Panic in Hollywood: Warner Bros. and the death of cinema
“For many in the movie business, Dec. 3, 2020, is a day that will live in infamy,” said Kim Masters in The Hollywood Reporter. That morning, Warner Bros., one of Hollywood’s most storied studios, announced that every one of its 2021 movies will be released for home viewing in the U.S. on the same day it arrives in theaters. The studio, blaming Covid, called it a oneyear plan. But because few affected parties were consulted—including major directors and stars with money at stake—the decision was widely received as a betrayal that raises existential questions about cinema’s future. The move “could fundamentally change the way people watch movies,” said Brent Lang in Variety. Beginning with the Christmas Day release of Wonder Woman 1984, each of the next 18 would-be Warner Bros. blockbusters will be instantly available at home to anyone paying the $15 monthly fee for WarnerMedia’s HBO Max streaming service. Reviving exclusive theater runs a year from now won’t be easy. In the meantime, cinemas face “a potentially ruinous next 12 months.”
That the end of movie theaters could be upon us is “the most obvious takeaway,” said Alison Herman in TheRinger.com. But don’t blame Warner Bros. This is the same studio that “tied itself into a pretzel” trying to make Tenet into the blockbuster that saved the cinemas’ summer. The studio’s new tack is “far more grounded in reality,” anticipating that theaters will not be able to operate at full capacity for at least another several months. And shifting valuable content to HBO Max will provide a needed boost to a streaming service that launched weakly this year and has only a fraction of the subscribers of Netflix or fledgling Disney+. Though the heads of the big movie chains will squawk, said Kara Swisher in The New York Times, “no one is actually listening.” Any observer of the entertainment industry can see that the future is in streaming, not in an antiquated theater system that limits the content that reaches audiences and compels studios to rely on big-budget releases.
For anyone who doesn’t care for superhero flicks, an industry-wide shift to streaming first “could be good news,” said Eliana Dockterman in Time.com. Rom-coms, adult dramas, and other mid-budget movies have been disappearing from theaters, and a focus on audiences at home may encourage the major studios to diversify their offerings again. Meanwhile, don’t count theaters out, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. “As any parent of a teenager can tell you, movies are still the preferred excuse for adolescents to get out of the house with their friends,” and that dynamic will reemerge when Covid passes. With luck, we viewers will demand the return of theaters, and filmmakers will respond by making movies “too big, beautiful, and blazingly fun” to be watched only at home.