Narrowing the Gap Between Cinemas and Sofas
The desire to watch new theatrical movies at home is not new; it’s something consumers have wanted for a long time. Until now, studio experiments with “day-and-date” simultaneous releases in cinemas and at home were stymied by theater owners. But the intertwined impact of the pandemic and direct-to-consumer streaming services forced the hand of the studios. And now day-and-date home release has yet another tailwind in its favor: the evolving capabilities of the TV sets people have at home.
The impact of a (hopefully) once-in-a-century pandemic arrived at the same time as studios felt the pressures of quickly building subscribers to their new streaming services; both factors have accelerated the long-term decline in the theatrical film business. Having suffered through long periods of closures, cinemas now face competition from studios releasing their films day-and-date on their SVOD service (HBO Max), selling them day-and-date as a premium add to their SVOD (Disney+), and compressing the traditional release windows to a minimum, again to serve their streaming subsidiaries/partners (everybody).
If you consider the pre-pandemic complex structure of movie windowing as a “Multiverse of Madness” (to reference the upcoming Dr. Strange sequel), then that multiverse is in the midst of being pruned to a single “sacred timeline” (the theme of Marvel’s direct-to-TV “Loki” series) to serve the…