So, for example, as you say, if someone's ill, if you have a relative who has a serious disease and you know that unfortunately the prognosis is only going one way, anticipatory grief can kick in, which doesn't lessen the grief when the person eventually passes away, but at least you know it's coming.

Yeah.

And so we gave people space to be together or to go home or to go for a walk or be whatever.

And then...

We did a follow-up using NABs' brilliant services where we had a group session where people could talk about how they feel and then one-to-one sessions where for people who didn't want to talk about their feelings and emotions, that they could just talk to somebody who understood and could help support them.

And we did four of those sessions and then kind of just kept saying to people, if this, you know, it may be that this doesn't feel real now and it will happen to you.

And I wrote to everybody individually.

So tell us a bit more about that.

Yeah, well, what has Hollywood been doing then? Or is it something Hollywood has, has done? Or has the demand come first and then Hollywood has responded to it? Which way around do you think it is?

I think Hollywood's done it first.

I mean, you know, even now I'm talking about films that are coming out in September next year that are already in process.

So I think what it is, is...

I, I think there's a, there's a couple of things.

They're making things that people want to see, which is business logic.

But also audiences are coming back, and particularly young people, um, you know, Gen Z, Gen A.

H-how real could that cloud be? I guess a row, a, a new civil war in the industry after the writers' strikes and things like that that we've seen.

Um, but Catherine, what are, what are you seeing in, in terms of consumer confidence? I- is it perhaps hard for you to assess the state of the economy more generally when you've got so many amazing films perhaps kinda lifting, you know, the cinema sector in particular?

Yes.

I mean, we can have a, a kind of slightly depressed advertising economy, but if we've got a strong film slate, then advertiser demand will be there because consum- because, you know, as I've said before, it is possible to go to the cinema for, uh, you know, at a bargain price, and people want to escape.

I mean, cinema always does well and if we've got the product, we always do well when people are depressed because we offer them an escape from endless doom scrolling, um, you know, 'cause you can't have your cinema... your ph- phone with you in the cinema.

So yeah, I mean, we can do a good slate, you know, rises all the boats as far as, as, as cinema is concerned.

The, the, the worry for us is our cinema operators who got really, really slammed by, um, increases in, um, utility prices, and that-

Mm

... put pressure on them at a time when we didn't have a good film slate, but there's been a level of recovery there.

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So when you're very young, you know, you draw a picture of your mother and it's, like, looks like a potato and it's got one leg and one arm, and everyone says, "That's just the most amazing drawing," and you're, you think, "I am a creative genius." Then you suddenly get to a point in your life where that creativity's shut down if you're not an expert in it, which is a bit like saying to everybody, "Unless you're really, really, you know, brilliant at football, you're never gonna be able to play football with your friends anymore." Why do we do that with creativity?

Again, you can drive your business forward.

I think if I was trying to get out of a rut, I think one of the techniques would be kind of uproot and destroy.

So take away everything that you've done before and come at it with a fresh pair of eyes, as if you've got no previous ex- history.

There's nothing holding you back.

And it's a bit like when you start a new job, and you turn up and you say, "I really wonder why they always do this, because it would be so much more efficient if they did that." You've got that fresh pair of eyes.

The idea is to give you prompts and tools so that you can unlock that creativity, rather than just sit in a room with Sharpies and a whiteboard in the desperate hope that one of the muses will come and inspire you into the next iteration of fast food or what have you.