Amazon Studios spent $250 million to make “Red One,” a comedic holiday action film starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, and then spent tens of millions more to market it. Despite only raking in about $80 million in domestic box office receipts, Amazon claims that the film’s theatrical release was a success, as it became the No. 1 movie on Prime Video, generating 50 million worldwide viewers in its first four days.
The film’s success is part of a larger trend in Hollywood, where studios are realizing that releasing movies in theaters first can actually boost their performance on streaming services. According to data from Nielsen, 65% of Netflix’s weekly top 10 English-language films were movies that had been licensed from studios after they debuted in theaters. Only three of the top 20 streaming movies of 2023 were released straight to streaming.
Industry executives are now echoing the sentiment that movies that perform well in theaters also perform well on streaming. “The better it does in theaters, the better it does on streaming,” said Joe Earley, the head of Disney+. The key to making a movie a streaming success is to first release it in theaters, where it can benefit from expansive marketing and public relations campaigns, as well as valuable word of mouth.
The trend is not limited to new films. Even new chapters of successful franchises can prompt spikes in engagement with the other films in the franchise on streaming services. Paramount Plus reported that when “A Quiet Place: Day One” premiered on its service, viewers increased their engagement with the other films in the “Quiet Place” franchise by 207%.
Despite the shift in strategy, Netflix remains the outlier in Hollywood, still avoiding wide theatrical releases for the movies it produces. The company continues to argue that putting a film in theaters detracts from viewership on streaming. However, all studios are being more selective about what movies they are willing to put into theaters, as the cost to break through an ever-crowded marketplace of entertainment options is more expensive than ever.
In the end, the theatrical movie business is very risky, but the marketing campaign for a film will not go to waste. As Casey Bloys, the head of HBO and Max, said, “Just because the box office didn’t meet a certain threshold, I’m still happy to have it on the streaming service.”
