‘Scoob!’ Beat Out ‘Trolls World Tour’ On PVOD Charts
By George Robbins
Premium Video on Demand is a type of video on demand that sees movies be instantly released to the public for their viewing pleasure. So instead of giving a movie a full theatrical release before putting it out on demand, they just put it straight out. Universal was among the first companies to release a film straight to VOD with ‘Trolls World Tour’ and now Warner Bros. followed in their footsteps when they released ‘Scoob!’ to PVOD. There are not many movies that have actually released in this way yet, but the fact that it beat out ‘Trolls World Tour’ is nothing to scoff at. The PVOD market is doing very well in the current global market and it is making things easy for the consumer.
Other movies such as ‘Birds of Prey’ and ‘Bloodshot’ hit Video on Demand much sooner than they would have due to the pandemic. Disney even took ‘Frozen 2’ and ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ and put the two films up early on their Disney+ service in order to give people content to watch and boost their streaming service. By putting those films up ahead of their originally announced dates, they are making far more money than they would have otherwise. This is the biggest premise of PVOD and why some companies are using this model for release instead of delaying the movies. It just makes sense to release movies like ‘Trolls World Tour’ and ‘Scoob!’ because families are looking for things to do, so this gives people a reason to buy or rent the films.
‘Scoob!’ was originally intended to debut theatrically on May 15th, but some time near the end of April, Warner Bros. decided to keep the date as the day it released on PVOD. This ended up working out for the studio because it would end up going on to outsell ‘Trolls World Tour’ after its opening weekend. When ‘Trolls World Tour’ dropped on the marketplace, it went on to be called the best digital debut ever, making about $50 million on its opening weekend. It also went on to outsell the original ‘Trolls’ movie after three weeks despite the first film being in theaters for five months. This changed Universal’s entire view on the process of PVOD and made them decide to continue with this model moving forward.
With all of this in mind, ‘Scoob!’ went on, in its opening weekend, to outsell ‘Trolls World Tour’ in both the Amazon and iTunes marketplaces. The two films are currently in a world of their own due to the fact that they are among the few to release without any kind of theatrical release whatsoever. This gives these companies a reason to want to continue with this model since it seems to be working out pretty well at the moment. The question remains, however, whether this model will remain viable moving forward when theaters reopen their doors and start showing new movies again. The only thing that we can do now is wait and see if this model can hold out when the world climate returns to the way it was before.