Not at the movies

The market finds a way to your home

WHAT WAS the last movie you watched in a theater? Little Women? Knives Out? That Tarantino flick? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Movie theaters—along with barber shops and restaurants—have been closed for weeks, and it looks like just about all the big releases have been pushed back as a result of the pandemic.

Even James Bond was no match for covid-19.

Movie studios, having invested millions in movies and salaries and production, want to score a profit and get as many eyeballs to watch their product as possible. And with the theaters shuttered, the pipeline has clogged.

Things are further complicated when large theater chains don’t want to reopen until they have new movies to show—that is, summer blockbusters.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios took a chance with one of its new animated movies—Trolls: World Tour—releasing it straight to digital for people to buy and watch in their homes. And it seems the experiment was a success. Here’s more from The Hollywood Reporter:

“Universal revealed that Trolls: World Tour racked up an estimated $100 million in premium VOD rentals in its first three weeks in North America, more than enough to put the film on the road to profitability, according to the conglomerate. That’s not far behind the $116 million grossed by the original Trolls in its first three weeks at the 2016 domestic box office on its way to topping out at $153.7 million in the U.S. and Canada and nearly $347 million globally, not adjusted for inflation.”

And Universal made all that money without the need to worry about filling theater seats. It seems the free market spoke up. If studios make movies that audiences really want, consumers will put down the money no matter if they watch on the couch or in stadium seating.

With the experimental success, Universal is planning to see what other movies it can put out on platforms like iTunes and Amazon. Naturally, AMC Theaters, one of the largest chains in the country, didn’t appreciate such news. It announced that Universal films would no longer be shown in its theaters.

Universal is one of the biggest movie studios, and simply refusing to show its movies seems like a strange business decision in an age in which theater attendance was already in decline well before covid-19 hit.

Maybe the artificial limitations on movie releases that stifles competition is finally showing some cracks. Call it free market. Consumers know what they like, and more choices are always welcome.