Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

Without a single doubt in anyone’s minds, this year has easily been one of the most difficult years for a large number of people and that isn’t going to stop going into 2021. Although vaccines are beginning the process of rolling out at the moment, the fact remains that it will be a long time before immunity is properly spread to the public. This is also assuming that the vaccines actually end up working as intended and people actually end up becoming immune to the virus after getting the vaccine. In the meantime, we will still be stuck inside for the most part until the world as a whole can decide whether it is safe to resume normal activity once again. This leaves a lot to be desired by much of the world who are trying to get out of the house and be able to do something for once.

Many people have been resigned for most of the year to staying in the house waiting for businesses that they would regularly frequent to be open to the public once again. A few months after the pandemic began, we started seeing businesses like restaurants start opening again for the first time, though with restrictions. Most restaurants could only really allow outdoor dining because they have to follow the social distancing rules which also limits the overall number of people that can be in a business at a time. Obviously this has made it difficult for most businesses to actually get stuff done properly as they cannot get anywhere near as much business done. Without a means of actually getting a lot of business, it would be easy to assume that businesses would start to fail a bit.

No industry has suffered from this so much as the film industry and more specifically, the distribution side of it which is things like the releases. Obviously it can be assumed that theaters didn’t exactly have a lot going for them when they first reopened but that wasn’t going to stop them from finally reopening to the public. By the middle of August, most theaters everywhere had been reopened and were doing their best to draw people in with the small variety of films at their disposal at the start. This meant that their saving grace that they were hoping for had to be a blockbuster movie and it had to be coming out very soon after they opened up again. This movie would be the new Christopher Nolan movie ‘Tenet,’ at least that was what they were hoping for, but things turned for the worse not long after release.

When ‘Tenet’ first released to theaters, it released in the international market before it released in the domestic market due to a surge in cases in the States. The movie was originally supposed to premiere back in the middle of July, but this plan went to the wayside because theaters could not find a good period of time to reopen. Eventually, once AMC began the process of opening their doors, Warner Bros. decided on a release date for ‘Tenet.’ The dates for release were at the end of August and at the start of September for the domestic market and these two weekends saw a decent amount of traffic hit theaters for once. Unfortunately, this was not going to last in the domestic market because the next few weekends only saw a few million each domestically.

Even from that point on, the market for the movie internationally started to slowly wane, but it was the main reason that the movie was able to stay afloat. There was no way for them to really make money from that point forward and Warner Bros. ended up losing a lot of money due to the “failed” theatrical release. They needed a total of $500 million before marketing expenses just to apparently break even on the movie and that was unfortunately something that was not meant to be. It has been a couple of months since then and there hasn’t really been any movies put into theaters that have generated any kind of decent income. This has caused many studios to waver on just what they want to do moving forward and there is no guarantee that things would get better. So after the ‘Tenet’ incident, most big releases were pushed out of this year and into next year to accommodate for better release windows.

Of course, most studios moving their release dates out of this year means that movie theaters were going to start losing money even more than they already are. Some theaters once again shut their doors to try and save money while others are about to go bankrupt due to lack of new income. They have been desperate to get more movies coming through their doors and thus they have implemented the plan that they announced a couple of months back which would allow movies to release sooner. Essentially, the plans goes like this: theaters will have exclusivity to new movies coming out for a period of 17 days, after which they can be released digitally to the public. This plan was one that was obviously unheard of but theaters are desperate at this point and want to draw people back in by any means even if it hurts them in the long run.

Normally, theaters would have exclusivity deals that would last upwards of months before the movies were able to release to the public for purchase. There is no one who actually liked this plan except for, obviously, theaters because it meant that they held most of the power in their own hands and they can do whatever they want with new movies until a certain amount of time is up. On top of this, movie theaters are always given a sizable portion of the money that is brought in by the movie tickets sold as well as concessions. With a lot less people now wanting to risk their health and safety just to go out, theaters haven’t been getting the business they need in order to stay open and they were forced to take the new deal. If they could get at least some people through their doors, that still works out better for them overall.

Movie theaters have always been the ones to get the best deal out of movie releases, but now it would appear that studios are the ones that are making out for once. Of course, they all make more money overall if theaters were functioning properly, but since this isn’t the case, studios are trying to get money the best way they can. Most people are still stuck at home on a regular basis and need something to do to keep themselves busy therefore, releasing new movies digitally works out better in the end. There are very few people out there that actually dislike seeing new movies so of course there would be a market for these new films. Thus, studios have been trying to get their new films out to the public as fast as they possibly can.

If things were normal, movies going to theaters would benefit a studio because that studio would make money from the film being in theaters as well as digital and physical sales later. Now that films being in theaters and not being available digitally is a huge downside to studios, they are trying to get their films out as quickly as they can while taking advantage of theaters. By releasing to theaters first it does two things which are the building of good faith between the studio and theaters as well as making more money for the studio. Things seem to be changing though as this is not the only change which has been discussed as of late and people are actually going to see movies release in multiple places at once. Well, specifically, people will be seeing movies release on streaming services while simultaneously being released in theaters.

A few months ago, theaters tried destroying the idea that movies should be released on multiple platforms at the same time and it resulted in a stalemate between companies for a while. Eventually they came up with the aforementioned deal from above where theaters would get exclusivity to new movies for at least 17 days. Theaters are unfortunately just not in the position to try and talk their way out of anything new that comes up after that deal or instead of it. They are actually being taken advantage of at this point by people in studios who want to make the most of their film releases while partially helping theaters. As previously stated, showing movies in theaters does attract a crowd, and while it may not be as large, it is still a little bit of extra cash to keep things going.

Warner Bros. is taking it that little step further than Universal tried doing some months back which is that they are trying to get their films to release at the same time as their theatrical release. To be a bit more fair, they are trying to get their new movies to release on their streaming service HBO Max because they need to drive traffic there somehow. Although the pandemic may begin to calm down at the start of 2021, things are still going to be pretty ridiculous for the remainder of the year. As such, studios need a long term solution which will make it easier for them to get work done and bring people to them. Warner has been trying to make their HBO Max service work for over half a year now, and things still aren’t turning out great for them.

The HBO Max streaming service is one that has become something kind of strange to a lot of people because of the way that it is being handled by the public. Warner released HBO Max at the end of May as a way of finding their place among the streaming landscape which is now allowing other companies to flourish. If those companies are able to bring in a steady base of customers, then they can certainly get a lot more money in the long run from subscription fees. HBO Max started off with boasting from the company that they would be putting thousands of hours up on the service at launch and that it would be their entire catalog going up just like Disney+. Unfortunately this tactic hasn’t been working out as great as they originally thought it was and they are not getting as many subs as they originally hoped for.

Considering the size of their library, it is difficult to try and guess exactly why people aren’t signing up for the streaming service. On the other hand, most people can recognize that the service may just not have everything that they want on it and therefore they aren’t interested in subscribing. Thus, it would seem that Warner is now doing what they think is necessary to get more people to flock to their service and that is by putting up new releases. Anything that is new and interesting can catch people’s attention and in this world of digital convenience, this is the best way for them to ensure that they don’t lose more money than necessary. Their method that they have chosen to go with to get more subs to their service is to release their new movies both in theaters and on their HBO Max service.

Obviously if they are putting new movies up on their service while they are released simultaneously in theaters it will catch peoples’ attention. They kicked off this method of releasing their future content when they announced that this would be their way of releasing the new ‘Wonder Woman 1984.’ Over this past weekend, they have made it known even more that they will actually be doing this with all of their upcoming 2021 movies that they are releasing. Even if the pandemic does somehow miraculously end, we are going to see movies drop on HBO Max at the same time that they drop in theaters which completely goes against everything we know. If movies can release in this way from Warner, there isn’t too much getting in the way for other large studios to do the same to get movies out there. This is what they feel is the best possible way for things to go moving forward and it is bound to change things for the industry in the future.