STREAMLAND Why HBO Max Is Harming the 2021 Warner Bros. Film Slate
The hybrid strategy adopted by WarnerMedia for this year is proving detrimental in the long run.
In early December 2020, WarnerMedia announced that, due to the effects of the pandemic, it was adopting a new release strategy for the 2021 film slate produced by Warner Bros., with Wonder Woman 1984 (which opened on Christmas Day and had already negotiated the new deal separately at the time of the announcement) serving as the unofficial inaugurator: every single film scheduled for this year is to open simultaneously in movie theaters and on HBO Max, with the latter option expiring after 31 days (this was a non-negotiable item to get American exhibitors on board).
Officially, this is purely temporary, with no plans to implement the measure past December of this year, but it’s easy to be skeptical in that regard: merely a few months ago, Disney said the Premier Access option on Disney+ (whereby select titles are temporarily available only by paying an additional fee) was a one-and-done they were using only for Mulan, and we all know how that turned out.
The announcement upset quite a few people in Hollywood, for fairly obvious reasons: it was made without notifying the studio’s producing partners and, more importantly, the filmmakers themselves; and the new formula screws up the way cast and crew receive residual payments, which are a valuable source of additional income in an industry where people can sometimes go months or years without steady gigs (when The Cosby Show was pulled from syndication, one of the actors had to start bagging groceries at Whole Foods due to no longer receiving residuals for the show).
But even if all the financial and legal matters were to be settled, it leaves the matter of the movies being substantially devalued, primarily because WarnerMedia and its parent company AT&T appear to have made the decision without considering the global implications. In short, they decided to give a boost to HBO Max (currently available only in the US), while sacrificing the rest of the world.
At the time of writing, four of the concerned movies have been released: Wonder Woman 1984, The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah and Tom & Jerry. Plans for the international rollout have been, to put it mildly, scattershot: I only found out Wonder Woman 1984 was going to be available as a Sky exclusive in my territory (Switzerland) a few days before it was due to drop on the service (March 8), and I found out because I was googling the Swiss release strategy for another thing altogether (Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which had no available information on the matter as late as last week, when I asked the local Warner Bros. publicist for details).
Similarly, release plans for Judas and the Black Messiah are nebulous, with multiple people inquiring about when and where they will be able to see it (legally, that is) in light of this year’s Oscar nominations. That’s right, most international viewers have no idea how to properly access a major Oscar-nominated movie, and one would assume the studio behind it would have come up with something even vaguely resembling a plan at this point.
The lack of a global strategy for these films, in an age where day-and-date is practically mandatory for big studio releases, has been frustrating for two reasons: firstly, it damages the movies’ financial prospects, because the opportunity to access a pristine version online on opening day is a godsend for piracy. This was evident with Wonder Woman 1984, with countless people mentioning how they had either accessed HBO Max with a VPN (which is not strictly speaking illegal, but still sketchy) or downright pirated the movie over the Christmas period. By the time it became available on digital platforms in other countries, it was already yesterday’s news.
And that’s the second factor: the film’s shelf life. While I still maintain Warner Bros. should have released the Wonder Woman sequel in Tenet’s late August/early September slot (because at a time when viewers are concerned about going to the movies even just once, releasing a movie by a director who typically makes sure you have to watch it at least twice is not the best idea), the latter remained part of the conversation for months, precisely because it wasn’t immediately available at home, ready to be digested, nit-picked and forgotten in a matter of weeks (seriously, how many Netflix or Amazon originals remain a topic of conversation past the first seven days?).
By choosing to prioritize its streaming service instead of curating its image and legacy, WarnerMedia has turned films that should have been major events into mere footnotes. Quite an achievement, when you consider the first two titles were a highly anticipated sequel and an old-school thriller starring Denzel Washington, one of the few actors who can still reliably draw a crowd regardless of the movie. If the rest of the year shapes up the same way (hopefully it won’t), 2021 might be remembered as the year that practically sank one of the foremost film studios in the world. And no streaming service is worth that.