Black Widow: Imax boss thinks Disney+ release hurt film’s box office

Last Updated on August 10, 2021

Much has been made about Disney experimenting with releasing some of their films day-and-date in theaters and in-home via their Disney+ Premier Access program and Black Widow has been the focus of much of that attention. After the film's pandemic-era best opening weekend of $80 million and Disney+ opening weekend revenue of $60 million reported by Disney, the film has seen substantial tumbles in its subsequent weekends. Theater owners have blamed its performance on the film also being available via streaming which has left it open to a ton of piracy and Imax CEO Rich Gelfond is also siding with that sentiment. 

During Imax's Q2 2021 earning call, Gelfond commented on Black Widow's performance and on the notion that he believes the simultaneous release model will not be the new normal moving forward. Here is what he had to say about Black Widow's box office results:

"There’s really no question in my mind that the combination of PVOD and a lot of piracy –people haven’t really talked about it that much– clearly, there’s a lot of piracy that accounted for the cannibalization, and it significantly affected the box office at the end of the day."

In regards to this model being used moving forward, Gelfond said, "Every studio has seen the same data that Disney has seen. What Disney did is experiment during the pandemic, which is what they said they were going to do. I remember [Disney CEO] Bob Chapek saying at one of their investor days that when times are normal, he thinks theatrical is important, exclusivity is important and I think when he looks at his data and the pandemic is in the rearview mirror that he'll come to the same conclusion that everyone else does: The way to maximize value is to have a theatrical window."

Gelfond believes that the theatrical window will be respected more as the pandemic eases because studios will see that they're only really selling their property off once with the streaming strategy. It hits theaters and then it goes straight to home or it debuts at home exclusively. Pre-pandemic, you had a theatrical release, PVOD, streaming, a Blu-ray release, etc. He believes studios will want to go back to that.

"They used to sell the same property five times, and now they’re selling it once. They might be bringing some revenue forward, but there’s no proof points that it’s a better model. A lot of the same people, they will come to the same conclusion."

When addressing Black Widow again, Gelfond compares its performance to that of Fast 9. The latest Fast sequel respected the theatrical window and isn't hitting PVOD until tomorrow and the film is likely to end its global run without $700 million. Black Widow has grossed $316.3 million worldwide in pure box office and may not see much more than that, especially if it can't secure a release in China:

"It's hard to quantify it, but some statistics I find interesting is that F9, which is the more traditional distribution model, will gross about $700 million worldwide at the end of its run, and Black Widow will gross half of that. Black Widow was a great movie, so when I think about it, there was no doubt a lot of money was left on the table."

Gelfond was pretty optimistic about the future of the moviegoing experience since there are some significant releases left this year that will be respecting the theatrical window including Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Top Gun: Maverick. Gelfond also said that "Every studio has a 45-day window next year" so he believes the studios that tried the streaming and theatrical release model won't move forward with the tactic after this year.

Do YOU agree with the assessment of the Imax boss?