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 Easy E wrote:
I wonder why movie studios are trying to kill movie theatres? Do they cut into the bottom line too much?

It's everyone for themselves. Not enough life boats and this ain't the gentile Titanic, chummer!

In all seriousness, Hollywood has always been cutthroat and greedy but they've just had to pretend otherwise to a degree. The streaming wars exacerbated the situation but the pandemic has just brought it to a boil.

Corona has accelerated a pattern that was slowly establishing itself. Hollywood wasn't going to let Amazon and all those other upstarts win the streaming wars.

With cinemas forced closed it pushed Hollywood to make their streaming system come to the market faster and it will have a big lasting impact on the cinema experience and the relationship between film groups and cinemas.

Just like the streaming VS Blockbuster wars this will likely be very brutal.


Cinemas will likely adapt and survive in big areas by offering an experience you can't get a home; a social event and also by likely shifting form only showing the newest and latest to showing classics, theme weeks/months etc... Eg they'll do a sci-fi week and show a big new blockbuster alongside older films and such.

The Cinema doesn't actually need to show the latest, they just need to build enough of a draw to get bums on seats.



But it will change things and a good few will likely close down.

I've read some things about this online.
Some of it reads a little conspiracy theory, but also like, it's big business.... So, anything they do reads like a conspiracy theory.

Basically, the end game is "Warner Brothers Cinemas", as a result of the removal of the antitrust laws known as the "Paramount Consent Decrees" in August.

It's also why they basically don't care a jot about films like WW84 or Dune being available (or not) overseas...

Because that's not simply not a factor in the plan.

Kill the US cinema chains, found your own brand cinema as a replacement that only shows your movies, keep 100% of the profits.

Studios are sitting there with their ***** in their hands looking at a pile of content worth billions that they can't bring to market. They've tried through theaters but no one's going. We might not reach a decent level of herd immunity until next fall, and EVEN THEN it's not clear that people will return to theaters.

So they're just supposed to take the hit...indefinitely? D***s in hands? Forget about shareholders...what about stakeholders? There are jobs at stake at the studios also.

If WB/AT&T wanted to kill theaters, then they would have cut them out completely. This plan with HBO Max may start that ball rolling anyway, but at least they're hedging their bets. As Overread said, the future is pretty clear. They could have been a lot more cutthroat all through this pandemic.

I think once herd immunity/vaccinations are mainstream and the virus no longer requires social distancing then we can expect things to reboot quite quickly.

If anything there might even be a massive boom for things like cinemas - social things people have been denied. It's one thing to not want to go when its there; its another to be told you can't go and its forced closed.



Granted what we might see is cinema groups closing doors and new firms using investment/loans to re-open once things start picking up. I expect the same for many food outlets in key areas.


Recovery should be swift provided that the vaccine rolls out well; provided that track and trace remains in operation and the international scene sorts itself out.

As I understand it, they fully DID intend to cut theatres out completely, particularly with Wonder Woman, it was only with Patty Jenkins insistence that WW84 is going to theatres at all.

So, a more stepped approach, like you say, hedging their bets, seems to be their move.

Well, if they go straight to streaming on their platforms only, then there is less of a cut to theatres.

It is really no different than Amazon also delivering their own packages. Now the Movie makers will also deliver their products to the consumers.