• by Todd Wasserman , March 2, 2022

March, a month typically punctuated by the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, saw the tournament get canceled in 2021. This year, the tournament is returning, albeit with limited crowds -- up to 25% capacity -- mandatory face coverings and social distancing, beginning March 18.

The NCAA is proceeding cautiously this March. Total viewership for regular season college basketball fell about 4%, according to Nielsen data. Ad sales have been strong. Some brands, like Nissan, are repurposing ads they had planned to run last year.

Meanwhile, many are waiting to see whether the other big part of the media landscape -- movies -- will come back to 2018 levels. Comscore projects that the North American box office for 2021 will be $4.4 billion,  about double 2020’s total but down more than 61% from 2019.

Among the franchises expected for 2022 include “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattison and Zoe Kravitz, which is set to premiere on March 4. Later this year, there’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," "Top Gun: Maverick” and  “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” Summer releases will include “Thor: Love and Thunder,” ”Black Adam” and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One).” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Avatar 2” are set for December.

This recycling of previous blockbuster films is notable since the box office on superhero films is back to about 75% of pre-pandemic levels, while family films are off about 50%, David A. Gross, who runs the movie consultancy Franchise Entertainment, told the Associated Press in November.

Older moviegoers are a big part of the holdup.  The over-50 audience is among the last to come back to theaters.

Given the superhero-heavy slate of movies for 2022, it looks like the studios aren’t banking on older folks showing up. “Things are looking a lot better Monday morning than they did even three days ago,” Mike Stevens, executive director of Moxie Cinema, a nonprofit two-screen in Springfield, Mo., also told the AP. “But that’s kind of been the way it’s been going. Each week seems to bring a new wrinkle or a new variation or hope or despair.”