Theaters Had a Grim May. Streaming Movies Fared Worse
What the hell just happened to straight-to-streaming films? What we missed while worrying about the box office — and what Netflix and Prime Video need to do now
The Entertainment Strategy Guy writes for The Ankler every two weeks. Subscribe to his own standalone newsletter for access to all of his weekly streaming ratings reports.
As someone who makes their living following streaming ratings week in and week out, I wish we got them as quickly as we receive box office receipts. By Monday morning — heck, by mid-day Sunday — we know which films bombed and which soared to high heights. For streaming, we have to wait four weeks to get Nielsen’s data.
Naturally, this puts a lot more attention on the multiplex than the streamers.
For example, there was no shortage of coverage of May’s dismal box office performance (including me, along with excellent pieces by The Ankler’s Sean McNulty and Richard Rushfield). But how many people realize that the summer slate of straight-to-streaming films is not only doing horribly right now, but it’s laden with more flops, bombs and misses than the multiplex?
In sum, as bad a May as theaters had, streaming’s was worse.
That’s what I want to show you today, along with a whole bunch of strategic takeaways and some advice for the streamers.
In this article, I will explore:
Netflix’s IP problem that’s different from the rest of Hollywood’s
Four straight-to-streaming flops that debuted in May
Two meh performers which were mistakenly labeled hits
How these films rate to recent comparable theatrical films in their streaming performance
Three things that went wrong for straight-to-streaming movies in May
Netflix’s spend-to-hits ratio and what it can do to improve the performance of its original films