What’s gained and lost by the HBO Max-Warn­er Broth­ers deal?

There are so many films I remem­ber vivid­ly thanks to the con­text in which I saw them. Chick­en Run: I was eight years old, front row of the Sheffield Show­room. I cried when they near­ly got baked into pies. The Fel­low­ship of the Ring: I was 12, it was my friend’s birth­day, and we went to the Odeon, where the show­ing was sold out. Gan­dalf fac­ing off against the Bal­rog was the most ter­ri­fy­ing thing I’d ever seen. The Social Net­work: same cin­e­ma, six years lat­er; the Cam­bridge Regat­ta scene con­vinced me movies were the most impor­tant thing in the world. These for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences undoubt­ed­ly shaped me as a per­son and I doubt I’d be work­ing as a film crit­ic today with­out hav­ing grown up believ­ing the cin­e­ma was a spe­cial place.

Why then, does it increas­ing­ly feel like forces are work­ing so hard to try and dis­man­tle this?

The announce­ment that Warn­er Broth­ers are send­ing their entire 2021 the­atri­cal slate to their stream­ing plat­form HBO Max in a simul­ta­ne­ous release pro­gramme is the lat­est blow to cin­e­mas after a year that’s seen them dev­as­tat­ed by the pan­dem­ic. Of course, it’s been a hard year for the stu­dios too, with count­less releas­es pushed back or delayed indef­i­nite­ly and shoots thrown into chaos. While stream­ing ser­vices such as Net­flix and Ama­zon Prime have flour­ished, tra­di­tion­al release mod­els now seem obso­lete; some­thing had to change.

Uni­ver­sal were one of the ear­li­est to adapt, releas­ing Trolls World Tour on stream­ing only ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic – a deci­sion cin­e­mas decried, but the stu­dio report­ed was a major suc­cess. Dis­ney fol­lowed suit, send­ing the hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed Mulan straight to Dis­ney+ in the sum­mer, and announc­ing they would be doing the same with Pixar’s Soul on Christ­mas Day. But these seemed like tem­po­rary fix­es – a way of keep­ing the mon­ey com­ing in while we all wait­ed for the green light to go back to cin­e­mas. The HBO-Warn­er Broth­ers deal feels like a water­shed moment, throw­ing into ques­tion whether or not oth­er stu­dios will fol­low suit, and if – in a post-pan­dem­ic world – audi­ences will opt for the cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence when they can watch the same film in the com­fort of their home, for less.

While some have laud­ed the move as a win for acces­si­bil­i­ty, it’s clear that has not been at the fore­front of Warn­er Broth­ers’ mind here. Cin­e­ma lovers with dis­abil­i­ties have been cam­paign­ing for bet­ter facil­i­ties for years, from sub­ti­tled show­ings and audio descrip­tion to dis­abled access with­in the­atres. While the option of home rental for new titles might allow some view­ers to avoid the often unpleas­ant and unwel­com­ing expe­ri­ence of the cin­e­ma, it remains to be seen whether HBO are plan­ning on includ­ing sub­ti­tles and audio descrip­tion tracks as stan­dard (many VOD titles still don’t).

Every­one deserves to expe­ri­ence a film on the big screen if they wish to, and those with dis­abil­i­ties should not be expect­ed to remain at home in the name of con­ve­nience for stu­dios. As for price, well, stream­ing ser­vices are still a lux­u­ry for many. Sub­scrib­ing to a cou­ple in order to get all the films you want to watch will set you back more than the price of a few trips to the movies a month, and that’s before you fac­tor in the cost of a view­ing device and a decent inter­net con­nec­tion. While many view­ers might already have these at hand, plen­ty don’t – in some areas, the cin­e­ma is still the place to go for new movies.

I’ve loved films I’ve dis­cov­ered via VHS, DVD or stream­ing, sit­ting atten­tive­ly in front of my tele­vi­sion or lap­top, but the inter­net and smart con­sumer tech has made carv­ing out time to actu­al­ly enjoy any­thing at home more dif­fi­cult. We’re con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed by dis­trac­tions: noti­fi­ca­tions, alerts, fam­i­ly mem­bers, pets, the lure of the whole world con­tained in the palm of our hand. For those of us not lucky enough to have a good home cin­e­ma set-up, watch­ing films out­side the dark of the mat­inée can be a frac­tured, frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence. Even Tom Cruise had to step in to tell us all that we were all doing it wrong thanks to tech that is fun­da­men­tal­ly not opti­mised for turn­ing your liv­ing room into a the­atre. Real­is­ti­cal­ly, the only peo­ple who can afford to real­ly do that were prob­a­bly not going to the movies in the first place.

My acute knowl­edge of how dif­fi­cult it is to actu­al­ly recre­ate the cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence in your own home has made this a chal­leng­ing year to love movies. I recog­nise my priv­i­leged posi­tion to have spent as much time as I have snug­gling down in the vel­veteen seats of count­less movie hous­es, but it wasn’t always this way, and it’s only by grow­ing up with a sense that the cin­e­ma was a spe­cial place that I’ve devel­oped such an appre­ci­a­tion for it. This year has high­light­ed to me that the things I miss about the cin­e­ma are myr­i­ad, but it runs so much deep­er than the movies them­selves. It’s chat­ting to the staff and oth­er cus­tomers, it’s going on ter­ri­ble dates to see ter­ri­ble films, it’s the com­mu­nal expe­ri­ence of laugh­ing, cry­ing, shriek­ing with a hun­dred strangers who I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er see again.

Anoth­er for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence: about two years after I moved to Lon­don, stuck in a job I hat­ed with no real friends to speak of, I was extreme­ly depressed and suf­fer­ing from insom­nia. I took myself to a mid­night show­ing of Baby Dri­ver at Vue Strat­ford; there were about six oth­er peo­ple there. I thought the film was just fine, but the act of being alone in a shared space some­how thawed me in a peri­od when I thought noth­ing could. The movies can be a deeply per­son­al and soli­tary expe­ri­ence, but they’re also about com­mu­ni­ty and human con­nec­tion. I spent so much of my ado­les­cence hang­ing around cin­e­ma foy­ers, watch­ing trail­ers on the mon­i­tors or star­ing up at the posters. When I got my first job in a cin­e­ma, I thought I was the luck­i­est girl in the world, because I got to spend all day talk­ing to peo­ple about movies. Even clean­ing up kids’ vom­it in the foy­er and actu­al human shit from the toi­let floor didn’t seem so harsh a penalty.

I know that not every­one shares this love of the cin­e­ma-going expe­ri­ence (cer­tain­ly none of my fam­i­ly are enthu­si­as­tic movie­go­ers) and per­haps one studio’s deci­sion won’t have a domi­no effect, but I do wor­ry that future gen­er­a­tions won’t have the chance to expe­ri­ence the won­der of the big screen. It feels as though artistry is being con­demned to tiny bill­boards on a brows­er, icons on a stream­ing plat­form; con­tent, con­tent, con­tent. To be binged and then for­got­ten about. The rea­son we love a fran­chise such as Star Wars is because its mythol­o­gy is so tied to the idea of it as an event; some­thing worth queu­ing around the block for. Watch­ing a much-antic­i­pat­ed film alone on the sofa in your pants does remove some of the like­li­hood you’ll remem­ber it for years to come.

It’s easy to sit here and spec­u­late whether this deci­sion has been made in the wake of Tenet’s futile the­atri­cal release, at a time when many, many view­ers still did not feel com­fort­able return­ing to the cin­e­ma. Christo­pher Nolan report­ed­ly refused to con­sid­er any­thing but a cin­e­ma release, and even though the film almost dou­bled its bud­get in box office rev­enue, it was still con­sid­ered an under­per­former (in the con­text of the Nolan­verse, any­way). But Tenet was a com­pli­cat­ed beast; crit­ics and audi­ences alike felt con­flict­ed about return­ing to the cin­e­ma so soon.

Mean­while, HBO Max, which launched in May, has been floun­der­ing in an already crowd­ed land­scape. In August a major restruc­tur­ing pro­gramme was announced, and pun­dits have report­ed its messy exe­cu­tion as a rea­son for the dis­ap­point­ing uptake among cus­tomers. From a finan­cial per­spec­tive, it makes sense Time-Warn­er would want to save its invest­ment into stream­ing by offer­ing some­thing as allur­ing as a raft of high pro­file exclu­sives. The big con­cern is how this will impact the already strained rela­tion­ship between stu­dios and cin­e­mas – not to men­tion stu­dios and film­mak­ers them­selves, many of whom were appar­ent­ly not con­sult­ed on the deci­sion.

As it stands the HBO deal only affects US view­ers, and it remains to be seen if a sim­i­lar deal will fol­low in the rest of the world. Won­der Woman 1984 – the first Warn­er Broth­ers title to go straight to HBO Max – will have a lim­it­ed release in UK cin­e­mas in the upcom­ing weeks before mov­ing to a pre­mi­um rental on Sky Cin­e­ma. At least this mod­el gives cin­e­mas some chance to claw back much-need­ed rev­enue, and still offers an alter­na­tive for those who would rather stay at home. But giv­en day-of-release access at home, will audi­ences both­er to make the effort?

For a long time now cin­e­mas have report­ed ris­ing oper­a­tion costs, and that tick­et prices reflect the exor­bi­tant cost of exhi­bi­tion. Most cin­e­mas only actu­al­ly make mon­ey on con­ces­sions now, and the cost for a fam­i­ly to go to the movies can eas­i­ly mount up. Yet there is still an appetite for the bricks-and-mor­tar cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence: 2019 saw 176 mil­lion cin­e­ma admis­sions in the UK; only one mil­lion down on 2018 which was the biggest year for cin­e­ma in 20 years.

But I can’t help feel­ing that once again it’s falling to the pub­lic to ​“save cin­e­ma” in the face of an indus­try which has grown indif­fer­ent to the moviego­ing expe­ri­ence. Now more than ever it’s evi­dent that the gov­ern­ment doesn’t care about pro­tect­ing the arts, but for the actu­al indus­try to not even care seems dev­as­tat­ing. Films which have had years of work and mil­lions poured into them are rel­e­gat­ed to con­tent morsels to be farmed out to the hun­gry mass­es; not to be seen big and loud, inspect­ed and analysed.

I’m hope­ful that cin­e­mas can sur­vive, and that oth­er stu­dios won’t fol­low Warn­er Broth­ers’ lead. And despite every­thing, I do believe as we emerge into the world again some time next year, cin­e­mas and stream­ing can live in har­mo­ny some­how. But I can’t help think­ing of Blade Run­ner, which Warn­er Broth­ers released in June 1982; if stu­dios decide to push for­ward with stream­ing as the solu­tion to every­thing, and cin­e­mas become a dying breed, plen­ty of films – not block­busters, but the indies, the ones with­out stu­dio might behind them – will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.