The Covid pandemic may not have killed the movie industry, but it wounded it gravely.
Even before the virus forced people out of movie theaters, the movie business had changed. Consumers were willing to go to theaters for the biggest films, and in some cases, really big family films, but it was very hard for all other types of movies to get people to go to theaters.
That’s because most people have a large screen with good sound right in their living room. Because of that and the rising cost of going to theaters, it has become much easier to simply wait for a film to hit streaming.
The problem with that is many high-cost films have flopped at the box office. In the short term, that’s great for streaming networks and people waiting to watch at home.
In the long term, it makes more movies not viable. Aside from Netflix, which can justify high-budget films as a subscription driver/retention device, very few companies can afford multiple failures on movies that cost over $100 million to make.
Disney and maybe Comcast — the top two players when it comes to owning intellectual property (IP) — might be able to figure out a working model, but there are going to a lot of casualties along the way.
Major movie and TV company struggles
Village Roadshow Pictures has been a wildly successful independent production company. The brand has managed to thrive for nearly 30 years on both the silver screen and on television.
You may not know the company’s name, but you know some of the movies it has produced.
“Village Roadshow Pictures is a leading independent producer and financier of major Hollywood motion pictures, having produced and released 100+ films since its establishment in 1997. These motion pictures include the 2019 Oscar winner ‘Joker,’ ‘Sully,’ ‘San Andreas,’ ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ ‘American Sniper,’ ‘The LEGO Movie,’ ‘The Great Gatsby,’ the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ franchise, ‘Gran Torino,’ the ‘Ocean’s’ series, ‘Happy Feet,’ ‘Mystic River,’ and ‘The Matrix” trilogy,’ the company shared on its website.
“Projects currently in development include ‘Myst’, based on the popular video game universe, ‘A Moveable Feast’, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s autobiographical novel as a young writer in Paris, ‘Nash Bridges’, a reboot of the hit CBS television series starring Don Johnson, and ‘The Athena Protocol’, a globe-spanning thriller based on the book series of the same name,” it also posted.
Village Roadshow files Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Village Roadshow filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court when it opened on March 17.
The company reports $100 million to $500 million in assets and $500 million to $1 billion in liabilities, according to the filing. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing says that there will be funds available for distribution to unsecured creditors.
Village Roadshow reported $223.8 million in asset-backed secured notes and $163.1 million of senior secured debt, according to court documents.
The film and television company makes no mention of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy on its website.
Village Roadshow filed with the Delaware bankruptcy court that it has an agreement with existing creditors for a debtor-in-possession facility to facilitate the sale of its assets through bankruptcy. CP Ventura LLC has been identified as a stalking horse bidder for its library assets.
The company’s website currently promotes the movie “Goliath.” The film. tells the story of “Wilt Chamberlain and his contribution to American history, emerging on the national scene as a high school student in the 1950s until his death in 1999, with his cultural impact in power, money, race, sex and politics,” it shared on its website.
