Boxoffice - April 2019

NATO COLUMN
BY PHIL CONTRINO, DIRECTOR OF MEDIA AND RESEARCH, NATO
LET’S KEEP THINGS
IN PERSPECTIVE
Sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of pitting industries against
each other in a zero-sum contest. It certainly leads to more page views
for news outlets if two industries are portrayed as being “at war.”
It’s not that simple.
PHIL CONTRINO
>> We encounter this mentality on a daily basis in
the exhibition industry. It’s rare to have a conversation
with a reporter about the strength of our
industry without being asked about streaming.
And that’s fine, because exhibition approaches this
topic from a position of strength. In North America
alone, movie theaters sold 1.31 billion tickets
last year, and billions more were sold around the
world. It’s easy to remain confident because 2019
and 2020 are packed full of promising titles. Globally,
our industry is bigger than ever, and it grows
at the same time that consumers continue to pick
streaming over other means of consuming entertainment
in the home.
Consumers are more educated than ever about
the options in front of them, and that means they
aren’t making decisions entirely out of habit anymore.
The notion of watching a sitcom when it airs
on Thursday night and then going to the movies
on Friday night regardless of how interested you
are in the content on either platform is dead. Why
is it so hard for some to grasp the idea that people
can go see multiple movies in a weekend and binge
their new favorite series? If content is appealing,
people will make time for it and it will break out
and shatter expectations. If it’s not, it will quickly
fade into obscurity. What is clear is that people value
both the theatrical experience and the streaming
experience at different times.
For the second year in a row, we tackled this
topic head on by working with Ernst & Young
on a study about how moviegoing and streaming
habits are intertwined. The conclusion—which was
covered by dozens of outlets around the world—is
that, “Those who attended movies in theaters
more frequently also tended to consume streaming
content more frequently. For every race and age demographic,
average streaming hours per week were
higher for respondents who visited a movie theater
nine times or more than respondents who visited a
movie theater only once or twice.”
We talk to members of the creative community
a lot about the “war” between streaming and theatrical.
They dismiss it. The reality is that content
creators chose platforms based on what works best
for each individual project.
“The idea of pitting platforms against each
other is kind of ridiculous,” said director/writer/
producer Adam McKay in an interview I conducted
for Boxoffice late last year. “It’s really like
saying that musicians have to hate novelists …
there’s room for everyone. None of us are buying
any of that.”
Theatrical and streaming are two totally different
experiences that shouldn’t be compared as
equals. Streaming can never match the feeling of
watching with a packed audience and feeling collective
enjoyment as a movie connects in a big way.
This is another thing that the creative community
tells us over and over again: A “hit” on streaming—currently
hard to define because of selective
data releasing—doesn’t feel remotely as good as a
hit in theaters. (Accountants who look at return on
investment would say the same thing.)
The prestige that a robust theatrical run gives a
movie is going to be even greater as direct-to-consumer
platforms become more common. It’s a
surefire way to make a movie stand out among
endless options.
42 APRIL 2019