The pandemic accelerated the disruption. Traditional studios like Paramount, Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney have diverted dozens of theatrical films to streaming services or released them in theaters and online simultaneously. For the second year in a row, citing the threat of the coronavirus, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allowed films to completely skip a theatrical release and still qualify for Oscars. The academy had previously demanded a perfunctory theatrical release of at least a week in Los Angeles.
This is about more than Hollywood selfishness. The concern is that, as streaming services grow — there are now more than 300 operating in the United States, according to consulting firm Parks Associates — theaters could become exclusively the land of superheroes, sequels and remakes. The venerable Warner Bros. has cut annual theater production by nearly half and built a direct-to-stream movie assembly line. Last week, Amazon gave its Prime Video service a boost by acquiring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the old-fashioned studio behind “Licorice Pizza,” which has been nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
In a year when Hollywood largely failed to jump-start theatrical films, streaming services tightened their grip on viewers. According to the Motion Picture Association, worldwide ticket sales were $21.3 billion in 2021, up from $42.3 billion in 2019. (Theatres were closed for much of 2020.) Some theater companies have gone out of business, others have merged; The world’s largest theater chain, AMC Entertainment, has suffered $6 billion in losses over the past two years, and its stock is down 66 percent since June. At the same time, subscriptions to online video services worldwide grew to 1.3 billion, from 864 million in 2019, the group said.
One film that struggled at the box office was Mr. Spielberg, who (at his wish) received an exclusive cinema screening of about three months. It collected approximately $75 million worldwide (against a $100 million production budget and worldwide marketing costs of approximately $50 million). “West Side Story” is now available on not one but two streaming services, Disney+ and HBO Max, where it has almost certainly been watched more widely than in theaters. But the film never managed—among Oscar voters—to recover from being branded a box office misfire. It received seven nominations, and is set to win in one category for Ariana DeBose as Best Supporting Actress.
Spielberg’s presence in the current Oscar race makes the rise of streaming candidates all the more striking: a lion in the battle to keep the Academy Awards focused on theatrical films is being brushed aside.
As unlikely as it is, it’s possible that “West Side Story” will come from behind and win the trophy for best photo. So was Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” for that matter. Such an outcome would be a bit like 2019, when academy voters, sidelined by an over-the-top Netflix campaign to push “Roma” to top photo glory, instead gave the award to “Green Book,” a traditional film. from Universal photos.
