LONDON—Movie fans hoping to save money by waiting until their favorite new films appear on streaming services will have to wait a bit longer now, according to a new report from Ampere Analysis.
In a new report released this week, the researcher noted that more than half (55%) of U.S. studio movies took 90 days or more to hit subscription streaming platforms in 2024. The 90-day new normal for big-budget films reflects studios’ revived strategy of encouraging US audiences back to movie theaters by delaying movie releases on streaming. With box office revenue down in key overseas markets like China and the possibility of tariff-related disruption on the horizon, studios are taking action to protect the box office at home, the researcher said.
Wide-release movies distributed domestically by the five major U.S. studios last year took an average of 87 days post-release in theaters to reach subscription streaming platforms, up almost 20% from 2022, when just over a quarter of such movies took 90 days or more to reach streaming, Ampere said. Sony Pictures Entertainment, the only major studio without a streaming service, maintained the longest average transactional window (106 days) via its U.S. Pay-1 licensing deal with Netflix.
Ampere cited the example of Sony’s 2024 release “Bad Boys: Ride or Die, or It Ends With Us,“ which made more than $100 million in box office revenue, as an example of how delaying the shift to streaming can succeed financially. It was released to Netflix months after its theatrical debut. Films that made less than $100 million domestically were more likely to debut earlier on streaming platforms, after a minimum of 90 days, according to Ampere.
In a year when studio theatrical schedules continued to feel the residual impacts of 2023 production delays, Universal retained the largest slate and broadest range of windowing strategies. Its movies reached Peacock anywhere between 49 days (“The Bikeriders,” “The American Society of Magical Negroes”) and 120 days after theatrical release (“Despicable Me 4”).
The Walt Disney Co., last year’s box-office leader, saw its average dragged down by lower-budget titles such as “The First Omen” (55 days) and “Kinds of Kindness” (63 days), according to Ampere. The rest of its franchise-heavy slate waited 98 days on average to be released to the studio’s streaming services, with “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2” all dropping on Disney+ after more than 100 days.
Paramount Pictures was an outlier among the majors, sending movies to its streaming platform sooner than any other Hollywood studio. Paramount+ relied more heavily on its parent studio’s theatrical distribution slate to drive subscriptions and engagement relative to its rivals.
“By and large, studios have weaned U.S. audiences off the expectation that they need only wait a month or so for the latest blockbusters on streaming,” Ampere Research Manager Alice Thorpe said. “The domestic theatrical market was down 4% year-on-year in 2024 and remains somewhat fragile. Studio movies are still available for premium rental or purchase at home much earlier than was the norm pre-pandemic to maximize transactional revenues. But a key milestone is the fact that the majority of movies are now taking 90 days or more to reach studios’ subscription platforms. With box office revenue down in key overseas markets like China, and with tariff-related disruption potentially to come, studios are facing renewed pressure to protect the box office at home.”
