Maximising potential revenue for a movie requires careful planning of timelines in order to capitalise on newer release strategies, such as PVOD, without cannibalising box office revenue and subsequent licensing deals. Movie Tracker reveals that of all international markets, the US was engaging with premium transactional windowing the most in 2022.
Other territories with high levels of premium transactional releases include the UK and Australia, with each providing a large proportion of this activity in their respective market regions. Meanwhile, in Latin America, this type of release has yet to take up a significant proportion of transactional releases. Different studios have varied approaches to the timings of PVOD, if they engage with it at all, but most (with the notable exception of Disney) have engaged with it in some form so far this year for 2023 movies.
Studios like NBCUniversal have a clear timeline for most releases, with a PVOD release occurring a month after theatrical release and a debut on their own Peacock a month following that. The studio has elected to further monetise some titles, like ‘A Thousand and One’ and ‘Champions’ each ending their time on Peacock early and subsequently being licensed to Amazon Prime.
‘Creed III' represented one of MGM’s biggest releases following the completion of its acquisition by Amazon. While the studio has also since released ‘No Time to Die’, licensing agreements and release strategy still require some level of co-operation with fellow Bond rights owner Eon Productions. 'Creed III’ was released on PVOD just four weeks after its theatrical debut, and six weeks after this it came to Amazon Prime to stream. In this instance, we can see Amazon willing to risk a shorter exclusively theatrical window in order to drive revenue to both its transactional and streaming platforms.
Other studio activity is quite limited, with Warner’s only PVOD release so far in 2023 being ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’, which hit transactional less than three weeks after its theatrical release. Despite hitting the top of the box office in its opening weekend at $8.2m, this figure skirting the bottom of its projections ($8m-$10m) may have inspired Warner to experiment with an early transactional release before its eventual debut on Max in June.
Disney has thus far released no 2023 movies via PVOD in the US, despite its early adoption of Disney+ Premier Access in 2020 and 2021. Since then the studio has favoured releasing movies in a timely fashion on Disney+, although its delay of the 2022 title ‘Avatar: The Way of the Water’ has shown the studio is willing to make exceptions for the right movies.
Studios have yet to fall into a solid status quo for their transactional releasing and Movie Tracker continues to keep up with the experimentation and developing strategies of studios that engage with the premium transactional window.
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