Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 3 – Russians spent 42 percent less for tickets to movie theaters than they did the year before, according to the Film Foundation, failing to make up for downturns during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and highlighting the impact of the decision of Western studios not to send their wares to the Russian market (ng.ru/news/756932.html).
On March 1, Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Universal, and Paramount announced that as part of the sanctions regime, they would no be sending any of their new movies to Russia, thus depriving the Russian audience of many of the films that would otherwise have brought them into theaters.
By summertime, the situation in Russian theaters had become “catastrophic,” Laris Malyukova of Novaya gazeta says, with Russians not able to view the summer blockbusters they had expected and staying home in droves (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/01/02/dramaticheskie-oshibki).
Russian theater operators tried to compensate by bringing in more films from India and other Asian producers, but that has proved insufficient to bring Russians back to the theaters. Russian filmmakers did benefit: they attracted just over half of those attending, but it was just over half of total attendance that has sunk by almost half.
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