In a world where postponement is highly probable for anything we care about due to COVID-19 yet another release has been cancelled. It’s unclear at this time when they will reschedule the release for but it is very clear that they want to make some money off this movie. Disney has cancelled their Black Widow May 1st release and have decided to postpone it.
Can they adapt?
While other companies such as Universal have adapted and said that their movies would be available through Video on Demand Disney has yet to announce any such strategy. They would no doubt be losing money in the long run since by purchasing the film to watch just once they could be missing out on at least two to three other ticket sales, assuming the whole family is watching. Likely there won’t be any watch parties happening while everyone is on lockdown but seeing as Disney makes a lot of money off family expenditures this could be massive for them. They are probably going to wait until they see what Trolls World Tour brings in as far as revenue to gauge what kind of profit margin they can make.
This could also be in the wake of how their current Pixar movie Onward is performing. No doubt they are suffering due to the many movie chains that are now closed and will lose quite a bit of money off their new family picture.
The entire entertainment industry is put on hold as many productions have been postponed due to the virus. And that includes many Disney shows as well. Not to mention that they have shut down their parks in hopes that the general public will make safer decisions. They are losing money by the second and it may be worth visiting the option for Video on Demand for some of their releases and going by the honor system where people can put in the number of people watching. Or charge $30 to watch it and just assume three people are in the room.
With AMC and Regal closed for an unspecified amount of time this might be the start of a change in how we watch movies.
