With movie theaters struggling to pull in the same sized audiences they used to pull in before the pandemic, Hollywood has made considerable changes to their theatres-to-home media windows. Now, if a movie isn’t a financial hit, studios routinely release films to PVOD within weeks of their theatrical debut to capitalize on the publicity of theatrical campaigns. We’ve seen this happen over and over again with movies that didn’t perform up to expectations (such as The Fall Guy), and now New Line’s buzzy horror flick Companion makes its VOD debut only eighteen days after its theatrical release.
Directed by Drew Hancock, Companion is produced by Barbarian’s Zach Cregger, and stars Sophie Thatcher as a young woman on a weekend getaway with her tech-bro boyfriend, played by The Boys’ Jack Quaid. Of course, there’s a MAJOR twist the trailers spoiled, but if you don’t know what it is, I’m not going to spoil it here.
The reviews for this one were great (our own Tyler Nichols loved it), but despite a better-than-average B CinemaScore rating (high for a horror flick), the movie struggled to find an audience in theaters. To date, it’s only made $19 million domestically. As such, it’s no surprise that WB wants to capitalize on the movie’s word-of-mouth, with it also likely to hit MAX within the next few weeks (no date has been announced yet).
However, this does beg the question that if audiences know a movie will be available to watch at home within three weeks of opening day, does that prevent them from going to see a potential sleeper hit? It’s hard to say, as the windows aren’t all that much shorter for movies that are hits, with Universal also releasing One of Them Days on PVOD today (thirty days after it opened), despite that movie having been a solid hit. They even put out Dog Man (which opened the same day as Companion), which is still making loads of money at the box office, so I guess they figure it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end. Wicked, one of the year’s biggest hits, hit VOD within six weeks of opening but still made a mint. Maybe the notion that a movie being available digitally keeps audiences away from theaters is old-fashioned? Let us know what you think in the comments!
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