A Struggle for Straight to Streaming?

The end of last year brought the news that perhaps many movie fanatics had been waiting for as a number of bigger studios announced plans to stick to a straight-to-streaming release schedule throughout 2021 and perhaps even look to trial it into the future – this comes as many favourite services online have started to find an increase in popularity, online mobile gaming has certainly been amongst the biggest as players can click here to find some of the biggest online options in many different categories, with other entertainment options coming through the likes of music and podcast streaming too. Whilst these options are on the rise, the straight to streaming release pattern for the movie industry could already be running into some difficulties.

It had already been expected that the winter release season would see a return for theatrical releases with the biggest movies of the year all looking to come out around the Christmas period, but the change had come a little earlier following some drama with the release of Black Widow and the concerns that had been brought up regarding the way streaming releases were handled – despite the big numbers that have been put up, the concerns around the hired talent will likely continue to be a prominent part of the question.

This same period of time that saw questions arising around the future of streamed releases may be enough to discourage other studios from biting the bullet and making the change, but may also discourage the current studios from continuing plans into the next year or two with their bigger releases – it’s still a space that’s quite in the air with plenty of changes still to come, one side is showing very strong support for the potential of change, the other hoping that the standard theatre approach sticks around for the longer period of time.

The box office will look to thrive over the coming months with these bigger releases planned to come out, and with the re-opening of cinemas and the confidence for many individuals to travel back to them too, it will allow for a very successful period of time after nearly eighteen months of difficult for the industry, but may also look to shape the way future releases are handled too, if the success does follow much in the way that has become expected then it may be enough in itself to suggest that streaming is not yet needed despite the success it had seen itself and that the return to the cinema is what many viewers had been waiting for, only time will tell and figures are still emerging for what the true impact this past year has had, and whether or not major releases will look to change, or remain the same.