In a year where the film industry was decimate, exceptional cinema still prevailed.

The past year has been devastating. The world continues to reel from the tragic effects of the novel coronavirus. The film industry was ufabet decimate by the pandemic. Theaters are still closed across vast metropolitan regions of the country. As of December 29th, the total domestic box office for the top 272 releases total a paltry $1.37 billion dollars. That is a staggering $10 billion dollars less than the $11.4 billion earned in 2019. Dark times indeed, but even in the midst of this once-in-a-lifetime human tragedy, art and the pursuit of storytelling continued to thrive.

2021, against seemingly insurmountable odds, was a fantastic year for film. Brilliant filmmakers brought captivating cinema to audiences using modern technology. The pandemic changed the way we watch movies for the foreseeable future. Streaming and on demand services picked up where theater companies could not go. Disney started the trend by delaying tentpole films, like Black Widow, but releasing other big budget fare, Mulan and Soul, to the Disney+ streaming platform.

Warner Media would follow suit by premiering Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters and their HBO Max service on the same day. A calculated response after the global theatrical release of Tenet in September failed to jumpstart the box office. They further shook the industry by announcing all of their 2021 films would follow the Wonder Woman 1984 strategy. It remains to be seen how these moves will play out, but I remain optimistic.