In any other year, we’d be talking today about last weekend’s box office results – How did SpongeBob and Fast and Furious 9 do? — and licensed product sales as the summer blockbuster movie season kicked off in the U.S. We’d also be talking about how much business Wonder Woman 1984 might do starting in a little over a week.

Unlike any other year
But this isn’t any other year, and the talk of the film business globally revolves around when theaters will open, what safety measures they’ll need to take, and how quickly audiences will return.

Oh, and what they’ll show. Many of the biggest films planned for this summer have been pushed off until late this year and beyond, so there’s the question of what there might even be to be shown on the big screen. We’ve assembled a new calendar of planned U.S. theatrical release dates beginning later this summer; as we always caution when we run such a list, things change. That goes double this time.

Streamers?
A few of the films (Trolls World Tour, Scoob and Artemis Fowl) planned for theaters earlier this year, of course, never even made it to the big screen, veering off onto streaming platforms – and setting off much back-and-forth about whether that course might – or should — become a new normal.

At this moment – a caveat that could be repeated at almost any point in this story — Disney’s Mulan is slated to be the first licensing-attached film to hit movie theaters two months from now, followed by SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run (Aug. 7) and Wonder Woman 1984 (Aug. 14).

Many high-profile films slated to debut from mid-March and over the summer have been moved to year-end or 2021, setting off a domino effect whose effects will be felt well into 2022 and beyond. Many licensees and licensors are banking on next year as marking the return to some sort of normal film-based business.

In the U.S., AMC said that health and safety restrictions notwithstanding, it won’t re-open until there are enough new films to show. Its rivals Cinemark and Regal Entertainment are targeting July re-openings. AMC and Cinemark are expected to limit ticket sales to 50% of capacity. With roster of new films expected to be thin at the start, cinemas are expected to rely on studios’ libraries to fill out their theaters. So far about 320 theaters, many of them in Texas and Georgia, have re-opened, 150 of them drive-ins, according to Comscore. Georgia was the first state to lift restrictions on cinemas on April 27.

Outside the U.S., plans for re-opening theaters vary by country, but almost all have instituted or will mandate new health and safety requirements including the wearing of masks. Cinemas in Iceland opened early this month, while those in Finland and Portugal can come back on line on June 1. Switzerland is set for June 8 and Ireland on Aug. 10.

Vue International, which operates 228 theaters across 10 countries including UK, Germany, Poland and Taiwan, has said it will start re-opening theaters in late June and continue through July. Meanwhile, while the UK government said cinemas could return to business on July 4, many independent operators they were not likely to do so until September and later, given the social distancing requirements.

Helping to bridge the gap while brick and mortar cinemas were closed were drive-in theaters mostly showing classic films. In the U.S., about 150 of 300 drive-ins have re-opened with social distancing – 10 feet between vehicles and restrooms cleaned every 30 minutes. In Europe, drive-ins were open in Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway and Lithuania.