The cyberattacks on Sony may be remembered for more than hackers rummaging through systems at one of the world’s top studios.
Distribution of “The Interview” in the aftermath of the cyberattack also marks a milestone in the movement of movies to streaming services and away from theaters. Sony’s announcement that it would stream the film in the US via three online services means that many people will have watched the comedy on their computers. Though Sony also released the film to about 300 theaters, that’s roughly 2,700 fewer screens than planned to show it originally.
The unfolding of events presents theater owners with a tricky test that may accelerate the arrival of a time when studios release movies to streaming services and theaters simultaneously.
“We’re watching ‘The Interview’ online tonight at 10:00 p.m.,” a boy of about 14 told two friends Wednesday at a Starbucks in Manhattan. While results of the box office remain to be seen, theater owners, who have warned for years of the disruption headed their way, seem likely to face more such sentiment.
https://twitter.com/TheInterview/status/547817336485711872
The latest drama has unfolded in ways that few theater owners or anyone for that matter anticipated. Theaters owners, faced with threats to their audiences if they screened the film as they anticipated originally, decided to delay the debut.
That produced a backlash all the way to the White House, where President Obama slammed Sony for pulling the picture. Sony said that the theater chains cancelled the booking. The chains charged they had been sold out by Sony.
Still, the dustup pales compared with the threat theater owners face from the move of entertainment to many screens from the silver screen. Though seeing a movie in a theater has its delights, the prospect of schlepping to a theater is giving way to the convenience of watching a film from on-demand services such as iTunes, Netflix and others.
The drama over distribution of “The Interview” may foretell a future that theater owners have been fearing. As Jason Lynch explains in Quartz:
“For years, premium video on-demand has been a white whale for studios, which have been unable to convince theater chain owners to grant any leeway in their traditional 90-day exclusive window after a film’s theatrical release. Those exhibitors have good reason to be worried: This year’s North American movie ticket sales fell 4%, to $10.5 billion, and one of the most reliable moviegoing demographics, kids and young adults ages 12 to 24, went to the movies 15% less often.”
At issue is a shrinking of the period between the release of a film to theaters and its availability via streaming, DVD and other platforms. As of September 25, the window averaged three months and 27 days, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade group. That’s down from roughly five months and 22 days in 1997.
The window matters to the profitability of moviemakers and theater owners, who all say they will see their profits shrink if the window continues to shorten.
Not surprisingly, the two camps find themselves on the same side of the issue. According to a letter signed in 2011 by 31 filmmakers, including Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, among others:
“Major studios are struggling to replace the revenue lost by the declining value of DVD transactions. Low-cost rentals and subscriptions are undermining higher priced DVD sales and rentals. But the problem of declining revenue in home video will not be solved by importing into the theatrical window a distribution model that cannibalizes theatrical ticket sales.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars happen to be at stake, according to the group, which calls on the studio not to alter the “sequential distribution window” that forces moviegoers to see films in theaters first.
The theater chains adopt a similar stance. “We believe that a material contraction of the current theatrical release window could significantly dilute the consumer appeal of the in-theatre motion picture offering, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations,” Regal Entertainment Group, the largest exhibitor of films in the U.S. and Canada, wrote in its most recent annual report.
Of course, the straight-to-streaming of “The Interview” may foreshadow a reckoning for theater owners that industries from music to media continue to confront. Last spring, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation, predicted a three-week window within a decade:
“A movie will come out and you will have 17 days, that’s exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies. On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size. A movie screen will be $15. A 75” TV will be $4.00. A smartphone will be $1.99. That enterprise that will exist throughout the world, when that happens, and it will happen, it will reinvent the enterprise of movies.”
The attack on Sony has unearthed information about the studio that may be unflattering to its executives. But whatever slew of embarrassments and security headaches for Sony, the attack reminds us that for exhibitors, the worst may be yet to come.