Movie theaters were shut by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the closure pushed the film business into a public stress test. Old assumptions about distribution stopped holding.
The biggest assumption under pressure: that streaming cannot match theatrical economics. Universal's Trolls World Tour challenged it. The film cleared nearly $100 million in rental fees after its mid-April streaming debut. Universal executives, justifiably, celebrated.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell told the Wall Street Journal: "[The film] exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability of on-demand video. As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats."
Three words — "on both formats" — set AMC off. AMC CEO Adam Aron announced AMC theaters will "no longer screen films made by Universal Pictures." A serious escalation of what could have stayed a closed-door negotiation, played out in public.
The question now is what other studios do. If Shell was rethinking the theatrical window — the period a film runs in theaters before consumer release — other studio chiefs are running the same math. The responses will play out across the next several quarters. With many theaters still closed, studios have no choice but to ship directly to consumers, and theater chains know it.
AMC is taking the public stance, signaling it will use the theatrical revenue studios still want as leverage against losing it entirely. AMC framed the Trolls streaming release as an "exception" driven by extreme circumstances and called the Universal ban "not some hollow threat."
How this fight evolves — and how both brands take it to consumers — is the story to watch. More on the discipline of building a crisis communications plan before the fight goes public.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
