Well, I guess I've put this post off long enough. I wanted to wait a bit after the big announcement of Warner Bros. and HBO Max's bombshell streaming plans to see some of the reaction from various industry players. Everybody seems to have their own take on Warners' decision to premiere their entire 2021 theatrical film lineup simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters. There has been plenty of healthy debate as to whether or not this is a good decision for them in the long run, but I'm pretty well convinced that there's no putting the genie back in the bottle, and simultaneous VOD/streaming and theatrical releases are going to become much more common, if not the new normal for certain content.
As the pandemic rages on, the theatrical exhibition business is not expected to recover until spring at the earliest, and after that the studios are going to be faced with a logjam of blockbusters that have been delayed from 2020. Warners claims to have a fairly weak lineup for 2021. I may be highly anticipating "Dune" and "Godzilla v. Kong," but not everyone is. I think it's a perfectly sound idea to sacrifice a year's worth of iffy box office profits to shore up the HBO Max streaming service, which had such a disappointing release a few months ago. Now, how they executed this plan is what got them into trouble. Warners screwed up by not getting its creative partners like Legendary, and the major talent involved, like "Dune" director Denis Villeneuve, onboard. I expect that Warners will work out deals to get everyone compensated eventually, but it's going to be very messy for them, which could have been avoided - or at least significantly ameliorated. Now they have a very ugly PR fight on their hands from multiple fronts, and many of their talent relationships are in danger. The exhibitors are unhappy, of course, but they have no leverage right now, and can only wait and see how this is going to play out.
It's no surprise that this is riling up long-simmering worries over the effect of streaming on the basic workings of the movie business. Nobody has really figured out how to measure the success of a film on a streaming service yet, as opposed to the concrete numbers from the box office. Nielsens only debuted its charts for streaming content back in September. The studios have already been dinged for self-dealing and skirting around paying royalties for streaming television content. Now, those complicated, murky movie contracts are being dragged into this mess, and "Hollywood accounting" is about to come under much more scrutiny. When streaming was only a secondary or ancillary source of revenue, this was a fight that everyone could afford to see play out slowly. But now, streaming is quickly becoming central to the plans of AT&T and Disney, while the theaters are on indefinite pause, so we're likely to see the whole business of filmmaking fundamentally change in a hurry.
How things are going to shake out is unknown. Are the economics of a streaming-centric movie business going to allow for $200 million blockbusters anymore? Would it really be such a bad thing if it didn't? After being stuck home for months with no big action movies, I honestly haven't missed them as much as I thought I would. Are A list actors and directors getting big paydays based on box office performance a thing of the past? Will certain COVID era measures, like more generous theater/studio revenue splits, and exceptions to awards eligibility requirements, end up sticking around for the long term? Will we see box office revenue skewed even more towards international markets? Are "new media" compensation deals finally going to be overhauled? How many of the big studios are still going to be in the movie business after all is said and done?
As the streamers keep battling for market share, trying to catch up to Netflix and Disney+, it's the consumers who are going to be the big winners for a while. We're going to have more access to more content than ever before. I'm thrilled that I'll be able to watch so many new films from home, as I don't plan to visit a theater again until COVID woes are well behind us. Eventually, I'm sure prices for these services will go up, the flood of shiny content will slow down, and we will see some of these new ventures fail - Quibi is already kaput. And Disney announced that they will be testing out bundles of streaming services, putting us right back on the road to the pay cable model again.
Of course, this could all be too premature. The HBO Max experiment could crash and burn, as theaters open back up and consumers decide they already have enough streaming services. The piracy problem might prove insurmountable, with international rollouts still being slow. As fast as change is happening now, we could just as easily see it stymied by the end of the pandemic and a lot of bitter lawsuits.
Whatever happens, I've been convinced to sign up for HBO Max next year. So there's that.
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