Apple does an about-face on theatrical movie releases; ‘Wolfs’ now streaming on Apple TV+

Apple is changing up its theatrical film release strategy after the disappointing box office performance of several big-budget films, including Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, Argylle, and Fly Me to the Moon. Apple canceled plans to widely release Wolfs — an action comedy starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt — in thousands of theaters globally. Instead, the picture made its debut in a limited number of venues before it began streaming on Apple TV+ on September 27th.
Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw for Bloomberg Businessweek:
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Apple plans to use a similar approach with the next few titles on its calendar, including the World War II drama Blitz. Apple, which previously had intended to spend about $1 billion annually on blockbusters for cinemas, won’t return to the big screen with a wide, global theatrical release until June with F1 — a film starring Pitt as a former Formula One driver who returns to racing to mentor a rising star.
The shift in film strategy is part of a larger reset at Apple’s Hollywood studio, which is led by Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. Their bosses in Cupertino are seeking to rein in costs, as Bloomberg reported in July. After spending upwards of $100 million—and in some cases more than $200 million — on several of the aforementioned films, Apple will now focus on making about a dozen movies a year, most of them produced for less than $100 million, according to people familiar with the company’s plans who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about an internal matter. That means Apple’s commitment to spend $1 billion annually on films won’t change, but the makeup of the company’s movie slate and release strategies will, the people said. Apple will still aim to take one or two big theatrical swings a year with films exceptionally approved for higher budgets, such as F1. But films like Wolfs, for which Clooney and Pitt earned a combined sum of tens of millions of dollars, will be marketed as streaming rather than theatrical titles.


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MacDailyNews Take: A 2020 study found that 70% of consumers would rather watch new movies at home than in a movie theater. Apple should have paid heed instead of trying to turn the clock back to 1985.
Let’s see:
A) $19.99 for a first-run movie in the comfort of your own house on a large screen, with controllable audio volume (even closed captioning if you desire), with the entire family and your own all-you-can-eat popcorn, candy, and drinks for under $10 total for everyone…
or
B) At least $80.00 for a family of four with criminally-overpriced often-stale popcorn, candy, and drinks at a potentially COVID-encrusted theater packed with uncouth idiots from who-knows-where talking, eating, coughing, sneezing, crunching bags, looking their phones, getting up to go to the bathroom, etc.
It’s such a difficult choice!
The $10 bucket of 10-cents worth of popcorn and the $6 cup of 6-cents worth of soda are obvious clues that theatre owners don’t have a sustainable business model.
Bottom line: It took a global pandemic to wake up Hollywood and drag it kicking and screaming into the new millennium at least a decade late. We’re sure Steve Jobs was telling Hollywood honchos this would happen long ago. — MacDailyNews, April 28, 2020

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