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Weekend ticket sales opened in 98th place, but streaming revenue rolled out of the stadium.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Some of the headlines on “Black Widow,” the Marvel movie that premiered this weekend, were quite a spectacle. If “record” was mentioned without “pandemic” as a qualifier, they lied. What the box office data showed was how hard it is now for brick-and-mortar theaters to make money, and how much Marvel owner Disney killed the movie. by showing the film simultaneously over the weekend on Disney +.
During its opening weekend, Black Widow grossed $ 80 million in box office ticket sales in North America. It was just a “record” for any movie since March 2020, a “pandemic record”, so to speak.
But those ticket sales were far behind the actual records set during opening weekends by other films. According to The Numbers, the movie data tracker, these ticket sales were in the 98th place!
And they were 78% lower than the record-breaking first weekend for a movie, “Avengers: Endgame,” which premiered in April 2019 and grossed $ 357 million in North American theaters in the first weekend. end.
The brutal reality for brick and mortar theaters now:
- “Avengers: Endgame” was played in 4,662 theaters on the weekend of its premiere; on average each cinema brought in $ 76,601.
- “Black Widow” played in 4,160 theaters over the weekend; on average each cinema brought in $ 19,231. This is what this “record” means for movie chains.
This 98th place does not include the impact of higher ticket prices. Many of the movies that beat “Black Widow” debuted many years ago, when ticket prices were much lower, and it took a lot more tickets to get there, including “Harry Potter at the ‘school of wizards’, which opened in November 2001 and grossed $ 90 million. At the time, the average ticket price was $ 5.66, up from $ 9.16 in 2019.
Walt Disney revealed the other fascinating thing about the fate of mainstream cinemas: He had raked in $ 60 million streaming “Black Widow” over the weekend on Disney +, for $ 29.99 per house, in addition to monthly subscription fee, no theater involved.
Disney may be getting less than 50% of the $ 80 million in box office ticket sales. But he gets 100% of the $ 60 million he collected through Disney +.
This was the first time Disney has disclosed this kind of streaming data since Disney + launched in November 2019 – and it shows the very frightening outlook for mainstream cinemas.
What changed during the pandemic was Disney’s decision to release films simultaneously in theaters and on Disney +.
So now some people can go to the movies to watch a movie when it premieres and make it an event; others can watch the movie at home when it premieres, the whole family for $ 29.99, plus cheap soda and popcorn.
If the studios had tried before the pandemic to release a film simultaneously in theaters and on their streaming channel, thus breaking the cinema window, it would have caused the cinema chains to boycott the release, which would have been the end of this history.
But the balance of power between studios and movie channels has changed forever. And the studios have their own streaming services. If the movie chains try to boycott a movie, so be it; they’ll just push more people to the streaming service.
This effectively broke the three-month monopoly that the “cinema window” – the time between a film’s theatrical release and its release on other channels – gave theaters. During those three months, consumers had no choice (other than a pirate copy): if they wanted to see the film, they had to go to the movies. This three-month monopoly was never designed to benefit consumers, but to benefit movie theaters.
Now movie theaters have to compete with streaming from day one, and consumers have a choice. And consumers decide: some still go to the movies and make it an event, but many others watch it at home. And it changes the equation of how many brick-and-mortar movie theaters are needed and what they can do to survive with the movie theater window shattered, monopoly gone, and consumer choices wide open.
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