With the coronavirus epidemic, Universal is trying a bold new video-on-demand release strategy with their theatrical releases — except they already tried it back in 2011 with the movie Tower Heist. Home theater technology has a long trend of getting better, from larger TVs with higher resolutions to Dolby systems that can be set up at home, and theaters have been feeling the pressure for a long time.
The theatrical window has been greatly shortened and even eliminated in some recent cases. Most prominently, Netflix has tried to release all of its movies to theaters and streaming on the same day, giving occasional theatrical exclusivity for movies like The Irishman and Marriage Story so that they can qualify to compete in awards season. Now, in the middle of the coronavirus epidemic, Universal is attempting to shorten the release window even further with several of their new releases.
Universal will release Trolls World Tour on VOD on April 10, 2020, the same date it’s supposed to be released in cinemas. The movie will be available to rent for 48 hours at a cost of $19.99, and is set to be followed by recent cinematic releases The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt, all just a few weeks after they opened in theaters. It’s an interesting move, and one Universal have tried before. Back in 2011, Universal made an attempt at shortening the theatrical window into just a few weeks with the Brett Ratner-directed thriller Tower Heist. The plan was shut down almost immediately by theater owners and chains threatening to boycott the movie if they went ahead with that strategy.
Looking at the original plan with Tower Heist, it was incredibly modest for the strong reaction it received. Universal was going to release the movie on VOD exclusively for Comcast (which owns Universal) three weeks after the theatrical release. It was going to be available in two major markets (Atlanta and Portland), and cost $59.99 to rent (via the Los Angeles Times). When several movie chains threatened to boycott the movie, Universal stopped the test.
Now Universal is picking up where that left off, only more aggressively. Since so many movie theaters are closing due to coronavirus, they’re faced with the prospect of movies that have been released but no one can see, so putting them on VOD makes a lot of sense. This time, though, rather than a small test constrained to two markets for one cable provider, it looks to be going nationwide across all VOD services.
It’s clear that Universal wants to be at the forefront of getting movies onto VOD sooner while still in theaters. Disney have put Frozen 2 on Disney+ early, and Warner Bros. are set to make Birds of Prey available on VOD soon too. At the moment, though, Universal is leading the pack after last having tried to push the envelope on it about nine years ago. This is a good test for how well big movies can do going to VOD early, but not how it’ll affect movies in wide release in theaters. While this current VOD release plan is not under ideal circumstances, they’ll finally get their chance to try very early VOD releases after Tower Heist’s experiment failed to launch.
