The short answer to the different ways you have of asking the same question: don’t expect James Cameron’s new movie to hit Disney Plus 45 or 60 days after its theatrical release, on December 16. The long answer: Disney is going to follow a completely different strategy with this movie than it has followed so far with its Marvel titles, from the release of Thor Love and Thunder and Doctor Strange 2 , through Lightyear and Enchantment .. The withdrawal of the original film Avatar from the catalog of the Disney Plus platform to re-release it again on September 30 in theaters three months after the official release of Avatar 2 in theaters is a sign of what will happen in the future. with this movie.
Disney is looking for a way to value its movies beyond just feeding the Disney Plus catalog. Avatar continues to be the movie Avatar continues to be the highest grossing movie in movie history, ahead of Avengers: Endgame, 2,847 million dollars compared to 2,798 million dollars (and the distance will be greater with the September revival, no matter how little box office it can do). But it is not in these figures that you have to look to understand why Disney changes its strategy and is going to try a new model. The figures to look at are these others: the 1,355 million dollars raised at the box office by Top Gun Maverick and the 1,901 million dollars raised by Spider-Man: No Way Home , under the wing, remember, of Sony. In the crisis that movie theaters are experiencing, there are products that require a return to the classic distribution model. And it’s not because Thor Love and Thunder did poorly at the box office (737 million dollars) or because Doctor Strange 2there has been a bump (it has raised 955 million dollars). It is a question of potential. Marvel is a cross-platform product, as is Star Wars.
There is an audience that goes to the movies, that will make box office sales that could reach 1,000 million dollars and that, at the same time, will nourish the Disney Plus catalog. Avatar 2 will be followed in theaters by Avatar 3, Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 . The universe will continue to be built in the cinema and that is the idea that Disney thinks (or should think) that we must persevere.
It remains to be seen whether Marvel has numbed our capacity for surprise and Avatar 2 ‘s special effects festival has the same effect in 2022 as Avatar had.in 2009, before there was anything called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Disney is going to do an interesting experiment to see if it should change arrival times on its platform or not. The fact that Avatar is re-released and removed from Disney Plus allows us to gauge interest in the franchise: how many times are viewers willing to go to the movies to see Avatar? How many new viewers who didn’t see Avatar in 2009 are willing to see it now? Many times we forget about new generations of movie fans. What is the real interest of the public in 2022 for the saga? Yes, in 2009 an unparalleled entertainment movie phenomenon was created (as Avengers: Endgame also created it, beware), but what now? Movie theaters are in crisis, partly caused by the pandemic,
The experiment is double because by removing the film from the catalog they are also doing a stress test with Disney Plus subscribers: will a Disney Plus subscriber who until now has been able to see Avatar when they feel like going to the movies also be willing? to see the movie? It is an interesting fact. In retail there is an economic concept called like-for-like sales and it measures how much money a store earns when it expands and opens a store near another. How much more money do you earn? How much money do you earn less? What Disney is doing here is the exact same thing. And he does it because he has in his hands a product that until now has been eminently cinematographic. This is not to say that Marvel or Pixar are not.
Pixar is clearly in a Rubicon, at a time of change. With Marvel it is clear that the public responds differently to different stimuli and that it creates products for cinema and television that are closely linked, but that, at the same time, make consumption in cinemas less and less important or that the importance depends on the product. I mean, you might as well watch Ant-Man Quantumania or Thor Love and Thunder quietly at home, 60 days after the theatrical release, but you want to see The Fantastic Four or Avengers: Kang Dynasty in theaters.
