As 2021 approaches, our critics examine the film industry in crisis, and wonder what the future might hold. I don’t doubt that people will want to go back to movie theaters after the pandemic, as they will to restaurants, nightclubs, concert halls and bowling alleys. But a shift in the industry that was already underway before Covid-19 seems to have accelerated. I’m hesitant to offer any grand divinations, but we know that the movies or, rather, the American film industry is in a state of perpetual crisis. The threat posed by streaming is on another order of magnitude: i.e., the internet changed everything, including how people watch entertainment.

Source: New York Times December 30, 2020 19:18 UTC