Studios continue to try and find the perfect balance to their movie release strategy. Premium transactional (PVOD/PEST) stepped to the foreground during the pandemic when theatre revenue was impossible, but continues to be deployed by many studios with select titles. How and when to surface this premium window is important so it doesn’t risk cannibalising potential box office revenue. The same is true with the first licensing window, as too short a window can put the revenue of both the box office and transactional periods at risk. This is even trickier for studios with their own SVOD services, whose USP may include a short wait for subscribers to watch the studio’s latest blockbusters in the comfort of their own home at no extra cost. Taking just two studios as an example, 3Vision’s Movie Tracker can reveal quickly how stark the different tactics at play by the studios are.
Disney’s all-in approach to vertical integration means that on average their movie’s first window (now typically Disney+ outside the US) is premiering less than two months after said movie’s first release. So short was the wait to the first window on average in 2022 that Disney movies would become available to subscribers during the average PVOD/PEST period, before a regular transactional opportunity opened up. This general trend suggests a priority put on Disney+ as the speedy, affordable home for the latest movies, but it is clearly one Disney is willing to make exceptions when it comes to the right title. Avatar: The Way of the Water took nearly six months to arrive on Disney+ (and Max in the US), during which time it has successfully become the third biggest grossing film of all time, behind two other Disney titles, Avengers: Endgame and the original Avatar.
Lionsgate meanwhile is granting its movies a much shorter exclusive period to theatres before it opens them up for transactional in PVOD/PEST less than a month after release, while many of these movies are likely still running in theatres. The switch to a more regular transactional release happens much earlier than Disney (two months after theatres on average as opposed to three), but the first licensing window is much later, occurring between month five and six on average. Despite Lionsgate having their own SVOD, Lionsgate+, the studio engages in far less vertical integration with its movies than the likes of Disney so is less incentivised to allow an early release that cuts into the potential revenue of a movie’s transactional window.
This snapshot alone shows the industry is far from a new status quo when it comes to the timings of movie windowing around the world. Studios will continue to experiment with release patterns, while being open to breaking them entirely for specific titles where they feel the moment is right. In all those instances Movie Tracker will be monitoring all movie releases, from theatrical to transactional to beyond the first licensing window.
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