In a press release, Disney explicitly declares that it wants to favor streaming content over film production: it was in the air, but now it’s black and white.
While Controversy rages over Pixar’s Soul moved to streaming his Disney+ at Christmas, yet the opening film of the Rome Film Fest on Thursday 15 October, someone noticed an explosive passage in a Disney’s official press release, concerning one Disney’s shifting focus on streaming at the expense of traditional cinema and TV. Before discussing the scope and consequences of this decision, let’s isolate and translate the sentence, which will hopefully be explained in the already planned shareholder meeting on December 10. The text illustrates a company reorganization, then drops the bomb.
In this new structure, the company’s three groups dedicated to content creation will be responsible for producing and delivering content for cinema, linear channels and streaming, with the primary focus on streaming services of the company.
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In reality we are already witnessing the consequences of a process that seems to have been amplified and accelerated by Covid-19 pandemic, but which had its initial basis in the Netflix phenomenon and then in the presentation of the streaming platform Disney+, which exploded immediately between November last year and spring this year. If a big hit like the Soul Pixarian was hijacked to Disney +, as early as early September Mulan had been offered on the platform with a new solution, a paid “VIP Access” before unlocking for all subscribers three months later. Previously in the States Frozen II and Onward had been uploaded to Disney + long before the traditional “window” between theatrical release and home availability closed. Sure, there was the lockdown, but meanwhile the numbers of Disney +, as well as competing services such as Netflix, exploded also thanks to these raptus. A major that does not have such strong proprietary platforms has played the streaming card anyway causing cinema exhibitors to get mad: we recall the case of Universal e Trolls World Tour, with the leaders hypothesizing a future of contemporary theatrical releases and streaming. Another reality like Warner, while offering Tenet in the room, seems to have raised the budget of Justice League Snyder Cut, exclusive to their American platform HBO Max, from 30 to 70 million dollars. Important investments, signals not to be underestimated.
The consequences of Disney’s choice to favor streaming
We are obviously talking about long-term consequences, because those in the medium or immediate term we can already experience them, as we have explained. Even if the other majors are moving in the streaming direction, perhaps expanding it, Disney would become, if the words of the press release were confirmed at the meeting, the first major player in the market to explicitly declare the overtaking of home use over that in the room. Considering the size of the corporation’s business, the competitors’ emulation process could start very quickly (if it hasn’t started already, with less brazenness and fewer claims), causing a real earthquake in the supply chain as we know it. Does it suit them? As we explained to you, if a film like Mulan works for a fee on a proprietary streaming widespread at a widespread level, yes cut the costs of the intermediary, with all due respect to what the intermediary means for the creative and poetic fruition of the work. If you don’t charge an additional cost, you can use the film as a marketing flywheel for the service (and Soul on December 25 suggests this strategy). It would be easy to think that, with the bulk of the events moved to streaming and the medium American productions that have been looking for a home on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for some time, the theaters could defunct, or become elite experiences with consequent increase in ticket costs (George Lucas prophesied this years ago).
The end of cinema or a return to origins?
There is a partially fantastical scenario that we would like to share with you, as long as you take it with a grain of salt. In 1948 a law in the States forbade film majors of own halls or chains, because in doing so they manipulated and forced the market and programming. Freedom and identity were restored to the exhibitors, and ultimately to the public itself. Just for the record, Disney wasn’t a major at the time, it didn’t even self-distribute (it started in 1953): the majors were Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, RKO, Universal, Columbia and United Artists. Well, from this year the so-called “Paramount Decrees“have fallen! Is it too much to imagine that the majors will return to collect the pieces of the rooms closed and abandoned by their respective owners, to return to the practice of controlling the cinema experience as they control a Disney Store? Could there be a future on the horizon for “thematic rooms“Disney, Warner, Universal, Sony etc etc, with programming almost simultaneous to the streaming presentation? Of” Warner Village reloaded “in completely different contexts? With the little ones who, if they survive, raise their prices so much that they sell the charm of experience before the use itself?
Is this too crazy a prospect? Still, the case of Netflix it is significant: think of the phenomenon The Irishman last year (moreover one of the most acclaimed appointments in the last Rome Festival), a film event then soon after placed on the platform that had produced it, a platform that in the States already buy historic rooms. Let’s be clear: in the case of Netflix, Hastings has stated that the company is not interested in owning chains, it moves on cinemas (just happened) with symbolic promotional spirit. But that he felt the need to specify it in the aftermath of the termination of Paramount Decrees, let the good connoisseur understand: is anyone else thinking about it?
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