Amazon Studios spent $250 million to make “Red One,” a comedic holiday action film starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. Then the company pushed the film into more than 4,000 theaters, spending tens of millions more to market it.
So when the movie racked up only about $80 million in domestic box office receipts in recent weeks — half of which goes to the theater operators — it looked like a huge investment gone horribly bad.
Not so fast, Amazon says. “We did this for a very specific reason,” Courtenay Valenti, the company’s head of film, said.
And that reason: to make it a streaming hit...
...the thinking went, streaming would give movie studios a chance to spend far less on the expensive marketing required for a theatrical release. The algorithm would do all the work instead.
But the industry has now largely come to a very different conclusion: The key to making a movie a streaming success and attracting new subscribers is to first release it in theaters. It turns out that all the things that make theatrical movies successful — expansive marketing and public relations campaigns, and valuable word of mouth — continue to help movies perform once they land in the home.
https:// dnyuz .com/2024/12/17/heres-a-hollywood-twist-streaming-success-runs-through-theaters/
So when the movie racked up only about $80 million in domestic box office receipts in recent weeks — half of which goes to the theater operators — it looked like a huge investment gone horribly bad.
Not so fast, Amazon says. “We did this for a very specific reason,” Courtenay Valenti, the company’s head of film, said.
And that reason: to make it a streaming hit...
...the thinking went, streaming would give movie studios a chance to spend far less on the expensive marketing required for a theatrical release. The algorithm would do all the work instead.
But the industry has now largely come to a very different conclusion: The key to making a movie a streaming success and attracting new subscribers is to first release it in theaters. It turns out that all the things that make theatrical movies successful — expansive marketing and public relations campaigns, and valuable word of mouth — continue to help movies perform once they land in the home.
https:// dnyuz .com/2024/12/17/heres-a-hollywood-twist-streaming-success-runs-through-theaters/
@judgedread That really sounds like the media equivalent of “we’ll make it up in bulk” (now instead of losing money in one place, they’re losing it in two).
@EvilSandmich They're doing A-B testing, looking at various possible causal factors in the collapse of cinematic boxoffice revenues and seeing if the ones under their control can be flipped back.
Removing that gigantic marketing budget definitely didn't help. The problem is that streaming, diversity, coronahoax and home theater also took their toll and, aside from ramping down the social distancing scare tactics, they can't be undone.
Removing that gigantic marketing budget definitely didn't help. The problem is that streaming, diversity, coronahoax and home theater also took their toll and, aside from ramping down the social distancing scare tactics, they can't be undone.
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@judgedread @EvilSandmich when they banned people from going to movie theaters, a lot of people got used to not watching movies at movie theaters. And it sure has not helped that the movies are worse, making the idea of the experience less appealing.
