Overview of the US business for the week of May 18 Honoring George Lucas

The industry news roundup begins with an encouraging announcement by indie distributor Solstice Studios that it will open its Russell Crowe psychological thriller Unhinged in theatres on July 1.  Solstice is betting that enough theatres will have re-opened by the July 4th weekend to make this mid-summer release date successful.  We report positive returns from a cautious re-opening of theatres in Norway last week, while observing new rules to maintain social distancing among theater-goers.  FilmLA published a report that quantifies the drop in on-location shoot days in LA during Q1 2020, with an even more dramatic decline projected for Q2. On the other hand, the LA Times published comments from interviews it conducted with a large number of industry professionals predicting what film sets will look like once shooting resumes.

Our weekly report from Gower Street dives into Drive-Ins. 150 US drive-in locations across 38 states are now open for the season, including some pop-up locations created opportunistically over the last few months. Their  film programming has been creative, and varied, bringing back wide releases from early in Q1 to finish their runs together with summer classics of yester-year such as Jaws, and Back to the Future.

In this week's Hollywood Report, Martin Grove explains the post-pandemic financials which will lead multiplex exhibitors to play the largest, new releases on many screens and for longer runs.  Even though social distancing rules will limit the number of tickets available for any individual showing, the titles themselves will produce enough demand to get movie-goers back into theatres, in an orderly and spaced out configuration. 

We conclude with our regular film data tables: an updated list of the wide-release films scheduled through the end of 2020, the very latest studio release changes, recent MPAA film ratings announcements, a list of key new films premiering on streaming services and the most important new trailers to drop on-line last week.