We May See Earlier VOD Releases After Theatrical Releases
By George Robbins
Video on Demand, or simply VOD, has become something of a rising star these past couple of months due to the pandemic. This release platform has really started to find its footing since movie theaters have been shut down. After the pandemic was announced and theaters were shut down, movies that were in theaters had no choice but to release early to VOD so that people would have a chance to see the movie and the studios could make some of their money back. Something else that ended up happening when theaters shut down was the fact that movies that were supposed to release to theaters were forced to delay their theatrical releases. However, not every movie that was meant to release theatrically was delayed, which is why the current VOD climate is doing so well.
Movies that did not have their theatrical releases delayed were instead released straight to Video on Demand in an effort to make sure that the movies would still be able to make money. One of the biggest problems for a lot of film studios at the moment is making sure that they can release their movies at the proper time. This has sort of become an issue since no one is sure just when the right time would be to put those movies out there. Thus, some companies took the initiative to release their films to the public when they should have come out originally. For the most part, this plan has actually worked and a lot of money has been made in regard to these films.
This has ended up causing a lot of tension and distrust between studios and movie theater companies as of late. After all, these studios did essentially take away potential revenue from movie theaters by releasing these films now without any kind of theatrical release. AMC theaters even said that they would no longer show any more Universal films after their CEO said they would continue releasing films straight to VOD even after theaters reopen. This ended up making the CEO of Universal rephrase his statement by saying that they will still release movies theatrically, but simultaneously they will release them to VOD. This has created a few questions in people’s minds and has people wondering what the future of movie releases will really be.
It is believed that the current and only reason that VOD is doing so well right now is because of the pandemic and people don’t have much else to do. This may very well be true but even after theaters reopen, there will be a lot of tension around moviegoers since it will still be dangerous to go out to the movies. So the newest question on people’s minds is when is it a good point for movies to be pulled from theaters and put on VOD? After all, theaters won’t be able to function at full capacity or even normally for a while after reopening, and for the studios it would make more sense to release movies to VOD early to make as much of a profit as possible.We may just end up seeing movies release earlier from now on after theatrical releases, at least for the foreseeable future, since this may just be the best way to do business moving forward.