Here’s an odd one that businesses usually try to avoid: demand without supply.
The opposite, supply without demand, is also undesirable.
The former is happening in the videogame sector due to extreme demand for the new Playstation 5 and Xbox consoles. Online scalping bots have added to the pain and scooped up available units only to resell at a profit.
There is no secondary legal scalping market for new movies. Supply isn’t really an issue — and yet kind of is, since the studios want to release these movies in theaters only, but with a limited number of theaters open it is creating areas where tickets can’t conveniently be bought. Where does this show up on the financial spreadsheet for studio revenue? Lost ticket sales due to unopened theaters, I guess, would be the data column.
A few times in 2020 new movies have been released in theaters open in some areas of the United States. The closest theater open near us is almost 250 miles away. Despite our love for the cinematic experience watching new movies that far away means we’ll have to wait. We need to see movies locally or if we’re on vacation within say a 50 mile radius to be practical.
Last week, Sony released the videogame movie Monster Hunter, this week on Christmas day, two new movies were released that are only available in theaters: Promising Young Woman and Tom Hanks in his first western called News of The World.
Since VOD isn’t an option — and even if it was — we’d probably only pay $20 to watch one of these three (I’d opt for Monster Hunter, but Kara probably would opt for Promising Young Woman), we’re not going to be watching and reviewing any of these until, at the earliest possibly, January 4, 2020 when theater reopen if these movies are still showing theatrically.
No reason to think they won’t be, but also no reason to believe our local government won’t push back the reopening date for movie theaters again, as they were supposed to be reopen on December 14, which would have allowed us to see all of these movies in theaters.
There’s actually a fourth new movie in theaters we’d like to see that we did preview (see: FIRST LOOK: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) That anime film based on a popular series is only showing outside the United States and it’s doing really well financially. I’m sure someday it will be made available to watch in America, but no date has been announced as of this writing.
It’s good to have new movies waiting, but it seems a little silly that there are moviegoers who want to see movies and they are not conveniently available. In the past I’ve complained about LIMITED releases this way. They show up in a few theaters, either independent, arthouse, or large cities only. This might be a way for a movie to test audiences in various areas around the country, in a world where there are a bunch of different ways to screen new movies conveniently, it is an archaic distribution procedure.
Meanwhile, Wonder Woman 1984 and Soul are two other new movies that were meant to be released in theaters originally. Wonder Woman 1984 of course controversially was made day and date available also on HBO Max and Disney chose to release Soul directly to Disney+. We have watched and reviewed both of those movies.
Of the four movies mentioned above, can you see any at theaters nearby in your area? Do you have any interest in seeing any of them? Or are you waiting for these movies to come to VOD or streaming?
Movies, Movies, Movies 