Are drive-ins about to regain popularity? Open-air cinemas where spectators are not installed in seats near strangers, but in their car, the drive-ins or drive-in in French, have recently met with great success in the United States.
With nearly 300 drive-ins in operation in the country, they seem to be the ideal alternative to conventional cinemas, closed because of the social distancing measures due to the Covid-19. True symbols of the 1950s, the drive-in culture has long been anchored in the mores of America.
Increase in attendance
For the moment in the United States, drive-ins represent the only opportunity to leave your home to have fun, but safely inside your car. John Kopp, owner of a drive-in in Virginia, is one of the few outdoor cinema owners to have stayed open during the pandemic. Fewer than fifteen were active in the country, the season usually only starting in April.
"If people can enjoy and have fun with us before going back to the regular theaters, that's fine," said the owner to the Washington Post . With an audience mainly made up of families, he is showing animated films, like Sonic, the film last month. In Texas, a drive-in owner saw his ticket sales increase by 40% on the weekend of March 14, before doubling them a week later, by offering two fictions, En avant , le nouvelle film d animation of Pixar, and Invisible Man .
According to John Vincent, president of the Drive-In Theater Owners Association in the United States, nearly 150 drive-ins are expected to open in the next three weeks. Politicians are even supported the opening of these outdoor cinemas, like in New York, epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States but also one of the territories with the most drive-ins in the country.
Ephemeral success
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York State, who has indicated that he intends to reopen non-essential businesses towards the end of May, wants to speed up the process for drive-ins. "Where is the public safety problem? It is an open air cinema. It is to be in a car with the same people [ Editor's note: at home ] ”he said recently at a conference.
But if drive-ins are experiencing a sudden resurgence in popularity, they remain fragile, between the very low margins they manage to generate and the high maintenance costs. At their golden age, there were 5,000. Their number fell to 900 in the 1990s and then to 300 today, while the number of multiplex cinemas has exploded.
Will drive-ins only have fleeting popularity? "This is a great form of alternative distribution, another way for us to enjoy entertainment instead of staying at home and watching Netflix all the time," says Thomas Doherty, professor at Brandeis University on the distribution and projection of films. “But I think it's an intermediate phase before we can go back to what we were doing before. "
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