Theaters only receive a small percentage of the sales, with the rest going to the movie studios. On top of that, movie theaters are not considered to be essential businesses, so, as of right now, they are not operating and constantly losing money.įor those of you who don’t know, most of the money made by movie theaters comes from their concessions rather than ticket sales. Now hearing that the two largest theater chains in the world are blacklisting Universal Pictures makes all this talk of extinction seem more legitimate. It’s obvious now that this conflict has been brewing for the past month or so, but now that Universal has gone public with their plan to release films both theatrically and on video-on-demand (VOD), Regal and AMC both have taken their views on this public, throwing the media into a frenzy.įor the past few years, the talk of movie theaters going “extinct” has risen with the popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. Greidinger said, “not only did Universal provide no commitment for the future window - but Universal was the only studio that tried to take advantage of the current crisis and provide a ‘day-and-date’ release of a movie that was not yet released.” Now, on April 29, a new statement was released by Regal Cinemas confirming that they will keep their theatrical window as it is, and went as far as saying Universal’s decision is “completely inappropriate and certainly has nothing to do with good faith business practice, partnership and transparency.”Īll partners of Regal were said to have contacted the company about shortening the theatrical window as theaters were closing, and these partners reassured Regal that there would be no change in the current release window policy once theaters begin to open back up.
The following day, Mooky Greidinger, the CEO of Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas, warned Universal as well that Regal Cinemas would also ban movie studios that do not respect the 90-day theatrical window. Later that day, AMC CEO Adam Aron composed a letter to Universal, which was also posted publicly, stating that “effectively immediately AMC will no longer play any Universal movies in any of our theaters in the United States, Europe or the Middle East.”
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell stated, “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats.” I took this to be a bold, premature statement from Shell. This all started on April 28 when The Wall Street Journal reported that “Trolls World Tour” had made more money in three weeks than the first “Trolls” film did in its five-month theatrical run.
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