Why Movie Theater Owner Destroyed ‘Mulan’ Display In Protest Against Disney+

Images of a French cinema owner destroying a pop-up advertisement of Mulan with a baseball bat has been circulating social media this week. The video encapsulates the anger of cinema theater owners at Disney’s decision to release their film digitally, bypassing theaters.

The anger of the cinema owner is understandable. Cinema theaters in France have been opened since June 22. Since that date, cinemas have been struggling, even in this film loving nation, where 65% of its citizens declared back in May, in the midst of the lockdown, that they wanted to return as soon as possible to the cinema.

A Significant Drop In Attendance

According to a report by the CNC (the French National Center for cinema and moving images) published on August 7, there is an estimated 74% drop in the number of ticket sales during this month of July compared to last year’s. The CNC estimates that cinema theaters have sold under 5 million tickets in the month of July, compared to over 18 million in July 2019 (France measures its box office in entries, not Euros). Since June 22, an estimated total of 6 million entries have been recorded by the CNC.

French cinemas had already seen a 20% drop in the number of entries in both January and February, but with the lockdown starting in March, this means that for the first seven months of 2020, with no tickets sold in the months of April and May, there has been an estimated total of 44 million entries, compared to 123 million in 2019, which had great summer blockbusters like The Lion King and Toy Story 4. As a point of reference, The Lion King made 2.5 million entries on its opening weekend in France in July 2019.

The Absence of New Films

The drop is of course due to coronavirus fears and the new social distancing measures. But this significant drop is also due to the fact that few Hollywood blockbusters have been released. Many theaters reopened with the prospect of huge summer box office successes with films such as Tenet and Mulan, which were both first due to be released in mid-July.

For the Fédération nationale des cinémas français (the federation of movie theaters in France), the real reason for the drop in attendance is due to the absence of films to be screened. French cinemas had a limited number of films to offer each week since they reopened at the end of June, the Federation argues. There were, indeed, fewer Hollywood blockbusters.

But what about French films, I hear you say. It seems that nothing attracts the masses like a big Hollywood studio movie. Since June 22, French cinemas saw new releases for French films, such as François Ozon’s Summer 85, but none sold a million tickets. Only one film made over 500,000 entries since the theaters reopened—a comedy entitled Tout simplement noir directed by Jean-Pascal Zadi and John Wax.

Movie Theaters in Peril

“It’s really a huge effort to stay open right now for most of us, but we were assuming there would be some ambitious movie releases in the coming weeks,” said the cinema owner who batted down a Mulan promotional advertisement in his theater outside Paris. This isn’t only affecting small cinemas. As it was reported more than a week ago, one of the biggest cinemas in Paris, the Grand Rex, made the decision to close its doors for the month of August in an effort to save the iconic Parisian theater.

Another legendary Parisian movie theater on Avenue des Champs-Elysées, the UGC George-V, already closed down in June, after the owners of the building decided that the cinema theater was no longer viable financially. They now plan to transform this iconic place into a hotel. As a point of reference, there used to be around 40 cinemas on the famous Avenue, now there is only three left. This is of course not only due to the pandemic, there has been around a 50% decline in attendance in the past fifteen years at the George-V, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. The coronavirus outbreak though seems to be accelerating the decline of the cinema theater.

In a statement made by the International Union of Cinemas (UNIC) in reaction to Disney’s decision to release Mulan digitally on Disney +, the union argued for a “cinema first” strategy for film releases as a proven business model, with 1.34 billion admissions and €8.7 billion earned at the box office in 2019 in Europe alone. “If our studio partners oblige cinemas to wait until the sector emerges from the crisis in the U.S. before supplying new content,” the union writes, “it will prove too late for many European cinemas and their dedicated workforce.”

Cinema theater owners are now hoping Warner will not be withdrawing or pushing the release date further for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which is due in France on August 26. Nolan himself actively advocates for theatrical screenings of his movies, so hopefully this will be the film that helps save cinema theaters.