AMC Will No Longer Show Universal Films
Ever since the middle of March, the entertainment industry has essentially had to deal with the fact that they have been shut down. The film industry in particular have had a pretty rough go of things considering all of their schedules have been messed up. Production companies have had to make do with moving release dates back, moving productions back, and releasing movies straight to VOD. Universal, in particular, has found success with straight to VOD in their release of ‘Trolls: World Tour.’ The movie managed to to better than its predecessor when it came to revenue with just VOD, so Universal was comfortable with saying that they plan on releasing more films straight to VOD in the future.
NBCUniversal’s CEO made comments saying that the company would continue to release films this way and it did not go over so well. AMC Theaters, one of the largest theater chains in the country, announced they would no longer show Universal’s films. Universal was the first studio to decide against delaying their release schedules in order to try and make money at a time when it would otherwise be impossible. As of now it is working for them and they made more than they were expecting to. With theaters shut down nationally for the next few months it would make sense that they would continue to do this with other films as well.
You can’t necessarily blame them for wanting to do this, especially since they receive 80% of the revenue from VOD instead of the usual 50% from theatrical releases. They also don’t want to have to push back their own releases and mess up their own schedules. This ends up creating an issue for the theater companies since they are now missing out on all potential future revenue from those films. The decision to release films to VOD directly is also a product of the situation we are all currently in and probably won’t work so well when everything is back to the way it was.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell announced that, in the future, Universal will continue to release films theatrically, and they will also be sending films straight to on-demand. They recently announced that they will be sending Pete Davidson and Judd Apatow’s ‘The King of Staten Island’ straight to VOD in June instead of a theatrical release. AMC CEO and President Adam Aron has said that due to this strategy, they will no longer show Universal’s films. He also said that any other studio that says that they are going to forgo any theatrical releases will also be treated the same way.