Now streaming: Future of the movie business
Something big is about to happen” – versions of this message were widely circulated among cinephile circles on December 3. What could it be, film fans all over the world wondered, memories of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s nowinfamous tweet teasing the death of Osama Bin Laden resurfacing in our minds.
We’d find out moments later; the news was under embargo, and outlets were waiting with their fingers inches from keyboards, prepared to publish a story that would alter the film industry forever.
No terrorist had been killed, but the announcement might as well have murdered movie theatres. At least that’s what the knee-jerk reaction to the big reveal was. Warner
Bros, in a flashy presentation, declared that its entire 2021 slate of movies would debut on the HBO Max streaming service. But what really ruffled some feathers was that the digital debuts would happen on the same day as the films’ theatrical release.
This meant that viewers (in the US only) could enjoy hotly anticipated films such as Dune, Matrix 4, and The Suicide Squad from the comfort of their homes (and, as WB kept reminding them, at no extra charge).
The unwritten laws of online piracy dictate that titles released on the internet will find their way on illegal file sharing sites within minutes of their launch. And so, Warner Bros’ decision signalled two things: one, that the studio did not care about theatrical grosses for these films, and was focussed entirely on building its fledgling streaming service; and two, it was somewhat okay with these massive movies being pirated and distributed unlawfully around the world. To make matters worse, it reportedly made this call without having consulted the filmmakers, whose films were suddenly being treated like fresh bait.
One of the world’s most popular directors (and Warner Bros in-house talent), Christopher Nolan, said that he was in disbelief over what happened. The decision didn’t even make “economic sense”, he told The Hollywood Reporter. Director Steven Soderbergh, meanwhile, suggested everyone just calm down.
Equally adept at making blockbusters and indies, Soderbergh has always been a career tactician, evolving and adapting with the changing times, while the more old-fashioned directors such as Nolan remain rather rigid in their ways. Soderbergh, for instance, was an early adopter of digital cameras — he’s shot two feature films on iphones — and has a deal in place with HBO Max.
He told The Daily Beast: “There’s no scenario in which a theatre that is 50% full, or at least can’t be made 100% full, is a viable paradigm to put out a movie in. But that will change. We will reach a point where anybody who wants to go to a movie will feel safe going to a movie.”
There’s another bit of information that can be gleaned from the WB announcement, and this might be the most important of the lot: the studio did the market research and learned that the theatrical distribution model would be in no shape to sustain such massive films for at least another year. The vaccine roll-out is a gradual and methodical process, and many governments have already made it clear that it could take years before everyone is inoculated against the coronavirus.
And in a world like this, would audiences want to take a trip to the theatre to watch the live-action/animation hybrid Tom & Jerry movie? Most likely not, WB thought. The studio’s first lab rat in this multibillion-dollar experiment was Wonder Woman 1984. The movie pulled in $36.1 million at worldwide theatres over the Christmas holiday weekend and boosted streaming viewership on HBO Max, Warner Bros said.
Warner Bros’ biggest industry rival, Disney, tested these waters with the release of Mulan, which it made available to American audiences on the Disney+ streaming service for a $30 surcharge. Some days after the WB announcement, Disney declared that several of its upcoming films are also destined for a streaming debut (although it continued to maintain that the more high-profile Marvel movies would not be diverted online).
Instead of re-slotting its titles from theatrical to streaming, Disney decided to go all-out on producing exclusive new content for Disney+ — on December 11, it announced 10 new shows set in the Star Wars universe, and 10 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The message is clear: streaming is the future, and the world’s largest movie studio is going to invest heavily in the market.
The pay-per-view model, as successful as it has been in the US, hasn’t really been adopted in India. The most notable Covid-shutdown release that took this approach was Khaali Peeli, the Ishaan Khatterananya Panday ‘masala entertainer’. With theatres bleeding dry, expect more Indian studios to experiment with this release strategy in 2021.
Most producers will attempt to sell their wares to those with the deepest pockets, i.e., Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+. But there’s no way that everyone comes out of this alive. Many independently owned theatres will be forced to shut down. The reserve of content with which the industry has been sustaining itself will deplete. But film production is back in full swing; they’re just going to have to work harder to lure us out of hibernation.