Many students have been anxiously awaiting the summer of 2020 for new seasons of their favorite shows or new movies to be released. However, COVID-19 has cancelled or delayed the production of many of these releases until later years.  How will this affect the film industry now? 

   COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on businesses, schools, jobs, and many more industries. One particular area of interest is the global film industry. It is difficult for an industry relating to cinema to work remotely, creating yet another problem to overcome. Without the production of movies and TV series, box offices face losing billions of dollars. In addition, millions of people are losing their jobs causing unemployment rates to increase. To put this into perspective, Hollywood supports more than two million jobs and 400,000 American businesses, according to the World Economic Forum. 

   Around March 2020, the start of the pandemic in the United States, it was predicted that the global box office could lose up to $5 billion dollars as a result of quarantine. Not only is the film production stopped, but cinemas are closed. Even if a movie was able to be produced, the closing of cinemas would still affect the numbers and result in the loss of even more money. 

   However, even though cinemas are closed, there are alternatives such as online streaming sources. These sources include Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, and more. Netflix added 15.8 million subscribers in the early spring of 2020, according to The Verge, and is still gaining subscribers, though at a lower rate.  Other streaming services continue to increase in profit as well due to COVID-19. Broughton students are loving these services.

   “I usually only watch Netflix anyway so the closing of movie theaters isn’t a big deal for me. I think with technology nowadays, there wasn’t really a point,” said junior Hagen Richter.