We may not see any summer blockbusters in 2020

It’s the middle of summer, and despite the world being in a pandemic, plenty of warm-weather activities have returned: picnics, Frisbee and even swimming are allowed in many states. But what of the summer blockbuster? Our cinematic escape in which supercharged air conditioning, a spaceship and Will Smith save us from the scorching heat? The …

It’s the middle of summer, and despite the world being in a pandemic, plenty of warm-weather activities have returned: picnics, Frisbee and even swimming are allowed in many states.

But what of the summer blockbuster? Our cinematic escape in which supercharged air conditioning, a spaceship and Will Smith save us from the scorching heat? The big-budget tradition that gave us “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park” and “Star Wars”?

Yes, some theaters and drive-ins have opened in the US, but they are all showing old, pre-coronavirus films. No brand-new releases will be screened until the major markets, New York and California, get the go-ahead from local governments to allow large indoor gatherings at entertainment venues.

Just one month ago, beleaguered theater chains were readying for a highly anticipated July return. Now, however, with a resurgence of virus cases, it’s becoming more likely that we won’t see a single big movie this season.

“It would be surprising to see theaters able to re-open nationwide before September, at the earliest,” veteran Wall Street analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners wrote in a dreary note to his clients this week.

Granted, the summer blockbuster has been on death’s door for several years, thanks to lackluster titles, the rise of streaming giants such as Netflix and Hulu, the fall of MoviePass and a year-round high-quality TV season. In 1980, a person couldn’t stay in bed on July 4 weekend and binge-watch Season 3 of “Stranger Things.” The cinema was their only choice.

But 2020 1.0 actually looked pretty good. We would’ve been treated to an unusually strong crop of summer flicks, all of which have now shuffled off to fall, winter or as far away as late 2021: “Wonder Woman 1984,” Pixar’s “Soul,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Jungle Cruise” starring Dwayne Johnson and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In The Heights,” among others.

Christopher Nolan’s mysterious “Tenet,” which has a pipe dream of being the film to cut movie theaters’ red ribbon, has been pushed back on an almost weekly basis since June 12, with a current, increasingly unlikely release date of August 12.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett

John David Washington in “Tenet.”

©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett

Pete Davidson in “The King of Staten Island.”

©Universal/Courtesy Everett

“Jaws.”

Courtesy Everett Collection

“Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

©Paramount/Courtesy Everett

“Trolls World Tour.”

©Universal/Courtesy Everett Col

Will Smith and Harry Connick Jr. in “Independence Day.”

“Even if the theaters say, ‘We’re going to reopen at a quarter capacity’ or something, I don’t know that the big studios are going to want to put their movies into that kind of market,” Hollywood analyst Doug Creutz tells The Post. “And without the movies, the theaters can say they’re open, but they’ll have nothing to show.”

You probably have watched some new movies this summer — on your home TV. This month, Disney released the Broadway musical “Hamilton” on Disney+, which according to Apptopia, led to 752,451 downloads of the app.

Universal has led the pack in dropping its big titles on digital for $20, such as Pete Davidson’s “The King of Staten Island” and “Trolls World Tour.” The animated family film with new songs from Justin Timberlake made $100 million, leading NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell to embrace the format going forward.

“It’s not a replacement,” he said on a Quarter 1 earnings call reassuring stockholders that the more profitable theater business is here to stay. “It’s going to be a complementary element. We’re just going to have to see how long that takes and where it takes us.”

Still, that remark led the struggling theater chain AMC to ban Universal films.

Creutz says that when the time comes, thrill-seeking audiences won’t want to experience “Spider-Man” on a tiny screen.

“I think people will want to go back [to theaters],” he says. “I don’t necessarily think that the decision to release some movies direct-to-home is a permanent decision.”

However, for the time being, the American box office is so fragile that a couple of punks managed to get their quickly made independent film to the No. 1 spot in the country in June, just by renting out a single Westhampton Beach movie theater.

For actor Eric Tabach and New York filmmaker Christian Nilsson, their quest began with a question: “ ’Is it possible to get one of my YouTube videos to be the No. 1 movie in America?’ ” Nilsson tells The Post.

The answer is yes, thanks to a strategy called four-walling, in which someone buys out a theater and keeps all the revenue from ticket sales. Tabach and Nilsson wrote and shot their 29-minute film, “Unsubscribe,” starring Charlie Tahan of “Ozark,” within days, screened it in an otherwise-shuttered indie theater with an audience of two (them) and officially took in $25,488 — the money they spent buying every seat — topping the US box office that week.

“It’s surreal, and ridiculous,” Nilsson says. “To see my name in the Washington Post compared to filmmakers like Spielberg and Christopher Nolan is stupid.”

That’s because Nilsson’s movie, which cost $0 to film on Zoom, was at least released, while Nolan’s “Tenet,” reportedly made on a budget of $225 million, is stuck in limbo. And there’s no telling how long the “Dunkirk” director will be reel-ing.

“Nolan may want to release ‘Tenet’ in the theaters, but Warner is gonna say, ‘If people aren’t gonna show up, if the footprint isn’t there, we’ll just wait till it is’,” Creutz says.

“There is a pretty significant chicken and the egg problem. How are you gonna know if the demand is there if there’s no movies in the theaters?”