Throughout the year we’ve seen big changes to our favourite entertainment platforms as adjustments have been required to continue delivering the service we’ve come to expect at a time where businesses, even the biggest, have been struggling. Even those that have been seeing tremendous growth such as online gambling sites found at thebestcasinos.co.uk have had to make adjustments as changes to regulation such as Gamstop required a different approach to delivering online gaming to the audience – but gaming isn’t the only online service to have made an adjustment as it seems online streaming providers are too, and perhaps to the detriment of offline entertainment.
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Earlier this year when Disney released Hamilton directly to their online streaming platform, there had been suggestions that perhaps some other big studios would follow in forgoing cinema release for a direct streaming release, and it seems that some are willing to trial that – Warner Bros, who are behind huge upcoming releases such as Dune have recently announced that they will be releasing everything directly to HBO Max on the same day that they’re released in the cinema throughout 2021 due to unprecedented times – and whilst this is seemingly a short trial run with nothing announced for beyond 2021, it’s safe to say that any success here could see the same approach continued.
What could also be interesting, however, is that if Warner Bros find success here, others may follow – Disney have already stated they’d like to put a more increased focus on the streaming platform and with titles such as Mulan releasing directly to Disney+ earlier this year, it’s sensible to think they’ll continue doing the same and with big brands such as Marvel in their collection, that’s certainly a chunk of the popular big releases that could move to online very early. Whilst other studios may not have direct contacts with any online streaming service, this provides an opportunity for the other giants such as Netflix and Amazon to perhaps start scoring exclusive deals to see other new releases move straight to their platform and forgo the cinema too, which would go hand in hand with the original content that has been put out over the past few years.
This adjustment could have bigger implications than some realise however – streaming services have somewhat fallen on hard times despite the huge success this year, as a growing number have become available, subscription cancelling has become all too common particularly as the libraries haven’t received huge overhauls. Similarly the cinema industry has been struggling too as people have been less willing to pay the huge prices of admission, with this year being a particular struggle if this shift to online is as successful as has already been seen, then we could lose a huge established part of the entertainment industry. It’s certainly an interesting proposition and one many will be closely following, with some very anticipated releases being delayed until next year, we could be in for another very online focussed year with little reason to get out to the brick and mortar locations.