Not living up to the billing: Why are audiences staying away from cinemas?

The Oscar nominations are out but cinematic releases from the Best Picture category have mostly bombed. James Moore takes a closer look at why film lovers are yet to return to movie theatres

Steven Spielberg’s sumptuous remake of ‘West Side Story’ has yet to see a return on its whopping budget (AP)

Nobody knows anything,” said the late William Goldman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men. If that was true when Goldman wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade in the 1990s, it is doubly so now. The Oscar nominations are out and there’s one thing that stands out about the majority of the Best Picture contenders: the ones given full cinematic releases have mostly bombed.

West Side Story, Steven Spielberg’s sumptuous remake of the hit musical, is still in a few cinemas after more than two months on release but it has yet to make back its reported $100m budget, per Box Office Mojo, despite having been granted a 45-day cinematic window, which is longer than many get in the post-Covid world.