Movie Tracker

Read about the 97th Academy Awards winners, as well as the post-theatrical release timelines of the Best Picture nominees in the US

Amazon has gradually grown its third-party acquisitions over the last year

After taking a long break from acquiring third-party content, Netflix seems to be making a comeback in the first window acquisition space

Get an overview of the 10 most read Movie Tracker stories of the year

Recently, we have observed a change in acquisition trends affecting all licensing windows in the UK market. There has been a decrease of first-window premieres on Pay TV, shifting instead to Studio SVOD services. On subsequent windows, we can also observe evolving studio strategies related to the prevalence of vertical integration.

With studios continuing to experiment with distribution strategies for their films to maximise their value beyond the box office, attention has been drawn to release timings as they balance scheduling so that the box office, transactional, and subsequent licensing windows can all generate revenue without cannibalising one another. In this insight, we reveal the growing phenomenon of co-exclusive Pay-One windows with simultaneous releases.

Studios continue to fine tune the balance between theatrical, transactional and Pay-One windows in order to maximise the potential revenue for all stages of a movie’s lifespan. Transactional releases such as PVOD/PEST can risk cannibalising box office revenue, and speedy Pay-One releases likewise can risk the same for transactional revenue. Movie Tracker reveals how the studios’ timing strategies for release differ from each other in the US.

Growth may yet be returning to the box office after a challenging recovery period following the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent prioritisation by studios on their own services. Despite fostering an expectation in audiences for titles to appear on streaming in no time, the box office for this summer’s blockbusters in the US has already surpassed Summer 2023 and with two weekends to go, may yet be inches away from reaching the huge success of 2023, itself boosted by Barbenheimer.

As Netflix's subscriber base continues to rise, we examine their acquisition and commissioning activity