Corona has changed the world, our lives, and everything else we took for granted. Soon we will beat this bug, but some things will never be the same again. Not all seismic shifts are bad, though. The pandemic forced us to take a long, hard look at Status Quos in several branches of business, and one of the most explicit examples lies in the way films are distributed and exhibited.
I was never a die-hard fan of the theatrical experience. In fact, I think it is profoundly overrated. The idea that films are best enjoyed in the dark with like-minded strangers has always seemed a bit peculiar to me. Most filmgoers are rude, navel-gazing semi-adults who can’t go five minutes without checking their phones or yapping to their date. Watching a film in the company of social-media addicts who clearly have no real interest in what is on the screen at all, fills me with intense apprehension. Actually, if it weren’t for the towering IMAX screens and superior sound thundering at me from every possible angle, I would not go to the cinema at all. I love the home-theater experience, and from a very early age I started investing in ever-increasing television sets and beamers / projectors (see picture).
Furthermore, I vehemently disagree with the elitist line of thought that a film can only be called a film when it has had a theatrical run, and that you are only allowed to call yourself a true film-buff when you prefer to see films in theaters. Quality has absolutely nothing to do with the manner of exhibition. Trailblazers like Netflix and Amazon have proven that time and time again.
This brings me to the point I am trying to make. The cinemas are among the businesses that were hit hardest by the pandemic. Obviously, a form of entertainment that is built around large groups of people gathering in a confined space, never stood a chance against a highly infectious virus.
I want to be very clear – I think this is a devastating development. It is truly heartbreaking to witness such a venerable form of entertainment being reduced to a smoking pile of rubble in mere months. But here’s the thing – people are always going to want to see (new) films and if they can’t (or won’t) go to a theater for it, they will seek another way. Innovators like Netflix and Amazon – and in the second wave Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max and whatever global strategy Paramount and Comcast are cooking up – have been very happily catering to this need for a while now, and Corona just sped things up. To paraphrase Darwin – adapt or die.
For decades, the all-powerful cinema chains have resisted the reduction of the so-called theatrical window. In a nutshell, this archaic principle states that a film will not be available anywhere else but in theaters for three to four months. The cinemas have always been able to enforce this monopoly because until recently, ticket sales were still sky high, so film producers and distributors did not want to rock their gravy boat.
When Corona forced audiences out of theaters and into their homes, the people who actually create, finance, produce and distribute films had no other choice than to think on their feet. Netflix and Amazon just continued on the path they had – very wisely – chosen years earlier, but suddenly major studios like Columbia and Paramount started offloading their film slate to the streamers too, completely bypassing a theatrical run. While early on in the pandemic there was still hope of cinemas returning to business as usual – and in some countries they did – it soon became painfully clear that the crisis was far from over.
The severity of the pandemic also rapidly shifted the streaming aspirations of two of Hollywood’s biggest studios into high gear. Disney boosted its Disney+ service with the premium VoD releases of Mulan (2020) and Soul (2020), but the true game-changer came from WarnerMedia, which is currently part of Warner Bros. Discovery but was still owned by AT&T back in 2020. In a press release that rocked Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment world, it was announced that the studio would be releasing its entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max simultaneously to a theatrical run.
At the risk of sounding pedantic – we cannot underestimate the impact of this unprecedented chess move. Although clearly a rushed corporate decision made by AT&T brass with absolutely no sensitivity for the machinations of Hollywood and its creative talents, it will forever change the film landscape. After the announcement, Warner’s studio execs feverously scrambled to nuance their corporate bosses’ strategy, stating that it was just an experiment with no consequences for future releases. Yeah right. It doesn’t take an insider to understand that with AT&T carpet-bombing traditional windowing, the business has irreversibly turned a corner.
Circling back to my earlier statements – I honestly don’t think that these power shifts are necessarily bad. I love film and I want to watch new stuff wherever and whenever I can. Crisis informs opportunity and chance favors the bold. I know these are tired, clichéd quotes, but that doesn’t make ‘em any less true. The real forward-thinkers in this crazy film-business are adapting to the situation and are trying to figure out how to adjust the altered supply chain to the unaltered demand. Will they make a lot of money at the expense of other businesses? Sure. But the end result will be that we get to enjoy films uninterruptedly, and that’s all that really matters.
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict
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