Last week, NBCUniversal Entertainment chair Donna Langley told The New York Times the studio planned to adjust its windowing policy — the period of time before a movie becomes available on PVOD streaming — so that all its films would be exclusively in theaters longer.
That news means more today with the first release to test that policy, this weekend’s Colleen Hoover adaptation “Reminders of Him,” than it would if it was announced ahead of a “Minions” movie or Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
Since 2020, Universal‘s movies that opened below $50 million domestic could make their way to PVOD streaming after just three weekends in theaters, or about 17 days, per deals Universal struck with the major theater chains AMC and Cinemark. For event movies like “Wicked” or the “Jurassic World” films that opened above $50 million, the exclusive window was longer, five weekends, a minimum of 31 days. That was at least the rule at first during the pandemic, but for the last few years, it’s been on more of a case by case basis rather than a hard and fast rule. A movie like “Oppenheimer” had an exceptionally long window, films like “The Fall Guy” and “Twisters” legged out even after they landed on PVOD, and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” opened in theaters and on Peacock the same day and still did gangbusters box office.
As NYT reported, the new window beginning with “Reminders of You” will be five weekends, and come next January, the window will be extended again to seven weekends, or 45 days. The rule won’t, however, apply to specialized movies from Focus Features, as those will still have the option to go onto PVOD after 17 days.
45 days is a window most exhibitors could live with if all the studios adhered to it, even though it wasn’t that long ago that movies were in theaters for a whopping 90 days before they became available for home viewing. It seems almost unfathomable at this point, but movies like “Top Gun Maverick” or even “F1” have really had some of those old fashioned windows and paid dividends for it.
But “Reminders of Him” is not a “Top Gun” movie, so this will be an interesting example to test whether or not theater owners are right when they say that all movies should have that generous window. The film from director Vanessa Caswill opened to a better-than-expected $18 million domestic, as well as $10 million international for a cumulative gross of $28 million. It has a production budget of around $25 million.
Under Universal’s prior policy, it would’ve had the right to move “Reminders of Him” to PVOD in just 17 days, but now the film will have the chance to leg out for 31 days. In terms of where “Reminders of Him” ends up, it’s probably fair to see it landing somewhere between two other Hoover adaptations, 2024’s “It Ends With Us” (Sony) and 2025’s “Regretting You” (Paramount).
All three films had similar breakdowns of female audiences of about 83 percent, while “Reminders of Him” had a larger percentage of 25+ audiences come out for this one. “Reminders of Him” also had the same CinemaScore grade of a B as “Regretting You,” but below the A- for “It Ends With Us.” “Regretting You” opened to $13.6 million domestic and finished with $48.8 million domestic ($90.4 million worldwide), while “It Ends With Us” opened to $50 million domestic and finished with $148.5 million domestic ($351.4 million worldwide). Those numbers suggest that domestically, “Reminders of Him” should wind up with about three to 3.5 times its domestic total, so somewhere between $54-63 million, maybe twice that for worldwide.
But let’s look a little deeper based on when these movies ultimately landed on PVOD and what they did in the lead up and aftermath of that. Sony has especially long windows as it doesn’t have a streaming service of its own, and “It Ends With Us” lasted seven weekends exclusively in theaters, opening in early August and landing on PVOD in late September. It had made $146 million by that point, and though it stuck around in theaters for another month or so, it only tacked on another $2 million to its total domestic haul.
“Regretting You” had a shorter window of just five weekends, exactly what “Reminders of Him” will now get, and it too earned pretty much all it was ever going to earn in those five weekends. It added about another $1.5 million in box office after landing on PVOD. But had it gone to PVOD two weeks earlier at 17 days, it may have left as much as $10 million of box office on the table.
That’s a hefty chunk of change, though what we also don’t know is just how much these movies are bringing in on PVOD. We do know that the film studio gets a larger share of the total than it would from splitting revenue with movie theaters, but is it an extra $5 million that it would’ve only gotten at the box office? Such a number could be the difference between a movie being profitable or a slight money loser.
Universal is pretty much the only studio that has been even remotely transparent about what it has earned from PVOD, disclosing that “Wicked” brought in $100 million in PVOD revenue, as did the studio’s first release after Covid, “Trolls World Tour.” Those are almost certainly on the high end of what any movie will do from premium at-home rentals, and “Reminders of Him” isn’t about to hit those levels. But clearly Universal believes it stands to make more money leaving it in theaters just a little longer than if it was available for rental just a little earlier.
While this policy applies to PVOD, the real number that might matter to most consumers is when it hits SVOD, so something like Peacock, Netflix, HBO Max, or Disney+. That’s when audiences consider something “free,” rather than having to pay upwards of $20 to rent a movie at home. Universal to its credit doesn’t put things on Peacock until 120 days, or four months, after it’s been in theaters, and that will still be the case. Disney might have longer windows to PVOD but tends to be faster to put something on Disney+, as something like “Zootopia 2” will be on SVOD after closer to 80 days.
The general theory though is that, regardless of PVOD or SVOD, audiences have become conditioned to expect movies will be at home eventually. They can wait and don’t have to go to the theater, especially if they know they just have to wait less than a month. Will knowing that you’ll have to wait at least five weeks, maybe seven, before you can rent “Reminders of Him” at home make you more likely to check it out in a theater?
That’s the bet exhibitors are making, and that Universal is now willing to test.
