How drive-in theaters surged during the start of the pandemic and helped indie cinemas and studios survive

texas theatre — The Texas Theatre in Dallas turned its parking lot into a drive-in during the pandemic, which was also used as a satellite spot for the Sundance Film Festival last year.
Provided by the Texas Theatre.

Drive-in theaters surged in the spring and summer months of 2020 during the pandemic.
The Texas Theatre in Dallas, for instance, turned its parking lot into a drive-in that year.
Indie film studios like IFC Films kept releasing movies during this time.

When movie theaters in the US shut down for months amid the coronavirus pandemic, indie cinemas were acutely impacted.

Insider recently spoke with indie theater operators from six different locations throughout the US. To stay afloat, some took the opportunity to renovate their theaters while they were closed. Many evolved their programming strategies once they reopened by playing commercial films with broader appeal than what they typically programmed.

And some introduced drive-ins.

The Texas Theatre in Dallas, for instance, set up a giant screen in its parking lot soon after shutting down in 2020 and ran concessions to cars "Sonic style," owner Barak Epstein told Insider. And when the theater was a satellite location for the Sundance Film Festival last year, some screenings were shown at the drive-in.

By 2020's end, drive-ins had accounted for 6.7% of the total box office, according to the data firm Comscore. Before the pandemic, they typically accounted for less than 2% in a given year. Last year, they accounted for 3.3% of the total US box office, still up from pre-pandemic years.

But breaking down the box office further shows the surge in drive-ins. From April through July of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic when most indoor theaters in the US were still closed, drive-ins accounted for an average 87% of the box office, according to Comscore.

Here's how those four months in 2020 compares to the same time in 2019:

April: 93.7% in 2020/1.07% in 2019
May: 92.5%/1.60%
June: 81.8%/2.99%
July: 80.5%/3.28%

The share of box office for drive-ins significantly decreased in the following months once theaters began to reopen again, but was still higher than pre-pandemic times.

"Movie fans and consumers in general still sought out the big-screen communal experience even though they now had more reason to stay home and more content than ever available on streaming services," said the Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

Drive-ins offered an alternative to indoor theaters for studios that didn't rely on streaming services.

The indie-film studio IFC Films in particular utilized drive-ins, which it had never done before, to keep releasing its movies during the pandemic, Dergarabedian said. The studio's ticket sales were down just 2.6% through July of 2020 compared to the same time in 2019, according to Comscore.

IFC's best performing movies in 2020 year were the horror movies "The Wretched" and "The Rental," which were both released that summer.

"During the summer of 2020, horror movies and repertory titles did extraordinarily well and earned the lion's share of the box office with IFC Films, A24 and other independent distributors really stepping up," Dergarabedian said.