Movie Theater Owners Blame Black Widow’s Underperformance on Disney+ Release and Piracy

Tsing

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Image: Marvel Studios



Despite surpassing $215 million between the global box office and Disney+ Premier Access in its opening weekend, Marvel Studios’ latest MCU film, Black Widow, ended up suffering from a massive drop of 41 percent in its second weekend. The National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) has now given its thoughts on the predicament, alleging that Black Widow’s underperformance can be pinned strictly on Disney’s eagerness to launch the movie through its streaming service day and date with theaters. One of NATO’s major arguments pertains to piracy; Black Widow is reportedly “the most torrented movie for the week ending July 12” and “available on myriad illegal streaming sites all over the Internet.” NATO stresses that releasing films exclusively to theaters first is a better idea, as it traditionally results in more revenue for all stakeholders involved...
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You would have thought Hollywood would remember that Sex Sells.

And despite having two of the hottest female starts, they managed to strangle every bit of sex out of this movie.
 
The bottom line is that not every tom, dick, and harry is in a rush to get back to the theater either. Sure the numbers might've been a bit bigger without streaming but at this point, those theater owners are dreaming if they thought all the revenue Disney got would've been theirs, to begin with. Denial from theater owners, and the industry in general, goes back decades and they'll always find ways to blame someone else rather than accept that between ticket pricing, and the increased availability of high-quality HT setups, the desire has decreased dramatically in the last 10 years. There will, eventually, be $1B blockbusters again but we're not even close to that happening yet. Can only imagine what they were smoking if they thought this was going to be that big.
 
I kind of liked it, but not MCU finest. The story was so-so, Scarlett Johanson is ok, Florence Pugh steals the show,, Rachel Weiz and David Harbour also do fine , the villains are the weakest part, there's really no sense of danger and the ending is meh!

BTW isn't Olga Kurylenko like 5 years older than Scarlett Johanson? The age difference is very apparent as Antonia seems like an early teenager and Natasha seems 25ish when the incident in Budapest. Flash forward and Taskmaster actually looks older than Black Widow.
 
I'm just not incredibly interested in seeing this. I'm fine with waiting for it to go non premium on Disney +.
 
I don't think piracy is a factor in this, those who pirate won't go to theaters. In fact I'd bet disney+ converted a lot of pirates into paying customers, because often the reason for piracy is the convenience of not having to leave the comfort of your home.

if it was parallel releases that killed ticket sales it should've killed the opening weekend too. There is no logical reason for it not to.

This is more likely word of mouth and maybe a bit of disney buying their own tickets to fake a success to investors. As there were numerous reports of empty but sold out theaters.
 
Yeah, because the wise consumers didn't predict over 2-years-ago, that the BW movie was going to be a huge flop, like ALL C-class superheroes/villians movies e.g. Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn movies' disasters, and ESPECIALLY after Bree Larson hateful campaign against men (wait until the next CM 2 movie huge flop compared to the 1st film) and Disney for its veey sick FORCED woke agenda now.

Mulan super failure
Black Widow super failure

What does these two movies share together, is the huge problem.

Get woke, go broke!
 
GunShot said:
Yeah, because the wise consumers didn't predict over 2-years-ago, that the BW movie was going to be a huge flop, like ALL C-class superheroes/villians movies e.g. Suicide Squad and Harley Quinn movies' disasters, and ESPECIALLY after Bree Larson hateful campaign against men (wait until the next CM 2 movie huge flop compared to the 1st film) and Disney for its veey sick FORCED woke agenda now.

Mulan super failure
Black Widow super failure

What does these two movies share together, is the huge problem.

Get woke, go broke!
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Wow... it is 100% c list movies not the fear of someone laughing at your peen thatf has people like me not very interested in this movie. Just want to put it out there tthst even the other 'woke' movies you listed were actually good and I look forward to the next captain marvel movie.

Just because you see a correlation you want to see doesn't mean it is a causation.
 
That's a first for me. Seeing someone who actually says they liked captain marvel.
 
Captain Marvel was middle of the pack in the MCU movies. It wasn’t the best, but it certainly wasn’t the worst.
 
MadMummy76 said:
I don't think piracy is a factor in this, those who pirate won't go to theaters. In fact I'd bet disney+ converted a lot of pirates into paying customers, because often the reason for piracy is the convenience of not having to leave the comfort of your home.

if it was parallel releases that killed ticket sales it should've killed the opening weekend too. There is no logical reason for it not to.

This is more likely word of mouth and maybe a bit of disney buying their own tickets to fake a success to investors. As there were numerous reports of empty but sold out theaters.
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Yes we do... I mean, yes they do go to theaters. :D :D 😉😉
 
I think there is a lot going on here and there isn't any single reason why this movie isn't doing well. I haven't seen it and therefore can't speak to how good it is or isn't. That being said, we know Black Widow's ultimate fate in the MCU, so its hard to get super invested in a movie about a character who we know isn't in any danger at all. This movie should have been made years ago when interest in the MCU was greater and when interest in the Black Widow character was at its peak. Additionally, placing it before Avenger's Endgame would have helped.

Beyond that, people haven't been able to go to theaters for awhile now and people have been going to them less and less for years. Back in the day, the theatre offered a superior viewing experience and you got to see the movie six months to a year before it came out on home video. Today, streaming services are getting these movies at the same time or very close to theatrical release. Combine that with so many people having 55" and larger TV's etc. and there is less and less motivation to go to a movie theatre to see a film.

Lastly, I do think franchise fatigue is setting in somewhat which drives interest on such things down. However, that fatigue isn't simply due to saturation of the market, but also the decline in the writing quality of the MCU and its ever increasing forced injection of political ideology into it. I think the average movie going public is sick of this **** and starting to get sick of the genre in general.
 
Dan_D said:
Beyond that, people haven't been able to go to theaters for awhile now and people have been going to them less and less for years. Back in the day, the theatre offered a superior viewing experience and you got to see the movie six months to a year before it came out on home video. Today, streaming services are getting these movies at the same time or very close to theatrical release. Combine that with so many people having 55" and larger TV's etc. and there is less and less motivation to go to a movie theatre to see a film.
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I never agreed with the "superior viewing experience". Even when I only had a 51cm CRT TV. The convenience of home viewing far outweighed any benefit theaters might have. To me theaters were a net negative experience, loud idiots, crunching of chip bags, tall mfs who block your view. And if you sit far back the screen is too small if you sit too far front or the side your neck is dead by the end of a movie. And to me the volume in theaters was always too high, I'm pretty sure I've lost 10% of my hearing even though I didn't see more than 20 movies in theaters.

Lastly, I do think franchise fatigue is setting in somewhat which drives interest on such things down. However, that fatigue isn't simply due to saturation of the market, but also the decline in the writing quality of the MCU and its ever increasing forced injection of political ideology into it. I think the average movie going public is sick of this **** and starting to get sick of the genre in general.
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I was never a fan of the MCU, I've only seen a few of the movies, and the only ones I liked were iron man 1 and 2. And Black Widow feels nothing like an MCU movie for the first half, which is the reason I liked it more than most MCU movies I've seen.
 
Well, after taking a glance through all our responses in this thread it's pretty obvious, despite our differences, that piracy and streaming had either little or nothing to do with the perceived underperformance of this movie at the theater by theater owners. It's a shame they can't crawl out of their buttery popcorn-laden caves to see input like this.
 
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