Streaming Death Wish Is Creating Chaos As Theatrical And Series Assets Are Plundered At A Record Pace

For a solid month the 2023 projection of new theatrical releases bounced between 501 and 502.   Two weeks ago, the number rose to 510 as the projected number of new theatrical releases for 2023.  

Last week it was 511 … and this week it is 510.  At least it is holding steady.

 

Ditto for the number of top-box films ($25 million plus; $100 million plus), which held at 64 for the third week in a row.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Universal Pictures) continues to roar at the box office with $436 million in domestic ticket sales, which looks right now as an easy climb to the half-billion-dollar mark when all is said and done.   The only new candidate for the “top-box” arena is writer/director Lee Cronin’s creep-out horror tale, Evil Dead Rise (Warner Bros.), which pulled in $24.5 during its opening week (it will easily push past the $25 million level).

On the transition front from theatrical venues to the home entertainment packaged media marketplace, Paramount Home Entertainment’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves got a lightning-quick move to the May 30 release slot — that’s an ARR of just 60 days.

 

The status for filmmaker James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water remains in limbo.   We’ve speculated — and it is only speculation — that Disney is delaying the release until the latest round of layoffs (industry trades are throwing around 4,000 as the number) have taken place and the dust has settled.  

That aside, it doesn’t help restore the health of the theatrical marketplace when the studio — yes, Walt Disney Studios — takes writer/director David Lowery’s mega-budget film ($150 million-plus) adaptation of the J.M. Barrie classic, Peter Pan & Wendy, and bypass theatres for Disney+ streaming.   To add insult to injury, it was — or course — immediately offered for sale on Blu-ray by one of Mickey Mouse’s “helpers.”   More will certainly follow in the days ahead.

Walt Disney Studios will be reporting out earnings on May 10.  It will be interesting to see how much red ink is attributed to the current streaming obsession.  

Of note, Universal/Comcast was the first of the season and they are projecting to lose $250 million per month for the balance of the year.   Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are back-to-back this next week on reporting quarterly earnings.   Last year, these historic “Hollywood” studios averaged $800 million in loses attributed to streaming each month.

How can you possibly justify bypassing theatres for a direct-to-video launch of Peter Pan & Wendy with a production budget north of $150 million?     

Ditto for the $40 million or so production budget associated with director Dexter Fletcher’s Ghosted?   This Apple Studios/Skydance production starring Chris Evans, Ana de Armas and Adrien Brody launched this past week on Apple TV+ and was immediately released on Blu-ray from several “helper”/”void-filler” sites.  

Apple TV+ still hasn’t released the Best Picture-winner for 2021, writer/director Sian Heder’s CODA, on DVD, Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD, but plenty of Apple TV+ “helpers” have gladly stepped up to fill the void.

The industry’s inattentive monitoring of what is happening with their film and series production assets is not limited by any stretch of the imagination to the high-profile theatrical release candidates.  

Amazon Studios, with production partner Morgan Creek, got hit for the mini-series Dead Ringers from more than one “helper” on Blu-ray; Hallmark got hit seven times, plus producing partners Larry Levinson Productions and Johnson Production Group got hit for five more (if you are counting, that’s 12 Hallmark films in one week); Netflix got whacked for a half-dozen series and Paramount’s Screams VI had its first “helper” attack within hours of being streamed on Paramount Plus.

And this is just a sample of what took place this past week ... multiply it by 52 weeks and you start to get a sense of just how out of control things are right now for copyright and production rights owners.

We could go on about theatrical catalog and all the little “helpers” on that side of the street, but that ship has sailed.   Those vast film libraries that were built from the 1930s to the launch of DVD in 1997 (the cut-off point for theatrical catalog and new theatrical) by the various “Hollywood” studios are now all in the public domain — when you don’t monitor and enforce your copyrights that’s exactly what happens.  

Sure, they still think they have copyright protection, but that’s an illusion that is not supported by the helter skelter release activity taking place in the DVD marketplace these days.  

To that point, through the first four months of 2023, 3,978 theatrical catalog releases (sound era through 1996) arrived on DVD.   That tracks for a total of 12,000 new product offerings in that category alone for 2023 … the average pre-pandemic count was roughly 1,600 titles per year.

New theatrical launches are stuck in limbo — still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels — mega-budget films that could change that dynamic go direct to streaming and priceless studios assets — in the form of theatrical libraries — are sacked at a pace that would make a Visigoth blush.

Streaming has been nothing less than a dagger in the heart of studio assets … when will someone wake up and see the damage that has been done and take steps to correct it?