Slumberland. That’s what the new theatrical release pace looks like as we head into the prime summer release months.
This past week the projected number of new releases hitting theatres nationwide by New Year’s Eve dropped to 511 from 512 … two weeks ago it was 510. Stuck in a holding pattern.
The top box projections remained fixed at 64 (the combined count of films grossing $25 million plus; $100 million plus) … the industry pre-pandemic average was 94.
The new entry in the hit film category this past week was director Louis Leterrier’s Fast X from Universal Pictures. It popped an opening week total of $67 million and will easily zoom past the $100 million mark over the Memorial Day weekend.
To the best of our knowledge there were no big-budget films bypassing theatrical playdates to be streamed and immediately stolen by those every so helpful “helpers” … pirates, bootleggers, thieves, etc. are very “yesterday” terms for piracy, so we like “helpers” and “void-fillers” as the more appropriate description of such activities.
Nothing on the order of director Niki Caro’s The Mother or director Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s Crater this week.
Shifting over to “helper” activity, in just looking at the theatrical catalog release numbers, you would have to come to the conclusion that films released theatrically in the 1930s through 1980s have all lost their copyright protections. Or, those that own such copyrights don’t have the desire or energy to enforce them.
There have been 21 street-date Tuesdays so far in 2023. During those 21 release periods, we have recorded 4,669 sound-era theatrical catalog releases. These are films that played theatrically from the 1930s through 1996 — 1997 was the launch year of DVD and that marks the cut-off point for theatrical catalog and the beginning of new theatrical releases.
Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary, but it does provide theatrical to home entertainment window data that has proven to be useful.
In any case, what does a total of 4,669 DVD theatrical catalog product offerings mean for the first 21 weeks of the year?
First, you have to put it into context. What happened during the same 21-week periods during the past five years (as an example of context)? Last year at this point the SKU-count was 2,508 … two years ago 812 (765 in 2020; 494 in 2019).
Second, where are all of these releases coming from? From the companies that own the copyrights, either directly or through licensing deals? The answer is NO!
Wait, doesn’t Warner Bros. own the MGM library (pre-1987), plus the RKO film library and, of course, the Warner Bros. library dating all the way back to the dawn of sound with The Jazz Singer! The answer is yes.
Universal Pictures owns the Universal film library (Dracula, Frankenstein and more from 1930s and beyond), plus they purchased the Paramount library pre-1950s … Paramount owns the rest. That’s another big chunk. Throw in Sony Pictures with ownership of Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems and more … there’s another big chunk.
Lionsgate talks about a 17,000-title library that includes both theatrical releases and series programming … and don’t forget that Walt Disney Studios bought-up 20th Century-Fox in 2019, so that’s a giant cache of films when you combine these two studio’s output dating from the 1930s.
Lastly, remember that in May of 2021 Amazon bought my old alma mater, MGM, for $8.4 billion, which included the post-1987 MGM library, elements of the United Artists library, Orion Pictures, American International and some other odds and ends.
There, Warner Bros., Universal, Lionsgate, Paramount, Amazon, Disney/Fox and Sony Pictures have the super majority of theatrical catalog holdings. Seven giants, and yet their combined share of the 4,669 theatrical catalog titles released on DVD through the first 21 weeks of 2023 is … 22. That’s .47 percent (less than one-half of one-percent of the output).
Isn’t there a lot of talk about licensing library assets these days? Legitimate DVD releasing companies — the Mill Creeks, Kino Lorbers, Criterions, Arrows, Severins and dozens of other well-known brand labels — must be where the action is taking place. Again, NO!!
They’ve kicked in a combined 36 DVD SKUs during the first 21 weeks of the year … that’s .77 percent. The traditional “Hollywood” studios and the legitimate labels combined for 1.24 percent (58 SKUs) of pie.
4,611, or 98.76 percent of all theatrical catalog releases have been from “helpers” during the first 21 weeks of the year.
Billions and billions of dollars have been spent amassing these vast film libraries only to see them sacked at rates never before witnessed in the history of home entertainment packaged media. We are on a pace to see over 11,000 pirated titles in this category alone in 2023 … where is the fiduciary interests of management in all of this?
Do Executives View Piracy As Just A Cost Of Doing Business?
Indeed, it appears that we have a business that is run these days by executives who see piracy as simply a cost of doing business.
OK, they, the “Hollywood” studios, don’t care about DVD as a viable format any longer … the action is Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD. Fair enough.
There have only been 430 Blu-ray releases in the theatrical catalog category through the first 21 weeks of 2023. 430 versus 4,669. Talk about lopsided.
The studios kicked in 42 SKUs (9.77 percent), legitimate labels added 131 (30.47 percent) and the rest — 257 titles — were from “helper” activity, which works out to 59.77 percent of the total.
Simply put, Blu-ray is not being used for theatrical catalog releases by “helpers.” DVD is backwards compatible and will play on Blu-ray players, so why bother with Blu-ray when DVD works just fine.
Theatrical catalog is the wild west these days … the vaults are open and it is just a cost of doing business.
Moving on, what got lifted elsewhere while the players were focusing on losing money on their streaming obsession this past week?
For starters, the Gozie AGBO/Amazon Studios’ series production of Citadel, starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas — and billed as one of the most expensive streaming series ever produced (on a per-episode basis) — began streaming on Amazon Prime at the end of April. It found a home on Blu-ray this past week from a helper source … a $300 million production stolen.
Blu-ray being used for complete season series …not for the HD appeal, but for capacity. That’s the creative way that helper sources use Blu-ray.
On the series front during this past week, we saw the following: American Born Chinese - Season 1 (Disney+), Better Than Us - Season 1 (Netflix), Big Door Prize - Season 1 (Apple TV+), Fubar: Season 1 (Netflix), Peripheral: Season 1 (Amazon Prime), Last of Us: The Complete First Season (MAX) and Serpent Queen: Season 1 (Starz) all released on either DVD or Blu-ray by helper sources.
On the movie front, Vertical Entertainment, with producing partners Doorbell Productions/Lola's Productions, saw director Junaid Syed’s War of the Worlds: The Attack given a nice Blu-ray launch by a “helper” label.
Vertical Entertainment went shopping at the American Film Market last November and make a splash with the acquisition news. The film had a limited theatrical break on Apr. 21 and a VOD push … Vertical will certainly release DVD and Blu-ray editions in the near future, but for now, someone beat them to it!
Finding Dory (Pixar/Disney), not a theatrical catalog title, but a new theatrical release (2016) has apparently fallen into the public domain as signaled by the DVD release from a “helper” source this past week. Ditto for the Amazon Studio - Big Indie Pictures mini-series production of Daisy Jones & the Six … a three-disc DVD launch.
That’s it for this week … next week will be another horror show with Nero center stage fiddling while Rome burns.
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