Seventy Million was a high price for Apple to provide one blockbuster movie. I don’t see how Apple or any streaming service can shell out that kind of money for a $5/month subscription. Apple did not charge ‘admission’ to watch ‘Greyhound.’ I don’t see where it’s any better for Apple to have two hundred million views rather than 20 views other than publicity and hype.
Another call for AI to add back the thumbs down option or at least a head-slap emoji.
Seventy Million was a high price for Apple to provide one blockbuster movie. I don’t see how Apple or any streaming service can shell out that kind of money for a $5/month subscription. Apple did not charge ‘admission’ to watch ‘Greyhound.’ I don’t see where it’s any better for Apple to have two hundred million views rather than 20 views other than publicity and hype.
Apple owns the distribution rights for the movie just like Netflix owns the rights for movies like The Irishman. Some streaming content makes it to Blu-Ray but for streaming, it will remain exclusively on Apple TV+. That means that if anyone wants to watch these movies in future, they need to subscribe to the service. All original/exclusive streaming content is an investment in subscriber acquisition and retention and the more content like this the better. If the distribution terms allow for it, Apple can still do a cinema release in future if they want to profit from it more.
Theatre and streaming don't appear to compete with each other given the following info:
According to those stats, the average for moviegoers is about 4 theatre visits per year. Frequent visitors are described as going once a month or more. This makes sense when you see the list of the top movies released:
There's only about 10-20 movies released each year that any given individual would want to make a trip to the cinema to watch. People don't just watch 90 minutes of content per month on streaming services.
The low number of quality movies being produced every year will limit how much Apple will be able to do something like this. Commissioning projects with Spielberg, Samuel L Jackson, Tom Hanks is a good way to go though.
The good thing with a subscriber service is recurring revenue. If they sustain 20 million subscribers per month at $5/month, that's $100m/month revenue they can put towards acquiring content, whether it's purchasing distribution rights or commissioning exclusive projects from the start.
Premium TV shows can give better value for money. They can be made for $1-5m per episode so they offer more viewing hours per dollar spent. But movies tend to hold a higher esteem than TV content so it's good to have a mixture.
The production budget for Greyhound is listed as $50m:
Even if Apple produced it from the ground up, it would have cost a similar amount to what they paid with the same end result. If Apple sustains a budget of $100m/month, they can easily handle an exclusive movie per month plus 1 exclusive TV episode per day. The more content, the more subscribers, the higher the budget.
Streaming services like Apple and Netflix are doing much the same as the theatre distribution companies like Sony. They acquire the rights to sell content to the public. When it goes to a theatre, they make money on ticket sales. With streaming, they make the money from the subscribers and it's a safer model because Apple is bidding with money they already have. Theatre distribution companies have to make a loss then recoup the money from sales. From a direct financial perspective, the viewer count doesn't affect streaming services but all the content on the service still has to attract paying subscribers just like with TV ratings. People will still pay for TV channels even when the viewer ratings go down but the show will be cancelled if that happens because it affects subscriber acquisition and retention.
Watched the movie this evening... it was very marginal in terms of the screenplay and the production just felt... sort of odd.
The CGI was top notch but it sort of felt filmed in a box and then everything outside the box was CGI. Star Trek comes to mind as an example.
I think Apple and Hanks did each other a favor. The movie was not good enough for a wide screen release and I'll assume all parties involved could sense that yet Tom Hanks still brings eyeballs even on his subpar outings. So Apple got lots of new eyeballs and Hanks got to save a very mediocre movie.
It was a bit better than I was expecting. The visuals were quite spectacular, but the characters were sort of flat and one-dimensional... just filling screen time.
Comments
Another call for AI to add back the thumbs down option or at least a head-slap emoji.
Theatre and streaming don't appear to compete with each other given the following info:
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187073/tickets-sold-at-the-north-american-box-office-since-1980/
https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MPAA-Theatrical-Market-Statistics-2016_Final.pdf
According to those stats, the average for moviegoers is about 4 theatre visits per year. Frequent visitors are described as going once a month or more. This makes sense when you see the list of the top movies released:
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/cumulative/released-in-2019
There's only about 10-20 movies released each year that any given individual would want to make a trip to the cinema to watch. People don't just watch 90 minutes of content per month on streaming services.
The low number of quality movies being produced every year will limit how much Apple will be able to do something like this. Commissioning projects with Spielberg, Samuel L Jackson, Tom Hanks is a good way to go though.
The good thing with a subscriber service is recurring revenue. If they sustain 20 million subscribers per month at $5/month, that's $100m/month revenue they can put towards acquiring content, whether it's purchasing distribution rights or commissioning exclusive projects from the start.
Premium TV shows can give better value for money. They can be made for $1-5m per episode so they offer more viewing hours per dollar spent. But movies tend to hold a higher esteem than TV content so it's good to have a mixture.
The production budget for Greyhound is listed as $50m:
https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Greyhound-(2020)#tab=summary
Even if Apple produced it from the ground up, it would have cost a similar amount to what they paid with the same end result. If Apple sustains a budget of $100m/month, they can easily handle an exclusive movie per month plus 1 exclusive TV episode per day. The more content, the more subscribers, the higher the budget.
Streaming services like Apple and Netflix are doing much the same as the theatre distribution companies like Sony. They acquire the rights to sell content to the public. When it goes to a theatre, they make money on ticket sales. With streaming, they make the money from the subscribers and it's a safer model because Apple is bidding with money they already have. Theatre distribution companies have to make a loss then recoup the money from sales. From a direct financial perspective, the viewer count doesn't affect streaming services but all the content on the service still has to attract paying subscribers just like with TV ratings. People will still pay for TV channels even when the viewer ratings go down but the show will be cancelled if that happens because it affects subscriber acquisition and retention.
A MUST SEE!!!!