The Projector | Straight-to-streaming: will the coronavirus pandemic change the film industry for good?
- As the pandemic keeps cinemas closed and films go online, what does it mean for art-house cinema and the theatres that show it?
- Universal’s decision to bypass cinemas and release Trolls World Tour online has outraged US theatre owners
A spectre is haunting cinemas around the world. Looming over theatre owners is not only the coronavirus pandemic but something unleashed with it – that wild and uncontrollable beast called streaming. Its popularity has surged as cinephiles and casual cinema-goers alike, subject to state-sanctioned lockdowns, find themselves resorting to watching films at home.
The debate about the merits and pitfalls of making content available online has been raging for years among film industry executives and filmmakers with the rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and – perhaps a harbinger of how even the major studios are acknowledging the turning tide – Disney’s own video-on-demand (VOD) service, Disney+. But the global shutdown of cinemas is accelerating this seemingly inevitable leap into the virtual unknown.
Universal’s decision to make Trolls World Tour available for streaming on Friday marked the first time a tent-pole release will skip cinemas (which are likely to remain closed) and go straight to online. In doing so, the studio has shattered the long-running industry model in which films – or, at least, money-spinning blockbusters – are shown only in cinemas for a “window” of a few months to a year before becoming available on VOD services.
Obviously, American cinema owners are not pleased. In an interview with trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter, the head of the National Association of Theatre Owners, John Fithian, raged against Universal’s decision to allow Trolls World Tour to land on digital first. He went as far as accusing the studio of “lying to consumers” by promoting the film as being released simultaneously on VOD and in cinemas, since they would be closed on Friday.
Watching from afar, one can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu: there was a similar squabble in China in late January, when the Chinese production outfit Huanxi Media cancelled plans for the cinema release of its Lunar New Year blockbuster comedy, Lost in Russia, in the face of the coronavirus outbreak.
Junking its agreements with cinemas – which would eventually be closed by a government decree, that still remains in place in parts of the country – Huanxi elected to allow free streaming of the film on its own platform as well as the immensely popular online portal TikTok. The latter is owned by ByteDance, with whom Huanxi has signed a deal to develop content and – surprise! – an online movie channel.
