If you were to ask the average student at Needham High what kind of movies and TV shows they watch, you would get some wildly different answers compared to what you would have received a few years ago. That is because the 2010s were dominated by the rise of streaming services. While the days of cable television are by no means gone, they have largely been overturned by money-making giants like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus. According to The Hollywood Reporter, of the record hundred billion grossed in the global entertainment market last year, $58.8 billion came from digital entertainment and streaming. In addition, the number of subscribers to streaming services around the world increased to 863.9 million, which accounts for roughly 12% of the world’s population. That means that a fifth of the world’s internet users (just under 60% of the global population) are on streaming platforms. These are incredible numbers compared to the start of the decade, when Netflix alone did not even have twenty million subscribers. As technology evolves at a breakneck pace, so too does the entertainment industry. The old ways of cable television are simply less profitable among the current generation of audiences. But for those who are not huge fans of the streaming-focused future, there exists some hope. Thanks in large part to the success of tent-pole franchise movies, studios have continued to always debut their blockbusters in traditional theaters before sending them off for digital releases… until now. Because thanks to the global pandemic, Wonder Woman 1984 is headed to cinemas as well as the streaming service HBO Max on the same day: December 25th, 2020. And that just might change everything.
Before the coronavirus, there was a clearly defined ‘right way’ to release a big, two-hundred-million-dollar movie like this. It would drop in theaters, often during the summer months, and make a killing at the box office. The demand for these blockbusters -- especially comic book movies -- is high among general audiences, and this is how Disney has managed to gross well over twenty billion dollars with their Marvel Cinematic Universe films in the past decade. But no matter how badly people may want to see the next major studio movie, they are not willing to risk their lives over it. That is why Christopher Nolan’s Tenet had such a disappointing box office return this past summer, grossing a mere $356.1 million on an estimated $200 million budget. When factoring in marketing costs, that is a disappointing return compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars (sometimes grossing over a billion) Nolan’s films have made in the past. Studios were hoping that Tenet would be the movie to draw people back into theaters, but that did not come to pass, as most moviegoers rightfully chose to stay safe at home. With other companies like Disney pushing their slates back into next year, many expected Wonder Woman 1984 to be the savior of the film industry when it was announced for a theater debut date of Christmas Day. In an interview with CinemaBlend, Cineworld (the second-largest global theater chain) CEO Mooky Greidinger was asked about the upcoming picture, and he said: “Wonder Woman 1984 should be a huge movie for us… If it goes in February, I believe it could be [big].” But the disappointing return of Tenet is presumably what has led Warner Bros. to drop their Wonder Woman sequel on streaming as well. While this move is unprecedented and would have never been considered in a pre-COVID world, it is seemingly a more profitable choice for the studio compared to releasing it exclusively in theaters, as no one is going to see movies. The first Wonder Woman made $821.8 million globally in 2017, but that style of release simply does not fly in a pandemic-ravaged world. WB is quite literally banking on Wonder Woman 1984 making more money on streaming with more people home to watch. It is a traditionally risky move, but in the backwards reality we are all currently living in, it just might work. If the movie does manage to significantly increase the profits of HBO Max, then this decision could end up having a profound impact on the film industry.
Never in history has a movie of such caliber been debuted outside of theaters. These are the kinds of flicks that regularly gross over a billion dollars. If Wonder Woman 1984 was able to gross near the equivalent of that for its resident streaming service, could we see this trend continue in the future? Releasing the live-action Mulan on Disney Plus did not work out too well for Disney earlier this year, but a highly-anticipated film like Black Widow? That could make some money, maybe even more than the disappointing profits of a tent-pole film like Tenet. That is the hope Warner Bros. (and other studios watching from the sidelines) is running with, hoping to reclaim the profits of previous years so they can continue to make big blockbusters for decades to come, and bring the entertainment industry out of the dark place it is in right now. Even after the pandemic is over and a vaccine has been widely distributed, could movie theaters no longer be the only place to see big franchise films? If they were to drop on streaming platforms alongside theaters, or at least soon after, that could be game-changing. While the profits would still rest with the studios, it would pull money away from theaters and towards these major streaming services, resting further power with the digital market and away from traditional methods. Like plenty of industries heading out of this year, the future of film is uncertain, but with the rapid growth of these services, there are sure to be some major changes within the next ten years or so. Come 2030, Needham High students -- as well as the rest of the world -- could very well be watching the latest blockbuster exclusively on Netflix. No matter what happens with Wonder Woman 1984 in December, though, one thing seems clear: streaming is the future, and that future looks like it’s already here.