On January 1st, Cinemark’s CEO Mark Zoradi will step down and pass the baton to his colleague Sean Gamble as the new chief at the country’s third-largest exhibition circuit. In this interview with Business Insider, Zoradi expresses optimism about the future prospects for Cinemark and the movie business.
At last, the box office appears to be rebounding after two tumultuous years filled with theatre restrictions and a general unease with going out in public. Zoradi added, “We’re in the midst of a strong fourth quarter. The recovery really began in October because the content started to come back.” The movies that have done best this year have been the superhero tentpoles and horror genre, with the box office for films focused on young families and adult audiences lagging. Zoradi expects that the full spectrum of moviegoers will re-emerge in 2022, helping to boost attendance and make week-to-week attendance more consistent.
As streaming has emerged, both studios and exhibitors have used the recent period to experiment with new release models, including straight-to-streaming, and the reduction or elimination of exclusive windows for theatres. Cinemark has even begun to work with Netflix on playing some of their new releases for brief one or two-week runs in Cinemark theatres before their streaming debut. Zoradi concludes that “We know that a movie will perform better if one, it’s a good movie; two, it has an exclusive window; and three, it has an extensive marketing campaign behind it.”
See also: Inside AMC’s Crazy, Bonkers, Upside-Down Year of Apes, Memes and Shorts and ‘West Side Story’ and the Decline of the Movie Theater (Wall Street Journal)
