Films are heading to streaming services quicker, concludes new report

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The time it takes a big new cinema release to hit a streaming service has fallen under 100 days on average for the first time.

Often when we’re covering stories about disappearing theatrical exclusivity windows, it’s the gap between a film leaving cinemas and its debut on premium video on demand that makes the headlines. With such gaps sometimes being just a matter of weeks, that’s often where stories focus, but a new report suggests that the most worrying trend could actually lie elsewhere.

As covered by Flat Panels HD (via Dark Horizons), the market research firm Omdia has studied the last four years of releases and arrived at the conclusion that the gap between cinema release and PVOD (premium video on demand) release has actually increased slightly since 2021. Meanwhile, it’s actually the distance between a cinema release and appearance of the same film on a subscription streaming service that has considerably shrunk.

A couple of caveats though: the study only covers the US and has only tracked ‘big’ releases. With that in mind, the study’s results found that ‘PVOD was around 27 days in 2021, 38 in 2022, 39 in 2023 and then 37 days in 2024.’

Given all of the concern about PVOD eroding theatrical exclusivity, that number appearing to slowly curve upwards is a little heartening, even if last year’s 37 days sees it drop slightly.

The more concerning statistic examines the window between a film’s theatrical release and its eventual premiere on a subscription streaming platform. That figure ‘fell from 128 days in 2021 to 110 in 2022, 104 in 2023 and just under 100 in 2024’, the first time it has dipped below the 100-day level.

In a way, that’s actually a far more alarming figure to see dip so steeply, because at least PVOD asks audiences to pay a substantial extra cost to see a film in the comfort of their own homes, with studios often sharing a portion of that one-time payment with cinemas.

Seeing films premiere on subscription streaming services increasingly quickly is perhaps more worrying. Because should that number continue to drop, it will train audiences to simply forego the cinema and wait for a film to pop op on streaming.

Maybe we’re just being ‘outmoded’ in wanting to see cinemas to somehow stay alive, as Netflix’s CEO Ted Sarandos wants us to believe.

Maybe we would all be better off watching films on our phones.

Or maybe not. This year’s CinemaCon saw news emerge that several major studios were in negotiations to bring back a ‘hard’ exclusivity window of 45 days before a film debuts on PVOD or streaming. That would help the average shift to PVOD climb somewhat further, but looking at this new report, it’s perhaps the window between a film leaving cinemas and its appearance on streaming services that should be concerning us.