Month: September 2020
Should Disney Have Released Mulan to PVOD?: Part III of “Should Your Film Go Straight-To-Streaming?”
Last week, we figured out that Mulan was likely watched by 1.2 million Americans on its opening weekend. (Plus or minus 1-1.5 million.) We estimated this means it likely ends up with a global PVOD of $150 million. But what I didn’t do was explain what all that data means. Which is today’s article. As ...
Most Important Story of the Week – 25 Sep 20: We’re Heading for the (Almost) Worst Case Scenario For Theaters
Last week was a big one for me as I tore through a lot of Mulan data to produce my soon-to-be-biggest article of all time, “1.2 million Folks Bought Mulan on Disney+”. (It looks like it will dethrone the previous champion, “Netflix is a Broadcast Channel”.) It’s been four weeks since I checked in on ...
Mulan vs Tenet: I (Don’t) Declare a Winner
At first, I was tempted to call “Mulan vs Tenet” the biggest battle of the streaming wars. Each weekend in September, we’ve eagerly awaited answers to the hottest questions in film: Will Tenet save theaters? Will Mulan blow up the model? Who is making more money? Who is WINNING?!?!? It turns out that the answer ...
1.2 Million Folks Bought Mulan in the US During It’s Opening Weeknd: The (Not) Definitive Analysis of Disney’s Mulan Experiment
How many folks bought Mulan? That’s the buzziest question in the streaming wars right now. Since we don’t know, we’re left to pick at the analytics tea leaves. Fortunately, as each day passes, we’ve got more tea leaves to pick through. (Partly, the question is relevant because it gets to the buzziest question, “Who’s winning, ...
Most Important Story of the Week – 18 Sep 20: Apple One, The Aggressively Moderate Take
Whenever a big tech company sneezes, the entire techno-entertainment industrial complex catches a case of “they’re taking over the world”. Such is my read of the latest announcement that Apple is launching a multimedia bundle called Apple One. For months, CWSMF (Celebrity Wall Street Media Futurists) had speculated and salivated over the idea that Apple ...
How Fortnite vs Apple Could Impact The Streaming Wars: Imagining a “Maximalist” Scenario
The first thing to know about the streaming wars is that it is really multiple wars simultaneously. One war is between the streamers. They compete fiercely against each other, with Netflix in the lead. (This is by far the most covered battleground.) If those are the established powers, the upstarts are the free, ad-supported streamers ...
Most Important Story of the Week – 11 Sep 20: How X-Box Could Impact Entertainment
Reed Hastings is famous for declaring his competitors to be anyone that isn’t a fellow streamer. Famously, he said a couple of years back that Fortnite is bigger competition than other streamers. (He’s previously mentioned sleep.) If you think about competition using Porter’s Five Forces, then Hastings is obviously right, and obviously wrong. Competition amongst ...
Most Important Story of the Week – 4 Sep 20: The Fall of Fall (TV Advertising Revenue)
I’ve been too positive about the entertainment industry recently. Especially the traditional players. I think theaters by the end of 2021 will be fine. I think the traditional entertainment streamers can compete with Netflix (and Amazon). And I even think Disney will see a thriving theme park business sooner rather than later. So let’s get ...
Visual of the Week – Is Netflix a (More Watched) Broadcast Channel?
We had a fun bit of data dropped via Nielsen in August which allows me to update my most popular article of the year, “Netflix is a Broadcast Channel”. Nielsen let us know how viewership looks through the Coronavirus lock downs as of August 2020. Here’s the original 2019 data and the update: Since I ...