SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME Remains At #1 As It Looks To Swing Past AVATAR's Domestic Box Office Record

@bobevanz - it definitely worked, especially since the nostalgia-bait worked excellent into the plot

@bobevanz - And yet it absolutely made HBO/WB a winner in streaming. BUT since that ship, and it is, imo, the last ship, has sailed I can't see any purpose for it in the future. That said since the purpose of HBO/WB in going day and date had nothing to do with theater box office, theoretically it could happen again.

@lordSTALE - They shut out anyone else from entering the market in a major way. It's getting very clear that there will be no other major players in that market. Had they waited then it just would have been Netflix and Disney. That is unless Netflix goes bust which while unlikely is possible even given their one glaring weakness.

Also understand that for WB/HBO being a streamer is even more critical since they are without a network.

@JDL - I get your new point, but that still doesn't make them "a winner in streaming" when they literally struggled to gain subscribers, then lost almost 2 million subscribers, and only gained those back by DRASTICALLY reducing their prices, and this with the help of completely sacrificing WB's entire 2021 movie slate so they can have big blockbuster streaming exclusives 🤷🏽‍♂️

Not really "a winner in streaming" and more like "a loser of a lot of money just to keep their streaming app alive in the growing marketplace" 🧐

@Blergh - "go whole or home, I say." "Either release a film directly for streaming and not in theatres or just in theatres."

In normal times I would agree. These times were not normal.

"It's important to note that studios want max profit but viewers don't respond well to have dual options."

"Having both devalues the theatre going experience and makes these films feel like glorified Netflix exclusives to potential viewers."

"When I, as a "normal viewer", have the option between watching Spidey or Matrix 4 in theatres I'd pick Spidey because "I can watch Matrix at home anyways".

That's nice. It's an opinion though, not a fact.

"The box-office speaks for itself, WB devalued its big franchise movies. Suicide Squad, Matrix, Space Jam and Conjuring have been bonafide flops compared to other studios releases like F9, Spidey, Bond, Venon or Shang-Chi certainly proved that even because of Corona they wouldn't neccessarily be flops."

Those WB films weren't even close in anything you could name other than runtime to the ones you were comparing them to. Good grief.

"Dune and Godzilla were their only hits but they would have been 1B flicks otherwise"

Godzilla might well have done a billion, but Dune ? Seriously ? I just can't see it. But at least 2 or 3 hundred million more I could believe.

This was a business decision. By going this route they are betting 1) that in the long term something like this is going to happen again* and if it did they would not survive intact. They might even end up under water, 2) if they were going to set up a global streamer it would have to be now. In my learned opinion setting the streamer up was much more about long term survival than additional revenue.

*If another pandemic like event hits many theaters are going to go under and once gone WILL NOT RETURN. If screens fall to say, 2/3rd's of what is current, fewer films will get made and those that do will be made more cheaply. What does get made will favor streamers and TV.

@JDL - Losing a ton of money in both streaming and at the box office in 2021, just for a "CHANCE to compete" makes them a winner for that year? Okay 😉

And this is after looking at their business results worldwide. They took a massive L 🤷🏽‍♂️

@Kadara - As I have made clear this was not about short term profits.

@DoubleD - It looks like another Emmerich piece of garbage.