Slumberland.
That’s what the new theatrical release pace looks like as we head into
the prime summer release months.
This past week the projected number of new releases
hitting theatres nationwide by New Year’s Eve dropped to 511 from 512 … two
weeks ago it was 510. Stuck in a holding
pattern.
The top box projections remained fixed at 64 (the
combined count of films grossing $25 million plus; $100 million plus) … the
industry pre-pandemic average was 94.
The new entry in the hit film category this past week
was director Louis Leterrier’s Fast X from
Universal Pictures. It popped an
opening week total of $67 million and will easily zoom past the $100 million mark
over the Memorial Day weekend.
To the best of our knowledge there were no big-budget
films bypassing theatrical playdates to be streamed and immediately stolen by
those every so helpful “helpers” … pirates, bootleggers, thieves, etc. are very
“yesterday” terms for piracy, so we like “helpers” and “void-fillers” as the
more appropriate description of such activities.
Nothing on the order of director Niki Caro’s The Mother or director
Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s Crater this
week.
Shifting over to “helper” activity, in just looking at
the theatrical catalog release numbers, you would have to come to the
conclusion that films released theatrically in the 1930s through 1980s have all
lost their copyright protections. Or,
those that own such copyrights don’t have the desire or energy to enforce them.
There have been 21 street-date Tuesdays so far in
2023. During those 21 release periods,
we have recorded 4,669 sound-era theatrical catalog releases. These are films that played theatrically
from the 1930s through 1996 — 1997 was the launch year of DVD and that
marks the cut-off point for theatrical catalog and the beginning of new
theatrical releases.
Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary, but it does provide theatrical
to home entertainment window data that has proven to be useful.
In any case, what does a total of 4,669 DVD theatrical
catalog product offerings mean for the first 21 weeks of the year?
First, you have to put it into context. What happened during the same 21-week
periods during the past five years (as an example of context)? Last year at this point the SKU-count was
2,508 … two years ago 812 (765 in 2020; 494 in 2019).
Second, where are all of these releases coming
from? From the companies that own the
copyrights, either directly or through licensing deals? The answer
is NO!
Wait, doesn’t Warner Bros. own the MGM library
(pre-1987), plus the RKO film library and, of course, the Warner Bros. library
dating all the way back to the dawn of sound with The Jazz
Singer! The
answer is yes.
Universal Pictures owns the Universal film library (Dracula,
Frankenstein and more from 1930s and beyond),
plus they purchased the Paramount library pre-1950s … Paramount owns the
rest. That’s another big chunk. Throw in Sony Pictures with ownership of Columbia
Pictures, Screen Gems and more … there’s another big chunk.
Lionsgate talks about a 17,000-title library that
includes both theatrical releases and series programming … and don’t forget that
Walt Disney Studios bought-up 20th Century-Fox in 2019, so that’s a giant
cache of films when you combine these two studio’s output dating from the
1930s.
Lastly, remember that in May of 2021 Amazon bought
my old alma mater, MGM, for $8.4 billion, which included the post-1987 MGM library,
elements of the United Artists library, Orion Pictures, American International
and some other odds and ends.
There, Warner Bros., Universal, Lionsgate, Paramount,
Amazon, Disney/Fox and Sony Pictures have the super majority of theatrical
catalog holdings. Seven giants, and yet
their combined share of the 4,669 theatrical catalog titles released on DVD
through the first 21 weeks of 2023 is … 22.
That’s .47 percent (less than one-half of one-percent of the output).
Isn’t there a lot of talk about licensing library
assets these days? Legitimate DVD
releasing companies — the Mill Creeks, Kino Lorbers, Criterions, Arrows, Severins
and dozens of other well-known brand labels — must be where the action is taking
place. Again, NO!!
They’ve kicked in a combined 36 DVD SKUs during the
first 21 weeks of the year … that’s .77 percent. The traditional “Hollywood” studios and the legitimate
labels combined for 1.24 percent (58 SKUs) of pie.
4,611, or 98.76 percent of all theatrical catalog
releases have been from “helpers” during the first 21 weeks of the year.
Billions and billions of dollars have been spent amassing
these vast film libraries only to see them sacked at rates never before witnessed
in the history of home entertainment packaged media. We are on a pace to see over 11,000 pirated
titles in this category alone in 2023 … where is the fiduciary interests of management
in all of this?
Do Executives View Piracy As Just A Cost Of Doing Business?
Indeed, it appears that we have a business that is run
these days by executives who see piracy as simply a cost of doing business.
OK, they, the “Hollywood” studios, don’t care about
DVD as a viable format any longer … the action is Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD. Fair enough.
There have only been 430 Blu-ray releases in the
theatrical catalog category through the first 21 weeks of 2023. 430 versus 4,669. Talk about lopsided.
The studios kicked in 42 SKUs (9.77 percent),
legitimate labels added 131 (30.47 percent) and the rest — 257 titles — were
from “helper” activity, which works out to 59.77 percent of the total.
Simply put, Blu-ray is not being used for theatrical
catalog releases by “helpers.” DVD is backwards compatible and will play on Blu-ray
players, so why bother with Blu-ray when DVD works just fine.
Theatrical catalog is the wild west these days … the
vaults are open and it is just a cost of doing business.
Moving on, what got lifted elsewhere while the
players were focusing on losing money on their streaming obsession this past
week?
For starters, the Gozie AGBO/Amazon Studios’ series
production of Citadel,
starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas — and billed as one of the
most expensive streaming series ever produced (on a per-episode basis) — began
streaming on Amazon Prime at the end of April.
It found a home on Blu-ray this past week from a helper source … a $300
million production stolen.
Blu-ray being used for complete season series …not
for the HD appeal, but for capacity.
That’s the creative way that helper sources use Blu-ray.
On the series front during this past week, we saw
the following: American Born
Chinese – Season 1 (Disney+), Better
Than Us – Season 1 (Netflix), Big Door
Prize – Season 1 (Apple TV+), Fubar:
Season 1 (Netflix), Peripheral:
Season 1 (Amazon Prime), Last of
Us: The Complete First Season
(MAX) and Serpent Queen: Season 1
(Starz) all released on either DVD or Blu-ray by helper sources.
On the movie front, Vertical Entertainment, with
producing partners Doorbell Productions/Lola’s Productions, saw director Junaid
Syed’s War of the Worlds: The Attack given
a nice Blu-ray launch by a “helper” label.
Vertical Entertainment went shopping at the American
Film Market last November and make a splash with the acquisition news. The film had a limited theatrical break on
Apr. 21 and a VOD push … Vertical will certainly release DVD and Blu-ray
editions in the near future, but for now, someone beat them to it!
Finding Dory (Pixar/Disney),
not a theatrical catalog title, but a new theatrical release (2016) has apparently
fallen into the public domain as signaled by the DVD release from a “helper”
source this past week. Ditto for the Amazon
Studio – Big Indie Pictures mini-series production of Daisy
Jones & the Six … a three-disc DVD launch.
That’s it for this week … next week will be another
horror show with Nero center stage fiddling while Rome burns.
