What Will the Movie Biz Look Like In 2022?
Warner Bros. announced that their releases will again have exclusive theatrical windows starting in 2022, however the previous standard of 90 days will be cut in half to 45 days. This is based on a deal made with Regal Cinemas, and presumably the same deal will be made with AMC.
Paramount similarly announced that their upcoming films will have 45 day theatrical runs before appearing on Paramount+, whereas Universal’s films will have theatrical windows as short as 17 days (though any movie making more than $50 million in its opening weekend will stay in theaters for at least 31 days).
The pandemic has put the entire movie industry into a state of flux and it’s now clear that 2022 will not look like 2019 no matter how many people are vaccinated. Disney has proven that consumers are willing to pay for more streaming services other than Netflix, and unlike theater tickets subscriber revenue doesn’t have to be shared.
Whereas movies used to go from the theater to digital purchase to digital rental to either a premium channel (e.g. HBO and Showtime) or Netflix; starting in 2022 they will go from the theater directly to the studio’s own streaming service. Movies will still be available for digital purchase and appear on linear TV channels, but there won’t be any more exclusives.
The only major studio wildcard is Sony, which doesn’t have its own streamer, though it may exploit that fact by making deals with the tech company who are in this game(Netflix, Amazon and Apple), and the smaller studios (e.g. Lionsgate, MGM) can do the same, either by making exclusive deals or on a film-by-film basis.
Consumers will quickly catch on and as a result box office returns will go down when they learn that they can enjoy any given film at home in no more than a month and a half. Fortunately for the studios, streaming service subscription revenue will skyrocket as consumers sign up to watch Mission: Impossible 7 and then don’t cancel when they start binging the Real World or iCarly reunion shows.
The new landscape will likely be bad for theaters, good for studios and (hopefully) great for consumer choice.
