Movies Should Take Longer To Come To Streaming

June 2, 20246 Mins Read

Despite solid expectations, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga underperformed at the US box office last weekend, becoming the lowest-grossing Memorial Day box office topper since Casper in 1995. That would be bad news on its own, but after The Fall Guy, Abigail, and IF all failed to light the world on fire, there has been some catastrophizing among film fans. Are the movies, as we know them, over? Are all the AMCs going to close down as everything moves to streaming? Are the wheels falling off this century-long experiment in theatrical exhibition? The answer is: no, but…

2023 Was Only Six Months Ago

No, because believing that theatrical exhibition is over and done requires the memory of a goldfish. Even if you accept that Barbenheimer was a unique and unreplicable cultural phenomenon, that still leaves 48 movies that grossed $100 million worldwide in 2023. And there’s a ton of range in that list. You’ve got the expected IP-driven successes, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. But unexpected movies also delivered surprise hits. Anyone But You brought the theatrically released, mid-budget romcom back in a big way, grossing $219 million globally. Pixar’s original animated movie, Elemental, which was pronounced dead on arrival after a weak opening weekend, went on to make nearly $500 million. Poor Things, a weird arthouse fantasy dramedy with a lot of explicit sex, made $117.5 million. The Boy and the Heron was the highest grossing Ghibli movie ever in the States, as was Godzilla: Minus One for a Japanese Godzilla film.

Undeniably, 2024 has been slow, with multiple weekends passing without wide theatrical releases, but that’s a result of a) historic dual strikes shutting down studio filmmaking for several months in the middle of last year, and b) many studios anticipated this slowdown, cut their losses for 2024 and banked their films for 2025. Things happen for a reason; audiences didn’t just lose interest in going to the movies in the few months since Wonka earned $632 million worldwide. There just aren’t as many movies on offer, which has led to some regular viewers getting out of the habit, and some occasional viewers having less reason to leave the house.

But there are minor tweaks that Hollywood could make that would pay off with massive dividends. Sean Fennessy of The Big Picture podcast suggested that movie theaters need to become less transactional and more communal. Right now, people go because they want to see a movie and then, when the movie is over, they leave. But the arthouse theater near me, The Music Box in Chicago, gives people more ways to make a night of it, and other independent movie houses do the same. If you arrive at The Music Box early, there’s an adjoining lounge area with a bar where you can hang out, drink, and talk with your friends. That lounge also houses a weekly movie trivia afternoon each Sunday.

There’s even a garden area where you can watch a tape from the theater’s VHS collection.

You don’t need to pay for any of those things — except, of course, the drinks — which makes The Music Box feel like a piece of the Chicago community, and gives people who might not be that interested in going to the movies another reason to visit the venue and potentially hear about cool upcoming events. Theater chains could bring in more customers if they took a page from the indie book, becoming a place that people want to visit. That change, far more than nicer seats and bigger screens, would help ensure the future of theatrical exhibition.

But at the studio level, what Hollywood needs to do is stop cheapening the theatrical experience and cutting the legs off of a film’s box office run before it can start. By making movies available at home a few short weeks after they open, they’re doing just that. The Fall Guy, as a recent example, underperformed in its opening weekend and then, a mere 17 days later, was available to rent at home. Reports have shown that this doesn’t necessarily eat into box office gross, and does provide an alternate revenue stream for the studios, which is good. But when we’re in the midst of a slower moviegoing year, people get out of the habit of heading to their local cinema, and when everything comes to VOD or streaming after just a few weeks of screening, it takes a big event to jolt them back to the theater.

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer

Training the audience to expect a movie to arrive at home instantaneously has only had negative effects. It made sense in the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic, when moviegoers were understandably worried about leaving their houses, but any sense of urgency or excitement dissipates if you know that a movie will be available at home right away. It also prevents movies from slowly working their way to success. I don’t know that The Fall Guy was ever going to be a huge hit, but making it available after less than three weeks kills its chances of chugging away.

As it is now, studios understand this but only apply the logic to immediate hits. Oppenheimer took five months to come to home video, while Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water held off for three. The movies were buzzy and, if you wanted to participate in the buzz, you needed to head to the cinema.

Applying this practice more broadly would be the best thing for the health of the industry. Big, epic, expensive movies like Dune: Part Two aren’t going to get made at the same scale if their destiny is to become content that sits on Max next to Zillow Gone Wild. Dune eventually lands on there, sure, but in a world without theaters, there’s no reason to continue financing that kind of big spectacle purely as a value add for a streamer. There are cheaper ways to get subscribers. And there are small ways to encourage people to see the movie theater not as a transactional night out, but as somewhere they enjoy spending time, where they don’t always need to spend money, and as a part of their community.