Jaws Drop As Universal Films Are Banished From Cinemas
Had Steven Spielberg's Jaws been released at cinemas in 2020 chances are you'd be hard pushed to find it on the big screen.
You wouldn't find it on any AMC, Odeon or Cineworld screens, as they have vowed not to show any Universal films post lockdown. The reason?
It all started with the release of Trolls World Tour for premium rental at home. It's been quite the success, raking in almost $100 million, which has prompted the home of Jaws to look at the way it releases features in future, one of those being mooted is the simultaneous release at home as well as on the big screen.
Jeff Shell, president and chief executive of NBCUniversal, parent company of Universal Pictures, told the Wall Street Journal the film had "exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability" of streaming.
"As soon as theatres reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats."
And that has had cinema owners throwing their popcorn in the air. Not only could it mean less bums on seats but also less sales of drinks and snacks, which is where cinemas make most of their money over ticket sales.
And when those ticket sales could be the next Titantic, Avatar or Avengers: Endgame that means lots of potential loss of income if they are paying premium prices to watch it at home.
It's somewhat ironic that this potential change in the releasing of films comes from the studio that brought us the first film to cross the $100 million box office barrier, Jaws. And he is still king of the horror box office.
That was one of the first films to get a wide release across the country at the same time, rather than gradually across the big cities, coupled with a memorable and aggressive marketing campaign. That's essentially been the norm in Hollywood for the last 45 years...until now.
Time and tide wait for no man. But does that really mean that Odeon, AMC and Cineworld won't screen the upcoming Universal distributed likes of the latest Fast And The Furious film, James Bond film No Time To Die or future Jurassic World films?
As film and Jaws fans we know that there is nothing quite like seeing Jaws on the big screen, as it stands it could well mean that there are less screens for us to potentially see any re release of Jaws on.
Of course there is no guarantee of how a post lockdown film would perform as a home release, but we also don't know how long we'll be socially disntancing for or how soon people will be that happy to sit close quarters in a cinema screen.
It will be interesting to see if Steven Spielberg enters the debate himself, with three of his films that were once the highest grossing films of all time - Jaws, E. T. - the Extra Terrestrial and Jurassic Park - he'd certainly be more qualified than many to have an opinion. And who released all of those films? Universal, naturally.
Where do you stand on the debate?
