Kyle Buchanan

Fewer big movies, fewer small movies, movies of every stripe.

And when you're starting to take those movies off the board, you are left with really big gaps in the calendar that make it kind of unreasonable for a lot of theaters to operate.

You look at Warner Brothers alone, the big hits that studio had this year from...

Minecraft, to Sinners, to Weapons, to One Battle After Another, without those movies, this year in theatrical distribution would be a disaster.

And it's already not easy.

The pandemic, the double whammy of the actors and writers strikes, and yes, the seg to streaming that this deal will almost certainly hasten, just make that not-so-rosy future look even more discouraging.

And I think that a lot of people in Hollywood don't necessarily expect Netflix to honor the initial terms of the deal where Netflix's owner Ted Sarandos is saying, sure, we're still going to put Warner Brothers movies out in theaters for now.

Then that will evolve.

Everyone can see what that writing on the wall means.

And it doesn't mean lengthy theatrical windows.

It means eventually those movies are going to get to Netflix as soon as possible.

And the consumer will know they don't have to see it in theaters.

In fact, maybe they shouldn't go to theaters at all.

Yeah, I mean, it's been amply proven that movies that come out in theaters tend to do better once they make their way to streaming because there has been that cultural conversation already because it did feel like an event.

Movies that just appear on streaming often make no noise whatsoever.

So you would think it would be in Netflix's best interest to still put movies out in theaters.

They do a very perfunctory theatrical release for their Oscar contenders, but they'd really rather people see those movies live.

in the comfort of their own home, those are really just done to satisfy Oscar rules and filmmakers who are agitating to have some sort of theatrical component.

But I think once there's no more theatrical component to be had, if theaters really do go the way of the dodo, that's not going to be something that Netflix is crying about whatsoever.

And I think, you know, Netflix has had movies that can and do make money if they're released in theaters.