**TL;DR With the rise of streaming platforms and their ability to provide blockbuster films to their audiences at a fraction of the price that a cinema can, movie theatres and cinema as we know it will continue to decline.** Movies are moving online and to streaming platforms in the modern age, with this having greatly increased in the last year due to coronavirus causing cinemas to shut down. It is much cheaper to buy/rent a film online and much more convenient than having to travel to cinema to watch a movie, and pay more to see that same blockbuster than it would cost from a streaming service. Even without coronavirus cinema was in decline – but the recent announcements from massive film companies, such as Warner Bros., to move all their movies to online release on the same day as cinema release throughout 2021 is the final nail in the coffin for cinemas. This completely revokes the period between a blockbuster’s initial release in cinemas, and their later releases online, ensuring that cinemas lose the time period where they made the most business. Others have recognised this too, with movie theatre stocks continuing to slide in response to the statements from film companies who are choosing to value streaming services in the same way that they value cinemas. I am not blaming streaming companies for stealing cinema audiences, in fact, audiences were practically handed to companies such as Netflix due to the wider coronavirus situation and choices of movie moguls. Usually, there is at least a 90-day period between cinemas showing new releases and content being made available on streaming platforms. Losing these crucial days – as films are released in cinemas and online in quick succession, will mean that less people will be inclined to go to the movie theatres. Cinema will die as we know it, even when coronavirus restrictions become a distant memory movie theatres will cease to exist. It is clear that the majority of people are happy to adopt the ‘straight-to-stream’ concept, which will make it increasingly difficult to return to the traditional model of streaming platforms having to wait their turn to show the newest blockbusters. Cinema has been set on a path to become a thing of the past, and it will be eventually be lost completely to online streaming platforms. **WORKS REFERENCED** ‘Cinemas are dead. Long live the movies’, (https://www.ft.com/content/e971f0fa-3547-4e44-b760-faa1b5a2efbe) ‘Warner Bros to movie theaters: Drop dead’, (https://www.zdnet.com/article/warner-bros-to-movie-theaters-drop-dead/)

**TL; DR - Cinemas are not dead because going to the cinema is something more than going to a place where we can watch movies streaming. The cinema is a whole experience of being with friends and watching the movie together in a cinematic way that cannot be compared to watching a movie through the streaming services**. For me, watching a movie at the cinema brings back wonderful memories of being with my friends, eating cinema food and just being together for the big screening. I always feel more immersed in the movie when I am at the cinema, which has a lot to do with the grand audio-visual experience. Terri White shares his own experience. 'For me', White says, cinemas are 'places in which I’ve laughed (*When Harry Met Sally*); shouted (*Room*); gasped (*Planet Terror*); screamed involuntarily (*Saint Maud*); fallen in love (*True Romance*) and wept until my face, clothes and seat were wet (*God’s Own Country*)'. The experience of watching a movie at the cinema is so immersive that it can significantly add to the emotional impact a movie makes. The cinema is not just the place, but the whole process of watching a movie there, and it brings people together in their love of a particular movie. People view going to the cinema as a different pastime to staying in with Netflix, and the ongoing popularity of cinema (at least just before the pandemic struck) shows that people are still into this. For example, Jim Amos argues that '*Bad Boys For Life* began 2020 by flying out of the gate to the tune of a $73 million domestic opening weekend and has now officially become the highest grossing non-expansion January release in history'. Cinema is still quite popular. Works Cited Amos, Jim, 'No, Cinema Isn’t Dying: 7 Reasons To Be Optimistic (Yes, Optimistic!) About Hollywood In 2020' (2020) <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamos/2020/02/05/no-cinema-isnt-dying-7-reasons-to-be-optimistic-yes-optimistic-about-hollywood-in-2020/?sh=7d2396a13b6c> [accessed 2 March 2021]. White, Terri, 'Cinemas Aren’t Dead, They’re Hibernating' (2020) <https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/cinemas-arent-dead-theyre-hibernating/> [accessed 2 March 2021].

When individuals argue that cinema is dead, they are usually referring to the movie theater. Sure, the decline of movie theaters has always been apparent. With the rise of the so-called 'streaming wars', people reasonably prefer to spend money for entertainment by monthly subscriptions for an amount of content than for a single movie that lasts about two hours. Unless it was either a Marvel or a Star Wars movie, box office numbers have grown tepid. But the coronavirus pandemic has led to nearly every movie theater close their doors or open at a set capacity. This has led to a severe decline in attendance since people do not want to be spend two hours in a dark room with other strangers, risking passing on the coronavirus. In response, Disney and Warner Bros. placed some of their tentpole films onto their respective streaming services. Disney has placed an extra one-time fee on top of their monthly subscriptions, with the exception of Soul, while Warner Bros. has only given subscribers thirty days to play the film for free before pulling it and keeping the film in theaters. This has also been a win for them because movie studios do not have to worry about splitting the profits with movie theaters. Now that moviegoers can simply watch the latest blockbusters in the comfort of their own homes free of charge, and not worry about the price of beverages or if the seats suck, moviegoers insist movie theaters are set to expire within a few years. While predicting the future is more complicated, it is actually reasonable for moviegoers to be optimistic about the future of the movie theater. First, and foremost, movie theaters in countries that have successfully contained the coronavirus has allowed them to operate. Per Fortune.com, movie theaters in China, where the coronavirus originated, have opened to moderate capacity, and even grossed $2.8 billion in revenue in 2020. In contrast, the article notes, the U.S. box office revenue generated $2.1 billion. That difference is not too far apart. Furthermore, Disney has been reluctant to release Black Widow or Spider-Man: No Way Home onto Disney+ because they are confident in the revenue it would generate at the movie theaters. If this happens, attendance to the theater would skyrocket, and movie theaters should be back in business. Other tentpole films such as Fast and Furious 9 and the latest Bond thriller have also been repeatedly postponed because studios know there is a physical audience for those movies. The fact that movie theaters are being hampered by film studios, the pandemic, and general low attendance has been frustrating for avid moviegoers who love the experience of going to see a movie in a room filled with strangers. A streaming service can only provide content for someone to spend two hours of their day. As Jordan Chrucchiola in Wired puts it, the movie theater is "an exercise in shared empathy. It's the chance to be immmersed in a world of fantasy, to laugh and scream with strangers, to learn more about what it means to be human." The theater helps create a community within a city between a group of strangers that connect over a series of emotions. CITATIONS: “Are Movie Theaters Dead? Certainly Not in China.” Fortune, 4 Jan. 2021, fortune.com/2021/01/04/china-box-office-new-years-day-record. Crucchiola, Jordan. “On the Future of (Going to the) Movies.” Wired, 1 Oct. 2020, www.wired.com/story/on-the-future-of-movies.

**TL;DR - The pandemic is not what's killing Cinema, large media companies are using it as an opportunity to get rid of independent movie chains.** I don't think your statement is false. Cinema was on the decline due to streaming services taking some market share recently. However, this decline is not natural, it's the result of Warner Media and Disney's war against independent movie chains. These big media companies have been aiming to take a good portion of the profit generated by theaters through streaming services. The pandemic allowed them to disguise the killing of the movie industry through "natural causes" [1]. Their apathy towards theaters is quite apparent and they tend to downgrade the importance of the cinema experience. They're more willing to sacrifice a large portion of their movie studio division to invest more on platforms like HBO Max and Disney+. It's just more profitable to cut off the distributor and distributing movies on your own, rather than splitting the profit with a middle man [1]. I don't think this is inevitable, but it certainly is happening. Movie theaters are not killed by innovation, they're getting killed by large media companies. Works Cited [1] Movie Theaters Aren’t Dying—They’re Being Murdered https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/movies-streaming-covid-theatres/

Cinemas are not dead because they can provide technology to viewers which is too expensive to have at home. Many cinemas offer the experience of being able watch movies in 3D / 4D. I remember going to watch one of the Harry Potter films in 3D, it was fantastic and certainly not an experience I could have had at home. 3D is not really possible to have at home as it is too expensive. However, cinema can provide people with this experience which makes visiting the cinema a very attractive option. Cinematic technology is also constantly developing which could attract even more people in the future years. Cinema operators are embracing the ideas of including side-wall projection and next-generation audio. There are many ways 'to push at the boundaries of creative cinema.' Cinema is not dead and I do not think it will be dead in the future as the technologies used in a cinema can provide a much better experience for the viewer compared to what they can achieve at home. WORKS CITED: Davies David, 'Immersive Cinema: Could new technologies fuel a post-coronavirus renaissance?' (11 May 2020), https://www.ibc.org/trends/cinema-tech-saving-the-big-screen/5920.article

Cinema is not going anywhere. But it is changing, as any industry does as it faces new obstacles and explores new opportunities in the fight to retain its customer base, which now has a plethora of entertainment choices from which to choose. The fear is that once the doors are shut, and the seats are empty, the question is when will be reopened, but in my opinion, Cinemas aren't going anywhere. They've gone into hibernation. Watching a movie at home is cool, but I prefer the excitement of going to the cinema and the big screen experience.

**TLDR - Cinema is not dead. There will always be a demand for going and seeing a movie, even if streaming sites have heavily dented this.** Whilst movie theaters are certainly in decline (especially after the pandemic), streaming and at-home options will never fully replace them. This is because the TV experience can never replicate a fully kitted out cinema, and the novelty of going to one. If just seeing the film itself is your only interest, then it would make sense to prefer streaming over going to cinema. However many people still treat the cinema as a special event, in which going out and experiencing it on the big screen is just as important to the experience as the film itself. It is also really up to the production studios themselves as to whether they want to let cinema die. Obviously if they all choose to release on streaming platforms as well, then cinema will dwindle vastly. However, big box office hits like Marvel movies and Star Wars are unlikely to negate cinemas because every year they smash box office sales. And whilst yes they would keep all of the profits if they just release on Disney Plus, the profits would be vastly smaller.

I don't think its dead yet, but I think its dying because its too easy to find a free stream online now