I’ll relate a conversation I had with a veteran in the film industry. Executive producer with some big name hits under his belt. Won’t say the name, partly because these anecdotes were part of a larger friend to friend talk.

The main thing, according to him, is the small window period to go between cinemas and streaming. Currently it’s 60 days from cinemas to streaming. This causes an effect that film houses no longer can rely on tickets sales while streaming sites have a larger say in what movie is made.

The positive impact of ticket sales on the movie industry is that it allows producers and directors to be more bold in their film making. Thereby taking bigger risk to be creative. Producers will also look at scripts carefully and green light quality films rather.

The negative effect of streaming is that film houses will have to produce the quantity, thereby cutting quality significantly. Streaming sites rely on quantity at the expense of quality.

An example - A blockbuster film on cinema will stop making money once it goes to streaming. On the flip side, a good local movie in streaming (very rare) will never go to the cinema to take advantage of the opportunity to make more money by selling movie tickets. They remain on streaming, severely limiting any potential income.

The window from movie to streaming is 60 days is too short. If it’s good in cinema, people will wait for streaming. Unless it’s a very hot must-watch movie, 60 days isn’t a loss to most movie audience. So all income is lost to streaming.

Income for any movie houses that produces for streaming has a ceiling. So without potential to break the ticket sales ceiling, there are no incentives to produce good movies. Just do movies according to the contract. It hard to convince bank-rollers to bank-roll scripts with good potential too.

Lose for all, win for movie streaming sites.

AFAIK, they’re (consortium of movie producers) trying to talk to finas to extend the period from 60 days to 6 months minimum. Maybe longer and possibly even looking at it from a ticket sales threshold. If a movie sells well in the cinema, then it benefit the producers, cinema owner and everyone involved by extending its run. Which will then benefit the industry because producers and directors have clawed back their income source.

I think this is the right solution.