With the growing popularity of streaming services, movie theatres are losing business. Let me tell you why that’s bad.
Last month, Disney released the live-action adaptation of Mulan exclusively on its streaming service, Disney+. Obviously, this is due in majority to the COVID-19 pandemic making it impossible for the movie to be released in theatres, but Mulan is not the first film to be released exclusively on a streaming service.
At the start of the pandemic, Trolls: World Tour was released exclusively online, and the movie did well enough that the producers mentioned considering releasing future films to Video on Demand as well as theatres. This caused AMC and Cineworld movie theatres to publicly state that they will no longer show select Universal films since Universal’s statement was a sign of bad faith and showed a lack of collaborative spirit with movie theatres.
And even before Trolls and COVID-19, direct-to-streaming releases have been growing in popularity. Netflix, in particular, has been releasing several Netflix Original Films exclusively on their platform for a number of years now (there have also been MANY Netflix Original TV Shows, but that’s the topic of another article). While these films have ranged in quality from excellent to shockingly bad, no one can ignore that Netflix is building a reputation not just as a streaming service, but as a production company too.
The film industry was working hard to try to keep these movies out of the “real film” sphere by prohibiting films that did not have a theatrical release from winning certain awards, like the Oscars. But with the release of Mulan, things get a little more complicated; before, Hollywood was refusing to acknowledge the credibility of films made by streaming services, but Disney is not just a streaming service—it is one of the largest studios in the world, and is the dominating movie-making power in Hollywood and Western popular cinema. If Disney starts releasing films straight to Disney+, there is the chance that other production companies will consider doing the same, and it will be hard for Hollywood elites to separate straight-to-streaming content from “mainstream” cinema if streaming becomes the main outlet for movie releases.
Luckily, Mulan didn’t do very well. It underperformed both nationally and abroad, which buys us some time. “Some time before what?”, you might ask.
Now that you have some context about the growing trend of straight-to-streaming films, let me tell you what’s to come (and why it might not be a good thing).
Universal’s statement after the release of Trolls: World Tour tells us that studios see streaming as a viable release option for their films. They see a financial benefit to releasing films online at the same time as in theatres, which one can argue means that the movie viewing public will get the choice to watch movies from the comfort of their homes without having to spend exorbitant amounts of money at the movie theatre. However, this also means that theatres will now have to split their business with online platforms, which almost guarantees that movie theatres go out of business. If theatres go out of business, that leaves streaming as the only option for the exhibition of films.
Disney, on the other hand, used Mulan as a way to test if movie theatres are necessary at all (which, considering how many blockbuster films are Disney-owned, is a surefire way for the movie theatre business to go under). They are considering releasing all their content exclusively on their streaming service, which means if you want to see anything Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Fox and more, you will have to subscribe to Disney+ and pay extra to rent the film when it is first released.
This becomes an even scarier thought when you think about what this means for streaming in general: in the last five years we have witnessed an exponential rise in the number of streaming services that exist, and with each new release, the number of quality films on each service goes down. Film watchers are then forced to either settle for the films that they can find on whichever services they subscribe to, or they end up spending way more money annually paying for multiple streaming services to get the content they want.
If you add the fact that Mulan’s release tells us production companies won’t just be happy with exclusive streaming rights to their contents, but will also charge fees to watch individual films that they deem “new and hot” (AKA every blockbuster film the public shows any interest in watching), your subscription to any streaming service doesn’t guarantee you access to all their content. It only opens the door for you to then pay more money to actually watch the content you want to see.
Direct-to-streaming doesn’t mean the Netflix model of paying $8 a month and getting access to all their content, good and bad, but rather means the Disney+ system of paying $10 a month for what the studio considers bonus or sub-par content and then having to pay an extra $30 in order to have access to the movies you actually want to see for a generous 48 hours. And Disney+ won’t be the only service to do this. Prime Video already denies members access to some content unless they are willing to pay more, and once other services see that Disney+ is getting away with this, they will begin to do it too. Even worse, the number of streaming services themselves will increase as other production studios learn this is the new exhibition model: without movie theatres to exhibit their films, and with the current Netflix model of not charging for individual films, production companies will be tempted to follow Disney’s lead, create their own streaming services and charge for the “good” content.
A lot of what I’ve talked about here is hypothetical, and there’s no guarantee that this is what will happen, but based on what we’ve seen in the past few years, and even more so in the last few months, it is pretty apparent that this is the direction production companies, or at least Disney, would like to see the film industry move, and, honestly, I won’t be able to afford it if it does. Will you?