Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

This year has been a pretty long one thus far and there is still a month left before it ends, but the end of the year won’t end the pandemic or the other problems we have. As of now, countless industries are currently suffering because of the pandemic and among those that are struggling is the movie industry. In the movie industry, it has been made known that filming hasn’t been impeded in the same way as movie releases, but it can still be difficult. Movie releases are in the most trouble because there is no reliable method to get movies out to the public the way they used to be due to theaters effectively being put down once again. When this pandemic began, movie theaters and movie productions shut down because they were forced to in the same way that pretty much every other type of business had to be.

Businesses that were deemed non-essential when the pandemic began were flagged and shut down until things started getting better with the pandemic. For a few months afterward, most everything else was shut down due to the emergency state we were all forced to adhere to and eventually they could reopen. At first it was things like restaurants which were able to reopen first, but only with outdoor dining in order to help people adhere to the new social distancing rules in place. Next, it was public places like parks which could finally allow visitors once again while still following the social distancing rules. As time went on, the list just kept getting longer and eventually, come August, most movie theaters were able to reopen to the public. Of course they had the same social distancing rules in place and people, like everywhere else, needed to wear masks if they wanted to go there.

Unlike restaurants and parks though, movie theaters had the add caveat that people would not be allowed to take off their masks even when seated because it would be too much of a hazard. Things were beginning to look up for theaters because they could finally get people through their front doors for the first time in months. Unfortunately only a couple of weeks later, things would turn out to not be as great as originally anticipated because it turned out people were still wary about going out to theaters. What happened was that the release of the movie ‘Tenet‘ was expected to be a massive blockbuster release which should have been the movie to bring people back to theaters. Unfortunately, things did not turn out well for the studio or theaters, for that matter, because the movie ended up failing in the domestic market after the first week.

After the first few weeks in the domestic market, ‘Tenet’ only started pulling in a few million each of the following weekends while still managing to bring some money in from the international market. That may not sound too bad, but the fact remains that they needed $500 million to break even before marketing costs and after months in both markets they haven’t really reached that yet. The failure of the movie theater market immediately made other studios decide to just push back all of their future blockbuster releases into next year to await a better release window. This had resulted in theaters having to scramble for movies to show because they had almost nothing left to show but old movies by that point. They have managed to get a couple of films released on their screens since then with one of the bigger ones most recently being the movie ‘Freaky.’

Even though they got a couple of movies to release on their screens, they were still left unable to do anything because the movies didn’t bring in a lot of money. They were lucky enough to make some money off of the movies that released, but it won’t be enough to save a lot of them from the financial ruin they are now suffering from. Movie theaters are just in a lot of trouble at the moment and it will take a lot in order to keep them from shutting down especially now that the pandemic is getting worse again. Even with the new deal theaters made being on the table- which allows movies to release digitally after only 17 days– many movies are still waiting for better release windows that won’t be seen for a long time yet. In the meantime, theaters are trying their best to make up for the lack of new content.

Movie theaters have been having a rough go of trying to get new movies put onto their screens because studios aren’t interested in losing large portions of money when they know they can avoid it. Instead of releasing to theaters now, many movies were pushed back so that they could possibly release when people are more comfortable. That isn’t likely to really happen any time soon with this new wave of the virus going around though, so many movies have been pushed back pretty far. With such a dangerous situation in play, it isn’t any surprise that this is what they would do given how everyone else feels about what is happening in the world. Given that, studios have the three options ahead of them that they are taking now which would be to either wait for release, release their movies on digital, or release their movies in theaters now and release on digital in a few weeks.

The last option is the route that some movies are taking in an effort to try and make money now during this period of time. If not for the ability to be able to decide exactly how they want to release their film, studios are doing this to try and help theaters which would help in the long run. Without any movies releasing any time soon, theaters are just spiraling more and more out of control trying to make up for the money they have lost this year. Many blockbuster films are now actually taking the second path of release as of late because it is the best chance a movie could have at doing well. This is the best chance they have to do well if they are releasing directly to digital because it is the perfect chance to get people to buy it without seeing the theatrical reviews. This makes it easier for studios to make a cash grab on new films because people will mass buy it the day of release.

Bigger studios are relying much more on digital releases now because they usually have their own streaming services now which they are trying to attract people to. The best possible way of drawing new people into a streaming service would be to add as much new content to that service as possible to get more people interested. By diversifying what content is available, and by making bigger titles available on said service, studios can draw more attention to that service. Studios with streaming services are the ones that have the best chance of making money during this pandemic because they can get people to get a subscription where they will make money on a monthly basis. Specifically, Warner Media is trying their best to get people to come to their HBO Max service because since its launch in May earlier this year, it hasn’t been as successful as they would have hoped.

As already mentioned, Warner has their HBO Max service as their main method of earning money from this pandemic and it already isn’t going well for them. They were the studio behind the ‘Tenet’ launch as well so they are also hurting from that as well so they are trying to come up with better ways to get people to come to their service. The best chance they have at doing that, as already stated, is to make content exclusive to the platform. As annoying as it might be to have to sign up for a service for exclusive content, it is actually the main way that many streaming services can go on with getting people to sign up for them. If exclusive content wasn’t widely available to the public they would have to throw money at the streaming service and this is how they plan on staying afloat at the moment.

At the moment, the streaming service that is having a hard time is HBO Max because people just aren’t as interested in it as they are with other services. The draw with HBO Max was supposed to be the fact that all of HBO’s content would be readily available from the service and people could watch it any time they wanted to. Regardless of what people may think about the service, the fact that they made pretty much their entire library available is still impressive for the most part because it presents literally thousands of hours of content. They were hoping that this would be enough, but unfortunately it was not and now they are scrambling to come up with a better way to get people to pay for the service. The only thing they had going for them was next year’s release of the Zack Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League’ that they announced when Max first launched earlier this year.

It would appear as though they have finally decided upon what they will be doing moving forward, and more specifically director Patty Jenkins. Jenkins is known for her work on ‘Wonder Woman‘ and its upcoming sequel ‘Wonder Woman 1984‘ and she has made it now known that the sequel will release straight to digital by means of HBO Max. This is definitely not an easy decision to have been made, but it is the one that she decided upon because of the current state of the world right now. While it would have been easy enough to have the release date pushed back further for a possibly better release window, this is a rough decision to have to make. The issue is that the movie was supposed to release in June but the pandemic pushed it back to August which was then given way under the weight of the failure of theaters because people weren’t going out to them. Now the film is set to release on December 25th which is usually a good spot for movies at the end of the year to sit on.

Unfortunately, as we all know, this year is different from any year prior and thus this window isn’t what it used to be and that has people worried. If things aren’t going to go as originally planned, there isn’t much of a choice left but to either delay again or release the film and they have chosen to go with the latter option in this case. It isn’t too difficult to see why ‘WW84’ is going to release on digital instead of being delayed again. People will eventually get tired of the film being delayed and the number of people who would want to see it would end up dropping significantly. This also leans into the fact that HBO Max needs to get more subscribers in order to become a better streaming service. This is a good opportunity for them to try and get more people subscribed to the service before things start to spiral out of control and they lose even more money.

This decision is one that is not really being met with any backlash, with director Joe Russo saying it is actually a “brave” decision on Jenkins’ part and that it is a respectable decision. Russo is known for his work on the MCU, especially ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ which have both been known as crowning jewels in the MCU in terms of popularity and box office. The movie will release both digitally and in theaters on the same day and it has been recognized by Russo that this is probably the future of the movie industry moving forward, especially with movie theaters doing as bad as they are now. This much-anticipated sequel is without a doubt one of the films that could help Warner, though it remains to be seen if it will be able to help out movie theaters. Many decisions in the movie industry moving forward are all going to go over the same way, so the future of movie releases is a long and arduous one.