One Outcome of COVID-19 May be More Movies Skipping Theaters, Straight to VOD

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The COVID-19 pandemic will increase transactional video on-demand significantly, according to a new transactional VOD (TVOD) forecast from Parks Associates.

The firm’s “OTT Video Market Tracker” found that in the first quarter of the year 14% of all US broadband households used a TVOD service in the past 30 days, which is a five percentage point increase over the previous year. Examples of this type of service are Amazon Prime Video, FandangoNow and VUDU. The firm says that usage will spike as content – including early access to theatrical releases – moves to TVOD.

“The idea of streaming current in-theater films was once a concept from a proposed streaming service called The Screening Room,” Parks Associates’ Research Director Steve Nason said in a press release. “This service never officially launched, but the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the concept behind it into reality. Many steps in content windowing were narrowing already, but the current shelter-in-place orders pushed the digital distribution of new theatrical content to the front to offset the lost revenue from closed movie theaters.”

The press release and report point out that Disney has expedited release of titles through its SVOD service Disney+. For instance, it released Frozen II three months before planned and added Onward more quickly than anticipated.

A decision for studios is if they should release theatrical titles straight to VOD platforms and services or push them back to premiere in theaters once the COVID-19 emergency abates, the researchers note.