The box office is non-existent. Thanks to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, the majority of the world’s cinemas are now shuttered, and in the US, at least, it appears this is going to last through the months of April and May. And without box office numbers, how are we supposed to come up with a ranking of how well a film does and if it’s actually as popular as a studio hopes? Well, thankfully, the studios have decided to use this pandemic to test the waters on a straight-to-VOD market. Sort of.
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With theaters around North America and the world closed, Disney, Universal, Sony, and others have decided to take those feature films that were dominating the box office and release them on VOD. it’s a new paradigm for film releases, with most of these VOD options becoming available mere weeks or days after hitting the big screen. But again, how are we supposed to know which ones are popular and which films aren’t? Well, we can look at the VOD numbers, right?
Unfortunately, those numbers are scattered over a variety of services, making a ranking system pretty damn difficult. Not to mention, when you compare the viewing habits of people going to theaters, their options are limited to what’s at the multiplex. With VOD, not only do people have the option to watch “Bloodshot” for $19.99, but they can also binge “Tiger King” on Netflix for free (with a subscription).
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All that to say, any sort of VOD ranking system inherently has flaws. But that shouldn’t stop us from taking a look, right? This is a new way of distributing films, during an unprecedented time in the industry. The information we can glean from VOD rankings actually tells us some information that is worth looking at, particularly when it comes to the idea of how much a viewer will pay to watch a brand-new movie at home, instead of a theater. Will they pay $20 for Vin Diesel’s latest? Or the newest thing from Blumhouse?
Below, I’ve come up with a quick, easy-to-understand idea for how to rank VOD releases that are of interest to this discussion. Basically, when you look at the top VOD film rental platforms (iTunes, Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube, and Vudu) and their rankings, you can come up with an idea about how popular this new distribution model has become.
So, how are we going to do this? Simply put, we’ll take a look at the top 10 box office from the last full report we did (March 15) and look at the average ranking of each film to see how they have fared so far, now that many of them have been on VOD for at least a few days. Again, this is far from an exact science but does help us have a general idea of performance.
Let’s start with “Onward,” the #1 film from the last full box office report. Currently, that film has an average ranking of 5.2 over the five VOD providers we looked at. The lowest ranking comes from Amazon Prime Video (current ranking #11), but over the remaining 4 platforms, the film ranked in the top 3 in three of them. So, it’s clear that Disney’s decision to release the film on VOD before it hits Disney+ on April 3 is a good idea, as people are quick to spend $19.99 to view the Pixar film.
Next up is “I Still Believe,” which ranked #2 in our last box office report. Currently, that film has an average ranking of 27.2. The disconnect between the box office ranking and VOD ranking is startling, to say the least. Clearly, faith-based films tend to do well at the box office because of group sales and church engagement. However, without that, it seems as if people are skipping the feel-good drama on VOD, with its $19.99 price point. This is definitely a film that would have been better served by a longer theatrical run.
Vin Diesel’s “Bloodshot” was a clear disappointment when it debuted at #3 at the box office. And since then, the film has been on VOD and seems to be doing pretty well. The current ranking average for the superhero film is 5.0. The big difference between how “Bloodshot” is distributed and the rest of the films we’re talking about is that you can actually purchase the film for the $19.99 price tag, whereas the rest of them are only offering rentals at that price. So, this could be a partial explanation for how the film seems to be ranked so high. Because honestly, this isn’t a great movie, at all.
Now, we should also talk about the two Blumhouse releases that sat at #4 and #5 on our last box office report, “The Invisible Man” and “The Hunt,” respectively. “The Invisible Man” had already earned a pretty large amount in theaters, so anything on VOD is just icing on the cake. However, “The Hunt” only got one full week in theaters before hitting VOD, so Blumhouse is banking on the rental business to make the low-budget thriller profitable.
“The Invisible Man” has a VOD ranking of 29. Now, before you begin shaking your head in disbelief, the average was skewed quite a bit by Amazon Prime Video, which doesn’t list the Blumhouse film as part of its top 100. In that case, I gave the film a ranking of 101, which inflated the average quite a bit. If you took that out of the equation, and just looked at the remaining four VOD platforms, the ranking would rise to 11, which isn’t terrible. This shows that, while many people went to the theater to watch the horror film, there are still plenty of folks willing to spend $19.99 to rent it at home.
As for “The Hunt,” that film debuted in our last box office report at #5 and now sits with a VOD ranking of 57.2. No, that’s not a typo. As with “The Invisible Man,” the newest Blumhouse thriller didn’t rank at all on Amazon (thus, 101 ranking from me), but it also ranks at #101 on Vudu, #38 on iTunes, #22 on YouTube, and #24 on Google Play. This is a terrible showing for the film, as its box office debut predicted. Ouch.
Finally, let’s take a look at Ben Affleck’s drama, “The Way Back.” The film fell to #7 in its second weekend at the box office in our last report. And as a VOD release, the film currently has an average ranking of 72.6. That number is heavily weighted by a poor showing on YouTube, where it ranks at #178. But still, not a great number, and goes to show that the marketing on this film was pretty terrible. If no one knows the film exists, how are they going to know to rent it?
I want to stress that this analysis is hardly a replacement for box office success and is definitely flawed. However, when you look at this new release strategy of distributing films on VOD such a short time after theaters, with a $19.99 price, people will definitely spend the money. However, there’s a world of difference between spending $19.99 on a blockbuster film like “Bloodshot” or “The Invisible Man” and the same price on a drama like “I Still Believe” and “The Way Back.” So, if nothing else, it’s clear that this time period is little more than a test run and a preview of what might come.