The act of streaming films in the comfort of your own home instead of seeing them in the public space of a theater full of strangers has taken over the film industry. At first, it was simply Netflix stealing business from Blockbuster and other video rental stores. Production studios then decided to use Netflix as distribution for their straight-to-video movies as it was cheaper than making physical media that may or not be sold. “In particular, while cinema and free-to-air programming still offer much appeal, it is clear that SVoD (Subscription Video on Demand) is creating significant disruption and is highly valued by consumers” (McKenzie et al., 2019). Streaming services, just like Netflix, have evolved to become a household staple and not just a luxury to have an infinite amount of content at your fingertips.
Streaming services have taken over the film industry.
As many business ventures are, film is a business that you go wildly in-debt for with calculations and a prayer to make the money back in the box office. Originally, that's all you could make money off of- the pure ticket sales. Even now, the box office plays a big role in this as production studios take a wildly massive chunk of ticket profits, leaving movie houses to only make their operating costs and profits on overpriced popcorn and candy. This was an okay business model as the cinema- and eventually broadcast television - was the only way to consume the visual media. That was until the VCR came in.
While there were some other inventions for home video, nothing took off quite like VHS tapes. They were expensive in the beginning but soon became an affordable way to watch films in the comfort of your own home and however many times you want. There were even entire businesses such as Blockbuster and Family Video built off the concept of renting VHS tapes for a weekend that have now become a nostalgic factor for Millennials and older Gen Z. However, due to the nature of the materials, they could be worn out and eventually thrown away like my family's copy of The Lion King (1999). After that came the DVD rom that saved a tremendous amount of space, could hold more data for behind the scene footage, and could be read with multiple kinds of devices. The more updated version of this is a Blu-ray disc that can hold even more data on the same amount of physical space.
Netflix commercials circa 2005
Now a household name worldwide, Netflix started off as a rental dvd mail service. Once you were done with the DVDs, you sent them back through the mail and they’d send what was next on your list. This and the Redbox kiosks found at grocery and drug stores that would rent DVDs for $1 per night would slowly take over movie rental stores as they were cheaper and more convenient. Netflix then offered the online streaming service as an alternative to the dvd service (which is still available today!) They quickly rose to the top with Hulu trailing and HBO a couple laps behind. It quickly became a saying to “Netflix and chill,” meaning putting on a movie while hooking up. Now there are more than 30 streaming services available in the U.S. alone.
Paying to watch movies can add up and become unaffordable for some. Sometimes some films are also hard to find due to studio contracts, distribution regions, and the will of executives. People would create physical bootleg copies and hand them out to friends. This would mainly happen for things such as the South Park (1997) pilot as they were trying to get picked up and the acclaimed anime Akira (1988) without English subtitles or dubbing as it had not made its way from Japan to America yet. People also distribute films online for free under the radar. This, of course, is illegal and a federal crime if caught. All home videos produced for the U.S. market had some sort of anti-piracy warning screen flaunting the consequences before the content in hopes of reducing the crime.
FBI anti-piracy screens via The Hollywood Reporter
Netflix and other streaming services heavily mitigated the piracy problem as they offered so much at an affordable monthly price. This can be seen in a study between 40 Asian countries where Netflix successfully launched and remained available and in Indonesia where Netflix has not launched. This led to a 19.7% increase in pirating searches for movies and tv shows compared to the countries that Netflix took hold in (Lu et al., 2021). However, with every major studio wanting to let their contracts with Netflix expire to launch their own service, things are becoming more expensive, harder, and/or more annoying to access, leading some people back to pirating.
Because of streaming and digital copies, physical media has taken a nosedive. If films did not make their money back fully at the box office, they could always count on the home video sales. Now it's practically useless. Good Will Hunting star Matt Damon speaks more on the topic during a Hot Ones interview stating, “because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release and six months later, you’d get a whole ‘nother chunk- it would be like reopening the movie almost. When that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make” (FirstWeFeast, 2021).
Hot Ones interview with Matt Damon
When the COVID-19 pandemic was underway and the world shut down in the beginning of 2020, studios have predominantly released their new films on these services instead of the traditional theatrical release. There was a decrease of 72% in movie audiences (OKUMUŞ, 2022). Even after two years when most Americans have quote on quote, “gone back to normal,” studios are hesitant to release anything that is not guaranteed to make a profit at the box office.
Many people choose streaming over visiting the theater- even before the pandemic, for numerous reasons. For some with large families, the monthly charge for even some of the more expensive services and packages is still cheaper than taking everyone to the movie house. For others, it is an accessibility issue. Those using mobility devices are forced to sit at the front of the theater, closest to the screen which in turn, puts a strain on the neck and eyes. For some, being in a dark room in front of a giant light source and loud noise can trigger migraines (Noseda et al., 2017).
Film studios themselves are choosing to stream as distribution on the online platforms take way less time and money and effort. Studios can produce a movie, show it off at festivals for a distribution executive to find it, and can make all their money back in one fell swoop by signing a contract with a streaming service. This is actually how a majority of Netflix Originals are made. They also tend to do little to no marketing on these films and rely on word of mouth and social media. The hopes of viralility does pay off for some things such as Bird Box (2018) and tv series Tiger King (2020) but it usually pertains to how unhinged they are and is not about artistry in filmmaking.
Some production companies do a combination of releasing on streaming services and at the box office. However, the films they think are going to do well enough to earn their money back at the theater have become limited to large blockbusters and reboots such as Spiderman: No Way Home (2021) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022). The time of mid-budget movies for a random Sunday afternoon has passed. Streaming services also are not required to release any actual data on views and can practically say whatever they want.
HBO has recently gone under new leadership who has decided to delete a lot of beloved content from the server for the sake of tax breaks. This was met with a lot of backlash as much of this original content could not be on physical copies and did not have any backup. The artists who have worked on these projects now have lost their art. They even decided to delete a whole film, Batgirl, a $90M film, from the Warner Bros. servers before it was released (Knight, 2022). “The decision still comes as a shock, as studios almost never shelve productions outright, preferring to get at least some return on their investment” (Vary, 2022).
Julia Pott, animator and creator of Summer Camp Island- an HBOMax Original via Twitter
