The Batman earned $760m at the worldwide box office.
ITHEATER STREAMING MOVIES MOVIE
The Motion Picture Association calculates that pre-release piracy can syphon as much as 20 percent of box office revenue.īut the main reason for the about turn lies in the cynical but evergreen evaluation that a movie released to cinema generally turns over more than its weight in dollars returned. Piracy is certainly one issue which has caused studios to rethink digital only releases.
ITHEATER STREAMING MOVIES WINDOWS
Theatrical windows grow our entire industry.” A shift to shorter theatrical windows The strategies of Hollywood studios that had collapsed the windows between exhibition premiere and release to the home have been systematically reappraised in favour of cinema once more.Īt cinema exhibitors event CinemaCon in April, John Fithian, CEO of US Theater Owners trade body NATO went so far as to claim that: “Simultaneous release is dead as a serious business model and piracy is what killed it… evolving periods of exclusivity maximise revenue and increase perceived value to consumers. “The bigger a movie succeeds in the cinema, the bigger it is on the auxiliary markets” This is nothing to do with sentimentality and all about following the numbers, which dictate that cinema remains the best place to first release your blockbuster. The experience of the last couple of years has proven that far from being the new medium for releasing feature length entertainment, streaming platforms are often second best behind good old-fashioned visits to the cinema. You can argue that Covid-19 has been a blessing in disguise for those in the exhibition business and for anyone who loves the romance of viewing a new film on a big screen in the company of strangers. It called to mind a comment by Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, who once remarked that the only innovation cinemas had to offer was better-tasting popcorn. What new content there was was ushered straight to streaming platforms in a model that seemed to have hastened the slow but inevitable demise of exhibition for that of the more convenient home box office. Theatres were shuttered globally and indefinitely. It was proof of the soaring demand to stream movies at home and equally of the importance to streamers of securing original must-see content.Īs for the effect on traditional moviegoing… There was a point in 2020 when the pandemic appeared to have killed off cinema. In contrast, Red Notice surpassed that total in just 18 days. As reported by Screencrush, Bird Box took four weeks to rack up its 282 million viewing hours. That record has since been surpassed by the 2021 comedy action movie Red Notice, which notched up 328.8 million viewing hours and has been seen by over 50 percent of all Netflix users.