variety

One film art director: “Over one hour, everything was cancelled. That’s £28,000 gone in an instant. My head started spinning. I realised the knock-on effect this would have in the industry and felt sick. It will be months before it’s gaining traction again, and once it does, it will be a feeding frenzy for us freelancers. I’ve never felt this hopeless and bleak in my life.” – The Guardian (UK)

Why? Because everyone’s at home – and everyone needs bandwidth. “European Commissioner Thierry Breton had asked streamers to take measures to prevent congestion on the internet. One of the suggestions he presented was switching to standard definition when high-definition was not necessary.” Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney, and Netflix are among those answering the call to reduce streaming quality. – Los Angeles Times

A very few cinemas in far-flung cities are back in business already (though few customers are coming just yet), and the major cities are making plans. The big problem: nothing exciting to show, since the epidemic scuttled the Chinese New Year release of the new blockbusters. The solution: studios will re-release recent hits. – The Hollywood Reporter

“To take Cannes out of the equation for even one year would have massive reverberations throughout the world of international cinema. It is, simply put, the most important film event of the year, from which distributors flesh out their art-film slates, festivals take their programming cues and countries make their Oscar selections. Films that launch in Cannes are virtually assured a healthy run at smaller fests around the globe for a year or more.” – Variety

“The festival made the news public on Thursday, saying that ‘several options are [being] considered in order to preserve its running’ – its preferred one being a shift of the festival to the end of June.” – The Guardian

Nintendo Online was unavailable for almost nine hours on Tuesday, preventing users from playing games such as Mario Kart 8 online or buying new titles on the console’s online shop. Steam, a popular platform for PC games, reported its all-time highest number of concurrent users over the weekend, with more than 20 million people logged in at the same time, and almost a third of those were actively playing a game. – The Guardian