Shortly after A Quiet Place: Day One’s record-breaking opening weekend, there was online outrage after it was reported that the horror movie would be available to watch at home within a month of its cinema release.
This was only an alleged release date and nothing has been confirmed by Paramount even now. It sparked a debate, however, about how the report would impact Day One’s chances at the box office, and a wider one about how movies just aren’t given the time to build their audiences at the cinema.
Going to the cinema is expensive and takes effort, so quick home releases will harm a movie’s box office take but there’s also an audience that, post-Covid, won’t go to the cinema and I can see the temptation to milk that source if income too.
I would be among them and I know a few others as well. We’ll rent or buy a movie at home, but we’re not going to theaters anymore.
One problem, though, is that when movies are released for rent online at the same time that they are released in theaters, the charge might be something like $30. I could just wait a few months and buy it for cheaper.
I’m not quite in that camp, but I’m damn close. There just aren’t a lot of movies coming out anymore that I am interested in enough to not want to wait, and where I feel that seeing it in the theater would add to the experience.
I’m privileged enough to have a damn good and big OLED screen at home, and the convenience of having complete control over my viewing experience can’t be ignored.
For me, going to the theater is for when I get something significant from the experience that I can’t get at home. That can be IMAX, 3D (on occasion), if the scale of the action is more immersive on a big screen, if it’s a film where the audio mixing shines with a theater’s atmos setup, or if it’s the kind of thinking film that gets more out of full focus and immersion (but I can still get this last one at home after the family is in bed).
The big problem is that outside of movies from franchises and directors I already know, I don’t usually know if it will hit any of those marks before I see it for the first time, and at that point it’s out of the theater. I use an ad blocker everywhere I can, and even when I do catch trailers, I’ve been burned before by misleading marketing.
I hope that studios start looking more at the long tail than opening week statistics, and that more movies start coming back to theaters after their initial run. I love the various “#th anniversary screenings happening lately”. I personally think that the opening week box office sales being the end all be all is an entirely outdated business practice that hasn’t adapted to modern times, lives, and changes in the media consumption landscape over the last 20 years.
Yeah, I don’t go to the movies anymore and I typically wait until the movies are available to rent for cheap or are included in a streaming service.