AMC has announced that the company is closing its theater chain across the U.S. due to coronavirus concerns, creating a new market. Last week Disney announced that it is pushing the Disney+ release of Frozen II; the movie is now available to stream in Disney+. With the Coronavirus affecting gatherings of over 50, and as reported before affecting Box office results. Other studies started tackling the in-home streaming market by making a few of this year’s biggest hitters available for streaming earlier than expected.
Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), and The Gentleman have both moved their home video release dates to next Tuesday. This is a surprising move because Bird of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) theatrical run is still going with the movie raking up $2.1 million last weekend. Traditionally, a movie would spend around three months in theaters, before another few months would pass, and lining it up with another studio release the movie would start going on DVD to hype up the old movie, and the new release. Streaming changed the formula, as a movie that did not succeed in theaters would quickly be pushed to streaming in the hopes that it makes its money back.
Warner Bros.’s decision to move all the home release dates comes as a response to Universal’s decision to make The Hunt, The Invisible Man, and Emma available on streaming this coming weekend. However, the biggest game-changer comes from Universal’s announcement to release Troll 2: World Tour online while the movie hits theaters at the same time.
As the coronavirus spreads and communities are closing, this is a safe way to keep the audience safe while bringing in revenue for newer releases. This move could also solve the constant delays of movies such as Mulan, F9, and James Bond: No Time to Die, “NBCUniversal will continue to evaluate the environment as conditions evolve and will determine the best distribution strategy in each market when the current unique situation changes,” Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal, said in a statement Monday.
While the reasoning behind these moves might be tragic because of the Coronavirus, this is a massive game-changer. For the first time, audiences now have complete control of how they want to view the latest movies. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the summer movie box office and movies going forward.
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