In the most seismic shift by a Hollywood studio yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, Warner Bros Pictures on Thursday announced that all of its film slate for next year — including a new Matrix movie, Godzilla vs Kong and the Lin-Manuel Miranda adaptation In the Heights — are to be streamed on HBO Max at the same time they play in theaters.
Among the myriad release plan changes wrought by the pandemic, no studio has so fully embraced streaming as a lifeline.
However, after disappointing domestic ticket sales for Tenet, and with the majority of US theaters closed, the AT&T-owned Warner Bros will turn to a hybrid distribution model. Films will debut simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max in the US. After one month, they will stop streaming and continue to play only in theaters.
Photo: AP
The move follows Warner Bros’ decision to put Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max this month, along with a concurrent theatrical run. If that pivot sent shockwaves through the industry, Thursday’s announcement rattled Hollywood to the core.
“Given the unprecedented time that we’re in, we needed a creative solution to address our fans, our filmmakers and our exhibitors,” WarnerMedia Studios chief executive Ann Sarnoff said in an interview. “Big and bold is a necessity right now.”
Sarnoff called it a “temporary solution” and a “one-year plan.”
The studio said other options — releasing big-budget films solely in reduced capacity theaters or delaying films another year — were not appealing.
Warner Bros’ move amounts to an acknowledgement that any full rebound for theaters is still a year or more away.
“It’s really hard to know, given the news of the vaccine and the rate of inoculation — that’s very hopeful news, but we’ve got to get people back in theaters at full capacity at some point. If you read the medical experts that’s going to take a while to work its way through the system,” Sarnoff said. “If we saw an end in sight to the pandemic, we might have a different strategy, but we don’t see that at this moment.”
HBO Max is only available in the US. Internationally, the studio’s 17 films planned for release next year are to roll out in theaters.
Warner Bros’ decision resounds especially because the 87-year-old studio of The Wizard of Oz has long been a market-leader in Hollywood — and one known as especially supportive of theaters. The studio has generally ranked among the top two studios in market share over the past decade — most recently dwarfed only by Walt Disney.
Warner’s films typically account for US$1.5 billion to US2 billion of annual ticket sales in North America — a lot of money to compensate for in HBO Max subscribers.
Warner Bros confirmed the films would be available to subscribers with no further charge.
“I can’t comment on the economics of how it will all work — I’d need a crystal ball for that,” Sarnoff said. “But I’m very optimistic that this is a win-win-win for our fans, our filmmakers and our exhibitors. We’re getting the movies out. We’re allowing them be seen on the big-screen which is what they were made for, but giving an alternative. The hybrid approach also allows us to market them in a fuller way than we would have had we just looked at the less-than-full capacities in theatrical right now.”
Warner Bros’ slate for next year includes many of the expected top movies of the year, including Dune, The Suicide Squad, Tom & Jerry, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, King Richard and Judas and the Black Messiah.
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