Remember the summer movie season? It’s been a while since we have had one now and it may well not happen in 2021 either. At least not the traditional rollout of epic action movies that used to define the summer. At the moment we can look at COVID-19 as the culprit. And in many cases it is. Some movie theaters have totally shut down, companies have gone bankrupt, and so on. But the transition from movie theaters being the hotbed for at least on-screen drama and excitement has been tilting towards home and TV for a long time. It started with HBO which actually stands for Home Box Office. It brought the big movies home meaning you could skip the movie theater and wait for it to play at home. Then it brought the big fight to your living room meaning you didn’t have to watch it at the bar. Later HBO began to produce TV shows that you would never be able to find on any network, even a cable one. Other premium cable networks followed HBO’s lead until finally, every major premium cable network had its own signature programming. And people started realizing these shows were more like movies. No, they don’t have quite the budget you find in the summer blockbuster but compare Game Of Thrones to say, Conan The Barbarian. Not a lot of difference there. In fact, the effects in GOT are better.
In the past 10 years, streaming companies and traditional media companies have all started making more and more top-notch content specifically to play on streaming platforms. In fact, traditional premium cable channels really are streaming companies too. Showtime, HBO, EPIX, STARZ all have their own standalone streaming options and they are really beginning to flex. Disney was the first to decide that TV could be the substitute for movies. After its Disney+ service launched people wondered, what would draw people i and keep them. As soon as we all had to stay home Disney rolled out Frozen 2 far earlier than expected, announced plans to feature the Live-Action Mulan, dropped Hamilton in our laps. The latter were supposed to be theatrical releases. And yet there they were on our TVs. HBO not to be outdone announced that the entire Warner Brothers 2021 movie slate would be available via its streaming service HBO Max. Even before COVID HBO Max was set to feature an all-new version of the Justice League, directly to streaming.
TV Provides the space to tell more stories
Streaming is not killing the movie theater. It actually has a chance to make the storytelling better. Disney owns Star Wars. It could release as many Star Wars movies as it wants. But it had diminishing returns on that. Costs ad up and expectations sometimes weigh performance figures down and who knows where internet chatter will take things. There is also the complication of having to space out movies so that they don’t cannibalize others like Marvel or Pixar films the studio can only tell so many stories on the big screen. But on the small screen, it is a lot easier. If a series is on-demand and you are making money whether someone tunes in at any given time or not it is much easier to build out a story the way it did with The Mandalorian. The Obiwan Kenobe series on the way will continue an arc that started on screen 40 years ago. Sure it could be its own movie but with the technology and budgets TV shows have now it is not necessary. I think if Disney had it to do all over again they would have made Solo into a TV show instead of a movie and built it up as a star vehicle for Woody Harrelson. People do not look at checking out TV shows as a big risk of time and money because they can say this is boring and “click”
When Disney decided to start building its brands through TV shows it made watching a show on Friday night a real option to going out to the movies. And while a lot of us will run back to restaurants when we can there will be nights when it is easier to stay home, order in, and check out that new Marvel show with Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie. TV shows give creators more time to develop little things about characters than they don’t have time to do in a movie. Who is john McLain’s dad? Why did he become a cop. No telling, because to tell the story would take up too much of a movie. But by building TV shows around characters from movies it allows an audience to get to know characters and even better identify with them so that when the next big-screen adventure comes along they can skip to the more eventful parts. Falcon and Winter Soldier will tell a story that picks up right where Avengers End Game left off. So will Thor 3. But now people will not have to say well I just dropped $100.00 taking the family out to Thor 3 I can’t do it again for this Captain America thing. They won’t have to. Because they can pay less than 10 dollars and watch it during dinner. Either way the next time Marvel features the characters from that show on-screen fans will want to see how they interact with the rest of the Marvel world in light of the new information.
So no I don’t think streaming is killing the movie theaters. Pricing might be along with other factors that I see from people’s comments. But Streaming is a gift to filmmakers and creators to tell big and small stories. Just ask Apple if it would like another Greyhound.
