Also posted in the Streaming thread but this is huge news. I wonder if Disney follows suit.

​​​​​​https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150605/hbo-max-warner-bros-movies-2021-simultaneous-release-matrix-godzilla-suicide-squad-space-jam

Terrible idea, I like it.

Wow. I assume like WW they will be limited time releases at least at first.

The article states one month.

People who don't frequent movie theatres are probably loving this news.

But, man this is terrible news for theatres. And all these movies will be pirated to hell.

and chances are, anyone who is probably under 30 won't subscribe to HBO Max and will just leach off a parent or family member's subscription to watch these for free.

This is a bizarre concept for me, I don't see how this makes sense as opposed to offering it for a paid rental simultaneously to theaters as opposed to using HBOmax. I guess that is one way to drive people to that platform... I agree that these will be pirated to hell and back especially if they are streaming in 4k.

As much as I love the idea of not waiting for a movie to be viewable at home, Its bad for all the people who work at theaters and releasing huge tentpole movies at home at the same time is going to cut the people going to theaters by so much that people will lose jobs in huge numbers.

Pretty crazy.

Still will go see some of them in imax.

$14.99/month that ATT gets for a sub vs less than that for a ticket sold. And they aren't selling any reasonable amount of tickets until probably summer-ish. This is long term play. Get people hooked on the service and keep them subscribed a la Netflix.

I wonder if they will start cracking down on people sharing accounts.

Agree. This is going to cost a lot of jobs. A lot of theatre locations are going to shut down. Also, I bet some lower end studio jobs are going to be cut as well. WB/AT&T is going to lose billions on these movies.

I realize not everyone cares about seeing something in IMAX, Dolby and such, but I don't want to see Matrix 4 and Dune or The Suicide Squad night 1 on my couch, which I do all the time.

It’s already costed a lot of jobs and money, so why not. And I definitely want to see Matrix 4 and Dune on my couch, so bring it. It’ll sound and look great in my theater.

Ahh got it. Right now Comcast is offering it for free so I did not realize there was such a large cost... not sure I can see myself paying that much for one "channel" service, seems high to me compared to Netflix but I guess this will help get buy-in. Thanks!

I prefer the theater experience, but now there isn’t even one locally that’s open. So if HBO Max is the option to watch new movies I accept that for now.

I do think this will change the theater business forever though and things will probably never be like they were pre-COVID.

I don't think people get it...Good or Bad... Covid has changed EVERY FUCKIN' THING. Short term? Yes. Long Term? We'll see.... But things have changed.

I'm fine with this change to releases. They will figure out a way to make their money back. They always do.

They do say a one-year plan but I doubt the genie can be put back in the bottle. Of course I also wonder what happens when they run out of movies that have already been budgeted and paid for.

I would've easily paid an additional $10 or so per movie in addition to the subscription.

I'm mostly curious what it will do for sequel potential. Namely for Dune.

I wonder if, from a financial standpoint, they can look at some of this optimistically as not having to spend the usual crazy amount on marketing and basically consider this combined marketing budget for Max + each film.

Well that's it, 98% of theaters are done. This is a sad day, but I can't pretend like I didn't see it coming. This is like Brutus stabbing Caesar. the floodgates are officially open, this is the end of the theater system. Everyone else is going to follow. Universal started it with Trolls 2, putting it out on-demand instead of theaters. The theatrical companies lost their minds, but the pandemic raged on and people understood. There’s been other planned theatrical releases that have gone to streaming services or on-demand, one offs, the theaters could do nothing about it, they have no legs to stand on right now. They took a sweetheart deal from Universal that shortened the home release window to 17 days, that’s why films like Freaky and Croods 2 went to theaters in the past month, because Universal is putting them out on-demand after 3 weekends. Now this, WB just fucked them. Disney has made it clear that their future is Disney+, not theatrical distribution. Paramount doesn’t have a streamer, they’ll just continue to sell off all their movies to various streamers like they did with Coming 2 America. Top Gun 2 is probably the only movie they won’t sell at this point.

I love going to the theaters, not being able to hit pause or be distracted by life, get a huge tub of popcorn and relax. This is gone. My dream was always to open a movie theater of my own, about 10 years ago I started mapping it out, my unique spin on it. I saw the writing on the wall in my research, I knew this was going to happen so I kept it on the back burner. Oh well.

I know a lot of people don't like to keep many of their streaming services year round to save money as the costs do add up and HBO Max is one of the more expensive ones. I wonder if AT&T thinks this will give HBO Max subscribers more of an incentive to keep it round than cancel hop. New HBO Max, HBO content, and now having 1st run movies on an almost monthly basis seems to be keeping the service fresh every month.

The funny thing is that they basically just took the usual monthly cost of HBO (the channel) and kept it the same but added all this other stuff.

I think Netflix is up to 13.99 for standard (they have an 8.99 tier but it's non HD) and even more expensive for 4k (which Max is now adding), with no discount for annual subscription.

Disney+ is the real outlier in terms of being super cheap. The other ones for the most part are only cheap with commercials or don't have a lot of unique content.

Our local indie theater has been thriving with a mix of same day, non-same day, classics, theater rentals and drive ins for most of the pandemic. I think it's a survivable industry but maybe fewer massive multiplexes.

Twitter

HBO Max just put out a promo spot to announce this

It's not like they are cutting the theatres out entirely... the studios still need to make money.