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It was the top on-demand title on Amazon, Comcast, Apple, Vudu, Google/YouTube, DirecTV and FandangoNow, and it did about 10 times the business of the studio's next biggest opening day for a traditional digital release, NBCUniversal said. That experiment triggered outrage from theater chains, which have clung tightly to the traditional 75-day (or longer) window that theaters usually get to exhibit new movies exclusively before films move to other formats.īut Trolls World Tour - a DreamWorks Animation movie under the umbrella of Comcast's NBCUniversal - ended up dominating home viewing stores the weekend it was released. Universal was one of the first studios to test its fortunes in the coronavirus pandemic by essentially skipping theaters in favor of online rentals, when it released Trolls World Tour as a digital rental in April on the same day the film was available in a sprinkling of theaters. Whether new movies rent online three weekends or five weekends after they hit big-screen cinemas, that's a titanic change from the standard months-long period that theaters traditionally have enjoyed exclusive dominion over new films. Regardless, both agreements mean movie releases will never be the same again in the post-pandemic future. Because Universal can't release the same movie two different ways, the more-restrictive Cinemark deal, with the $50 million carve-out that keeps movies in theaters longer, will prevail. That deal didn't include the option for a different "window" of theatrical exclusivity based on box-office returns instead, it only provided the 17-day waiting period before Universal could rent a new movie online. The Universal-Cinemark deal puts a slightly different spin on a similar arrangement that Universal reached with theater chain AMC in July.

If the movie doesn't hit the $50 million mark, it can be released to rent online just 17 days after its big-screen premiere, or three weekends.

Universal's new deal with a theater chain - Cinemark, this time - will let the film studio rent its new movies online dramatically sooner than ever before, but the latest agreement has a twist: If a Universal movie scores $50 million or more at the box office in its opening weekend (which gigantic franchises like Fast & Furious and Jurassic World uniformly do), that flick gets to stay in theaters exclusively for 31 days, or five weekends.