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View all search resultsIndonesian film industry in stasis, but for the better
Entering the New Year, film people are poised for big gains in streaming services, and money is not the only thing on their minds.
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T
he rising number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the first three months of lockdown in Jakarta put a kibosh on the city administration’s plan to relax the restrictions in July – which started with the reopening of shopping malls, tourist destinations, places of worship and lastly, movie theaters.
Even months later when major movie theater chains were ready to open their doors abiding by the protocols set up by the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry together with the Education and Cultural Ministry, it was still hard to tell that things would go well for them.
Not many people would take the risk of traveling to a movie theater, which are mostly situated in shopping malls. And even if the number of attendees reached full capacity, it would only bring a fraction of their usual revenue.
So, it is understandable that the large chains offered their studios for private film screenings as a birthday treat or as a venue for conferences to survive.
One obvious solution was to release a blockbuster movie in theaters to revive the whole film industry, but the uncertainty brought by the prolonged health crisis evoked the wait-and-see attitude among production houses.
That’s just how it is. The current business model of the Indonesian film industry was built around theaters, where the money is. Movie theaters were at the center of the film industry’s growth in the past five years, which ran at an exponential rate and became a robust market for the global industry.
