Winter Rant

I love going to the movies. Before the pandemic it was all I would do over the weekend. But more than that, I also love streaming content in my living room. That might sound paradoxical to many, but I love both things: theaters and Netflix. More paradoxically, I caught on to bingeing Downton Abbey (the series), after watching Downton Abbey the movie, the first one.

One of the first things I did after getting my COVID shots was to go watch Sheng-Chi. I even watched No Time To Die in a private screening with a bunch of close friends. It was really good fun!

To me there is no intellectual conflict between the worlds of movie-going and streaming … even as most movie execs, and some directors like Nolan sometimes like to pose this as an either/or situation.

Above all, I like having choices. I like having the choice to go to the movies, where I can enjoy popcorn and coke; perhaps even have lunch/dinner after. I hated not being able to do that during the pandemic. But I also love watching stuff on my TV, in my living room, when I damn well please. I love bingeing. I love hitting pause. I love knowing that I can hit pause to run to the bathroom real quick. And I love the wide array of choices that I have on streaming.

As a consumer, I like choice.

I get that a lot of movie makers take their craft seriously, and would love for us to go watch these movies in the theaters. But I hate to break the bad news: much like our shopping, moving watching needs to be an experience … an event, for consumers to flock to the theaters. Otherwise, both streaming, and e-commerce offer a level of accessibility from the comfort of our living rooms that is hard to rival — esp. when there are platforms that offer both streaming and e-commerce in the same place (thank you, Amazon!)

The simultaneous openings of Barbie and Oppenheimer has been drummed up to be an experience: and they are really well made movies, which explains their success.

I would be surprised to see similar reception for a movie like, say, “Meg 2: The Trench”. Not convinced?

Take “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” … Great cast, based on a popular game, got great reviews (90% on rotten tomatoes; 7.5/10 in IMDB), and yet it underperformed on the box-office: it cleared $208 million worldwide against its $150 million budget.

“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” bombed on the box office, despite getting mixed reviews. This is the kind of movie that would have sailed to be a box-office success on mixed reviews pre-pandemic, but people are budgeting their time and money more carefully now — and it has little to do with COVID. Things have just changed. We consumers have discovered that recently released movies in our living rooms are just as entertaining as they are in the theaters.

So sure, we will go to the big movie events like Barbenheimer, or even Mission Impossible (with all of its stunt marketing by Tom Cruise). But we have found out over the last three years that movies tend to make it quickly to streaming after release — no more waiting for BlueRays or DVDs. We just need to wait for a couple of months, and baam! … we can watch it in our living rooms (with popcorn and coke).

Ultimately, this represents an interesting and true hybrid reality for movie-watching. Theaters are not going away, because there will always be good, well-made movies that will create worthwhile experiences for movie-goers. But there will also be a deep interest for consumers in streaming movies over platforms like Netflix.

– vijay, standing in a UPS store 📦