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On Christmas day, can you see Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters, if theaters are open where you live, or you can watch it at home on HBO Max.
That is something extraordinary. It’s the first time you’ve been able to decide exactly when and where you want to see a great Hollywood movie that could be a blockbuster on opening day.
Distribution plans for a superhero movie aren’t the biggest news at the moment; after all, we are fighting a pandemic that has killed 250,000 Americans. But it’s also worth noting that this modest pro-consumer move, which gives people the opportunity to watch a comic book movie wherever they want to see it, is only happening because of the pandemic.
And the move also tells you a lot about the state of both the movie theater business (it has a lot of problems) and the broadcast business, which is in a desperate race for scale.
Quick Background: Hollywood movie studios and big theater chains have been fighting for “windows” for years – the amount of time that elapses between when a movie hits theaters and when you can watch it at home . Most studies have tried to narrow that window. They want you to be able to rent a great movie at home weeks, not months, after it hits theaters. Theaters, for obvious reasons, want to keep that gap as large as possible.
And since theaters account for a large chunk of the revenue a movie can generate, they’ve been able to more or less keep up. Sometimes you could watch an indie movie at home at the same time it was being released in theaters, but for big movies and big studios, it never happened.
He’s even trying to experiment with alternative models – in 2011, Universal Studios proposed to let him rent Robbery of the tower, a terrible Eddie Murphy / Ben Stiller movie, for $ 60 while it was still in theaters, has gone nowhere.
Enter the pandemic, which closed theaters and forced studios to try different strategies. Most of the studios moved most of the big movies they planned to release this year, like Dune or the last Fast and Furious sequel, until 2021. Then they experimented a bit with everything else: Universal allowed people to rent Trolls 2 and other movies at home. Other studios took movies that were supposed to go to theaters and featured them on their own streaming services: Hamilton debuted on Disney +, The witches went to HBO Max. Disney also tested a hybrid option by allowing Disney + subscribers to view Mulan at home, if they paid an additional $ 30.
But until now no one has let you choose whether you want to see a real blockbuster at a movie theater with other people or at home with friends and family. (First Wonder Woman The film, released in 2017, grossed more than $ 800 million worldwide, which means that WarnerMedia, the AT&T unit that owns studio Warner Bros. and HBO Max, expects the sequel to be a huge success as well.)
The fact that this is happening now reveals a couple of things:
- Movie theaters have completely lost the influence they once had. In the past, WarnerMedia would never have attempted this because the big theater chains would have made credible threats, including refusing to show the film in their theaters. (So, by the way, you can watch Netflix the Irish in theaters last year only in small chains and independent theaters. Big networks, like AMC, simply refused to show the film because they are angry and threatened by Netflix in general.) But the big networks can no longer threaten movie studios.
That’s because they aren’t open, period, or because people don’t want to see movies in theaters, even when they can. WarnerMedia tried to bring Beginning– a potential blockbuster – in theaters earlier this year, and pandemic-stricken American audiences simply refused to go. And while movie theaters hope to reopen in 2021, they will do so in a very weakened state. They have spent this year bleeding money and trying to avoid bankruptcy. It is very likely that many of the cinema chains will have to close many of their locations in the near future; There is also a good chance that some of them will wind up with new owners after filing for Chapter 11.
An indication of how weak cinemas are: Earlier this year, Universal made a deal with AMC, the world’s largest theater chain, to shorten, but not eliminate, the window from home theater. That pact was deemed staggering and required Universal to give AMC a portion of its rental home sales.
But a WarnerMedia public relations representative says the company will not change its existing deals with theaters in any way because of Wonder Woman 1984. Theaters that show it can get the part of the box office revenue that they always get, and nothing more. In other words, WarnerMedia is betting that the big networks will show the movie, on their terms, that they hate. And that they won’t be able to do anything to retaliate.
- Big media desperately wants to catch up with Netflix. WarnerMedia executives are fully aware that giving people the opportunity to see Wonder Woman 1984 at home means that many people will see Wonder Woman 1984 at home, which means they will sell far fewer tickets. Meaning: This is going to cost WarnerMedia a ton of money.
But the company clearly thinks it’s worth giving the public a reason to subscribe to HBO Max. The streaming service, a mix of old HBO plus a bunch of new stuff, got off to a slow start when it launched this spring, and a new family-friendly superhero movie is expected to be a reason for people to subscribe. during the holidays.
And WarnerMedia needs a lot of people to do that: Its owner, AT&T, has promised Wall Street that it will become one of the dominant streaming services, along with Netflix and Disney. Ultimately, you will be rewarded or punished based on that performance, rather than the short-term performance of your studio. So cutting back on some movie revenue now, and getting theaters upset along the way, will be worth it for WarnerMedia if it can make HBO Max a true Netflix competitor. And if you can’t, the money you lose Wonder Woman 1984 it won’t matter much anyway.
