He’s beaten Ernst Blofeld, Jaws and Auric Goldfinger in his cinematic career, James Bond isn’t going to be defeated by a bunch of trolls, that’s for certain. And I for one would pay money to be the fly on the wall when Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson call Jeff Shell and ask him to explain to them once more why the newest installment of James Bond, and the first distributed by Universal International UHS, isn’t playing in AMC theaters in the UK, the EU and other territories around the world because the studio finds it necessary to shout from the rooftops of their need to tweak exhibition’s noses by taking some of their films to PVOD. With Universal’s rather lackluster 2020 release schedule, AMC, especially if they are short of screens, isn’t pointing to a wealth of that studio’s films and saying they’re essential to the theater chain’s success until we get to the international release of No Time To Die. After all, at this point in time and even with the company in suspect financial straits, AMC might have far less of a need for Universal than vice-versa. Will AMC and Universal iron out their differences? The smart money is on them doing so by mid-summer, though probably not without someone at Universal throwing their arms (at a safe distance, mind you) around Adam Aron and trumpeting their commitment to the theatrical experience. Where this all ends up remains to be seen. By exhibition’s own admission, if a studio decides to take one of its lesser films straight to video it should theoretically be greeted by a resounding sigh of relief rather than shots across the bow. Is a film buyer going to take the fourth week of A Quiet Place II off the screen if it’s playing to 75% of available seats? If there was an issue with too many films in the marketplace before the world went insane, then that argument gets ramped up considerably in the weeks and months after cinemas reopen with strict distancing rules in place.
#FILM SEMI STREAMING MOVIE#
If moviegoers find they simply can’t buy tickets to a film’s opening weekend and are forced to make their purchases for the following weeks, then films that cinema owners could reasonably expect to play for just a couple of weeks may now last far longer in movie theaters. Well, if film buyers had too many movies to play pre-COVID-19 when a film would explode on opening weekend only to fall precipitously in subsequent weeks, thereby limiting their theatrical playtime, how will they feel when theaters are mandated to run at 25%-50% capacity because of coronavirus social-distancing concerns?
That is invariably the rationale when a studio can’t get a film into a limited screen theater complex: “Sorry, I have too many movies to play.” I often heard that in my sleep, along with “Can’t some of these go straight to video?” If I’m one of these ancillary components and I know that a certain title has debuted on Disney+ and that I won’t be one of the first platforms for a viewer to watch a film post-theatrical, you can rest assured I will be negotiating a lower rental fee than if it had grossed $750 million around the world.Įxhibitors are fond of telling any studio sales rep or executive who will listen that there are too many films on the release schedule. Deals for EST, video, cable TV, PPV, airlines, etc. While theatrical is often thought of as the barometer of a film’s success, it is often the ancillary markets which drive profit or loss.
The chance they’d take a tentpole film directly to streaming is minuscule unless they are losing Disney+ subscribers, which they aren’t, as shown by the announcement that their subscriber base just jumped to 52 million.Īncillary Markets Often Make or Break a Film Long gone are the days of the 50/50 split.ĭisney didn’t get to where it is by not understanding the dollars and cents of the movie business. Yes, studio rental from VOD is higher than theatrical, but as exhibitors will tell you, it isn’t that much greater. Do the math to see how many new streaming subscribers or VOD purchases the company would need to replicate that number. Seventeen of Disney’s titles grossed over $1 billion globally during the last five years. Just for fun, take a look at worldwide box office charts for the last several years. Again, we’re not talking Minions or Toy Story sequels here, but rather those next level animated offerings whose second or third installments would benefit from a release via some form of home entertainment rather than trying to elbow their way onto a crowded release schedule, often times at the playtime expense of more important studio titles. This is especially true with animated sequels.
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