The lo­cal cin­e­ma in­dus­try is hop­ing that this year’s block­buster sum­mer will turn around its for­tunes.

Last month, cin­e­ma tick­ets joined the long list of items that have in­creased in price for cus­tomers this year.

On Thurs­day, May 11, Movi­eTowne an­nounced it would be in­creas­ing its tick­et prices by $10 from Thurs­day, May 18. 

In a so­cial me­dia post an­nounc­ing the in­crease, Movi­eTowne said, “We know this isn’t the news you want­ed to hear, but we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing you with the best movie-go­ing ex­pe­ri­ence pos­si­ble. Thanks for your un­der­stand­ing and we hope to see you soon!”

When the Busi­ness Guardian con­tact­ed Derek Chin, the own­er of Movi­eTowne, con­cern­ing the price in­crease, he said the de­ci­sion was a re­sult of in­creased eco­nom­ic pres­sure as well as the fact that cin­e­ma crowds were still yet to re­turn to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

 “Well, it just has come down to eco­nom­ics. Every­thing post-COVID has gone up in price. Cost of se­cu­ri­ty, cost of main­te­nance, cost of chem­i­cals and we ba­si­cal­ly tried to ab­sorb as much as we can. That’s why the last price in­crease was about ten years ago. But al­so the num­bers are not the same as it was be­fore (the pan­dem­ic) and our dol­lars and cents are af­fect­ed. And as a re­sult, we have to make an in­crease in our prices,” Chin said.

He con­firmed that the tick­et in­crease would be ap­plied across the board at all of the com­pa­ny’s cin­e­mas across Trinidad and To­ba­go, news that meant those hop­ing to keep their dates un­der $200 may find it a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to achieve such an op­tion via a movie date.

One Movi­eTowne com­peti­tor Cin­e­maOne con­firmed that movie crowds were still some way off from the num­bers seen be­fore the ar­rival of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Cin­e­maOne CEO In­grid Jahra told Sun­day Busi­ness that while her com­pa­ny was see­ing an in­crease in mar­ket share in the lo­cal cin­e­ma land­scape, crowds were down sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

“We al­ways fore­cast and hope for bet­ter. But when we look at the land­scape we are hold­ing our own in terms of mar­ket share, we ac­tu­al­ly see our mar­ket share in­creas­ing.

“We hope that for the rest of May and June and Ju­ly, with some big movies com­ing down, we will see im­proved au­di­ences in terms of num­bers. So, I mean, if you’re still look­ing at pre-COVID, the num­bers are still off by prob­a­bly about 35 per cent,” said Jahra.

The lo­cal cin­e­ma in­dus­try, as well as the the­atres around the world, had suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Cin­e­mas in T&T were closed for 211 days in 2020, and af­ter re-open­ing late in that year, were shut down again fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of a state of emer­gency in May 2021.

Cin­e­mas were al­lowed to op­er­ate as safe zones in Oc­to­ber 2021, but re­stric­tions meant crowds were by de­fault far low­er than tra­di­tion­al au­di­ences at the big screen.

Even af­ter the re­moval of safe zone reg­u­la­tions and re­stric­tions, crowds have large­ly not re­turned to the the­atres and the fi­nan­cial im­pact has be­gun to tell.

Less than a week af­ter Movi­eTowne an­nounced its price in­crease, Cin­e­maOne’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance for the first half of the fis­cal year 2023 was re­leased.

It re­vealed that the cin­e­ma chain had seen im­prove­ments over fis­cal year 2022, which was hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en that movie the­atres were un­der re­stric­tions for some time dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny still record­ed a net loss of $200,000 de­spite the im­prov­ing re­turns. The com­pa­ny no­tably has been re­port­ing loss­es since 2020.

In the fi­nan­cial re­port, Cin­e­maOne chair­man Bri­an Jahra not­ed that glob­al cin­e­ma trends could lead to fur­ther eco­nom­ic re­turns for the cin­e­ma chain.

“Greater film vol­ume, cou­pled with the re­cent reaf­fir­ma­tion from all ma­jor stu­dios of the val­ue of wide the­atri­cal re­leas­es on 2,000 or more screens and, most im­por­tant­ly, cou­pled with movie the­atre ex­clu­siv­i­ty pe­ri­ods, au­gurs well for the sus­tained re­cov­ery of the cin­e­ma ex­hi­bi­tion in­dus­try.”

He con­tin­ued, “Cin­e­maOne main­tains a pos­i­tive out­look for the glob­al cin­e­ma ex­hi­bi­tion in­dus­try based on both the em­pir­i­cal re­sults from the in­dus­try’s con­tin­ued re­bound and the com­pa­ny’s re­cent fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. Movie­go­ers have been de­light­ed by nos­tal­gic fran­chis­es de­liv­ered in a larg­er-than-life cin­e­mat­ic set­ting such as the April re­lease of Su­per Mario Broth­ers which is the first movie of 2023 to sur­pass US$1 bil­lion in box of­fice re­ceipts.”

The Su­per Mario movie has in­deed sur­passed Frozen as the sec­ond high­est-gross­ing an­i­mat­ed movie of all time.

The re­turn of a slew of ma­jor movie re­leas­es over the next few months is be­ing seen as the ton­ic need­ed for the reel­ing in­dus­try.

Chin said he hoped the cin­e­ma in­dus­try would en­joy a boost with up­com­ing sum­mer block­busters, and point­ed to fran­chis­es such as the Fast and Fu­ri­ous and Trans­form­ers: Rise of the Beasts com­ing soon.

In­grid Jahra al­so not­ed that ma­jor movie fran­chis­es did hold ma­jor promise and she recog­nised that re­cent ma­jor hits had been pos­i­tive dri­vers for her com­pa­ny with crowds com­ing out in num­bers for ma­jor re­leas­es.

“It re­al­ly de­pends on the movie. So you know, like John Wick 4 was re­al­ly out­stand­ing for us,” said Jahra, “We hope that (crowds will come) with the new fran­chis­es, the kind of re­boot of the new fran­chis­es of Trans­form­ers, Mis­sion Im­pos­si­ble, In­di­ana Jones.”

“I share Derek’s sen­ti­ment that it’s not where it was. But then, as I said, it de­pends on the movie be­cause in some months we see in late Jan­u­ary, we saw sim­i­lar De­cem­ber were very good. But you’re on­ly as good as your last good movie. That’s the busi­ness that we are in,” she said.

Jahra al­so stat­ed the com­pa­ny was work­ing stead­fast­ly to get Cine­Cen­tral, which is set to oc­cu­py the spot va­cat­ed by Movi­etowne Ch­agua­nas at Price Plaza, op­er­a­tionalised in time to cap­i­talise on these re­leas­es.

Cin­e­maOne’s fi­nan­cial re­port con­firmed that the com­pa­ny had to ex­e­cute a suc­cess­ful eq­ui­ty rights is­sue to re­duce debt and its debt-to-cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion ra­tio to al­low the com­pa­ny to ex­plore such ex­pan­sion op­por­tu­ni­ties.

How­ev­er, Jahra said the in­vest­ment was worth it as the com­pa­ny had al­ready seen promis­ing re­turns from its Gem­stone The­atres at Gulf City, while she al­so ac­knowl­edged there have been reg­u­lar in­quiries as to when the Ch­agua­nas cine­plex will open.

“The au­di­ence is wait­ing on us, every day we are asked when are you open­ing? We re­alise that peo­ple are wait­ing pa­tient­ly so they don’t have to dri­ve very far. Like how they have to now be­cause their choice would be South or Port-of-Spain,” she said.