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Wicked made Universal in the neighborhood of $100 million on PVOD, cash it can use to make more movies, which will ultimately help exhibition, said Peter Levinsohn, Chairman, Global Distribution, NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios as the debate over exclusive theatrical windows dominates CinemaCon.
“We are a theatrical first company,” he said at at an industry panel at Las Vegas gathering alongside Regal Cineworld CEO Eduardo Acuna, FI and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski and Neon CEO Tom Quinn.
“Theatrical is the foundation, it’s the underpinning of every single thing we do. It’s where the brand is created, and it is the proxy for value of all of the ancillary windows,” Levinsohn said. But “we need to be with consumers, and the consumer is not going to go to see every single movie in the theater.”
He said over the last few years the studio has fine-tuned its windowing, “which has made us more profitable, particularly among the small to mid-range films … [which] has allowed us to make more movies. And there’s no question that we have by far the biggest slate in the industry. And we’re only able to do that because of the improved economics.”
He noted that NBCU moves films on-demand more quickly than to streaming, which it considers “substantially more disruptive” to the ecosystem and where it remains “conservative.”
Acuna was not convinced, saying the average customer doesn’t know the difference between transactional, subscription or streaming. They just think the film is coming soon to their home for free, and that trains them to wait, which is squeezing box office. Exhibitors have offered plenty of data they say backs that up.
Levinsohn said NBCU’s studies show that films put on PVOD earlier vs later followed roughly the same “decay curve.” On the issue of “training” consumers, he said, “we don’t see any evidence of that.” He does see a lot more competition for people’s discretionary time.
Quinn noted that its Cannes and Oscar Best Picture-winner Anora had a 70 days exclusive theatrical window, which he thinks helped it win the Oscar. “I think the idea of putting that movie out for 30 days, 17 days, 45 days — I don’t think it would have been the hit” it was.
One thing he’d like to see even out is trailer play for indies, which have a harder and costlier road to get their early looks in front of moviegoers. “If only the big players can access the trailer play, and it’s not curated to put in one or two independents for that first opening weekend, if you do not cross-pollinate there, you’re only serving the big movies.”
“I don’t think there’s any replacement for the theatrical experience,” Kosinski said. “It’s the formative memories I have as a kid seeing, you know, Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Back to the Future. I remember those experiences because I saw it on the big screen with big group of people. So for me, on, you know, for movies like Top Gun: Maverick and FI … theatrical is a requirement…. It’s my job to make a movie that the audience knows they have to see the big screen. Because I can’t control, you know, the stuff you guys are talking about. But what I can do is I can try, when the audience sees” it’s coming, that they’ll say, “I gotta see that” on the big screen.
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