I debated whether or not to put this in Serious, but I figured it wasn't super serious business technically so....

With movie theaters shuttered for a while, there's been a lot of talk about whether or not they were even viable even before lock-downs became common place and the virus has certainly gave it a blow to the knees. Big companies like AMC are rumored to be filing for bankruptcy and several big titles have made their way to VoD in time frames where they should've still been in theaters had they been open.

Disney's Onward is now on Disney+ after only a small window of being in theaters before the lock down really went into place; but the biggest movie in the discussion is Trolls 2. That movie went instantly to VoD via Amazon Prime and despite Amazon being very stingy with their revenue numbers, it's estimated that it already made back its initial investment in only a few days. The fact that this was a family movie only further creates problems for the theater business. Most families will look at streaming as a much cheaper alternative for getting to see the same movie.

Big studios like Disney, Universal, & Paramount would immediately cut out the middle-man theater business if straight-to-streaming was proven to be a viable alternative and Trolls World Tour has been a perfect example of that being the case. I don't know how to feel about this. One the one hand, most of the movies I go to see nowadays are Fathom Events, either anime screenings, classic re-releases, or art-studio plays. Those have a higher premium ticket price than the already high ticket price for a standard movie in most locations. I'm easily looking at $30 for just myself when I also take concessions into account, although using various reward programs has helped alleviate the price somewhat.

On the other hand, I'm also one of those snobbish art critics who considers seeing my Chinese cartoons on the big screen with the sticky gum on the floor and hearing the crowd go nuts at whatever bullshit happens on screen as an authentic movie-going experience. Certain movies have become social events (Hence I guess why its called Fathom Events) and you just can't recreate that experience from the comfort of your home. Going to the movies is also a social experience, I think the last time I went to see a movie by myself was Pacific Rim 2 and needless to say ignoring the fact that it was a garbage movie, it was also a lonesome experience and I've always gone with somebody to see a movie afterwards.

In my personal opinion, family movies will begin to get phased out of theaters regardless of when society reopens. It simply makes too much sense for both the consumer (budget-focused families) and the producers (cutting out the middlemen) to maximize efficiency and cost. But big KINOPLEX 9K theaters will still be around for generic Marvel capeshit #843 and college-dropout director films that are thinly veiled pornos disguised as Neo-Noir NC17 art films.

What are your thoughts?

They didn't say they were going to, they said that from this point onward they will stop showing screenings of those movies. AMC made a huge flex, but it's a big mistake; AMC does not have the position to make such demands. Studios need to make back their investment, straight-to-consumer is a way to help recoup the losses. Even if movies like Invisible Man are flops, they would have been flops anyways and there's little to no data showing they would have made out better on their losses had theaters been open over having them just being available to stream at home.

Furthermore, ticket sales have gone down slightly but their price has gone up to make up for the loss. This is a case of theaters being hindered and trying to pull studios down with them into the bucket when studios have their own issues to deal with during this lock-down.

Didn't AMC tell Universal that if they continued to release movies on streaming services, they would no longer show any of their movies in their theaters. Sounds like a bluff to me, considering their financial predicament.

In the 80s, the time between a movie ending its theater screening and its home video release was roughly six months, nowadays 3-4, the worse a movie does at the box office, the longer it takes. Ghostbusters 2016 did extremely poorly which is why it took so long to get released on home video. Evangelion 3.33 was released a little less than five months after its release day in theaters which is exceptionally early for a Japanese release considering there's adjustments and corrections made between 3.0 and 3.33 that typical western releases don't do when just going straight to home video.

i was pleasantly surprised when onward was put onto disney +, i always thought it took forever for movies to get on blu-ray/VoD, but apparently not.

The universe is going to have to do some serious bullshit to revert the downward trend the virus is taking and prevent theaters from being open seven months from now.

The universe doesn't want us to watch Godzilla vs Kong

the "authentic experience" meme only applies to video games for me

when it comes to movies idgaf, they should put literally everything on vod