Hint: Universal was already doing exactly that. (Pictured: Jurassic World: Rebirth.)
Photo: Universal Pictures/Everett Collection
Universal Pictures is trying to turn back the clock when it comes to the digital release of its films. Effective immediately, the NBCUniversal-owned studio will keep all of its feature releases exclusive to movie theaters for a minimum of five weekends; in 2027, that exclusive window for multiplexes will be extended to seven weeks. Since 2020, Universal has promised theater owners an exclusive window of only three weekends, which meant that some movies would be available for digital rental as soon as 18 days after they opened on the big screen. But while Universal is making a big deal about how important its new strategy is for the future of the movies and keeping theater chains healthy, this news really isn’t as big as it seems.
Yes, if you’re someone who regularly forks over $20 to $30 to rent a Universal movie very soon after it opens in theaters, you may have to wait a few weeks longer for some titles. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, for example, was released digitally on September 30, just 18 days after its September 12 U.S. opening; Bad Guys 2 had a similarly brief window between theaters and digital rental. But most people who stream movies watch them via a subscription service such as NBCU-owned Peacock, which gets first dibs on all Universal movies. And as Peacock subscribers know all too well, Universal has already been making fans wait longer to watch new movies on the service. The aforementioned Bad Guys 2 didn’t show up on the streamer until roughly 16 weeks after the movie hit theaters; Jurassic World: Rebirth and How to Train Your Dragon (2025) took 17 weeks to get there. But it’s not just mega-blockbusters and summer releases which got held back from Peacock: The last Downton didn’t debut on the service until eight weeks after its theatrical opening, while Oscar-nominated Hamnet, from Universal’s Focus label, took about 14 weeks to travel from movie houses to Peacock. In other words, pretty much every major Universal movie is already taking much longer than five or seven weeks to get to NBCU’s streaming service.
That doesn’t mean Universal’s declaration today is totally meaningless spin. By vowing to not make any of its Universal-brand titles available to watch at home until they’ve been in theaters for at least seven weekends — movies that carry the Focus label will be exempt from the new rule — the studio is potentially limiting how much revenue it can squeeze out of consumers via digital rentals. One big reason studios were able to charge $20 or $30 for 48-hour viewing windows was that consumers felt like they were getting fresh-from-theater releases. That value proposition falls the longer it’s been since a movie’s release date, particularly if the film ends up flopping in theaters. So the longer Universal keeps titles off digital, in theory, the harder it could be to amass big digital revenue.
As for Peacock, it’s too soon to say whether delayed digital rental releases will mean subscribers will have to wait even longer than they already do to get Universal movies. It’s possible the studio’s number crunchers will want to maintain a certain number of weeks of rental and sales exclusivity, thus pushing back subscription streaming-premiere dates even further. But given Universal has an output deal with Netflix that gives that streamer the rights to its new movies no more than eight months after they open in theaters, that seems unlikely.