Source:
@Jonathanmb32 on X
https://x.com/jonathanmb32/status/1808580989276598400
Example: Puss in Boots 2 was released on PVOD on January 6, 2023 ($20 rental), and despite that it continued to have amazing legs and went on earn an additional $111 million in America alone (or 60% of its final total in America alone).
Again, as a personal preference I’d rather VOD releases occur once a movie is making like, under $1M a week. But early VOD releases only really matters to torrenters or people willing to pay $20 for a digital rental – or people that were never gonna buy a movie ticket anyhow.
by AGOTFAN
3 Comments
This is only true if you ignore how far ticket sales are down compared to two decades ago. Just the number of tickets sold, not the gross.
Here’s the bottomline: If people wanna go see your movie in the theatre, they will go to the theatre.
* Tenet made $360M in September 2020 aka literally the middle of a global pandemic.
* Godzilla vs Kong made $470M in March 2021 with day & date HBO Max release.
* Dune made $407M in Oct 2021 with day & date HBO Max release.
* NWH made 1.9 Billion without China in Dec 2021-Jan 2022.
* Jurassic World Dominion and Top Gun Maverick made a billion in first half of 2022.
95% of the movies which bombed in 2021,2022 & 2023 would still have bombed if the pandemic never happened. At best they would have made $50M-$75M more.
Do people really think Lightyear or Strange World would have made $800M if the pandemic never happened?
I want to flag a reply in that thread (from the head of a decently large us theater chain) – https://x.com/greglovesmovies/status/1808715842474971191
> Recently I saw a a survey that said in 2020 15% of people expected films to be available in home at two weeks now that number is 24%. 29% said a couple of months now it is 35%. We know in 2020 films weren’t available in 2 weeks, but it is the perception that matters.
I really do think this clearly shows how the “theatrical window premium” theaters extract for a number of reasons (which is also why they fought hard to maintain it in the 2010s in the face of multiple pre-pandemic efforts to crack it) is being harmed. SVOD is far and away the biggest impact no this but PVOD also presumably matters because this survey question is clearly conceptually going to impact the box office gross in earlier weeks.
Consumer expectations will not perfectly map onto reality (people don’t actively track this stuff) but I really do think they’re meaningful in figuring out the composition of “people that were never gonna buy a movie ticket anyhow.” I don’t think people have an idea of that gap between hearing a film is available on digital and when its going to SVOD streaming.