LOS ANGELES — Want proof of the old adage that timing is everything? Just ask film distributors.
At a moment when streaming has elevated TV in the cultural conversation and brought countless entertainment options to consumers' fingertips, movies have faced a much cloudier picture — and the timing of their move from theaters to home video platforms, known as "windowing," has never been more in flux.
Companies like Warner Bros. Discovery have changed their attitudes about the divide between the theatrical and streaming after a period of experimentation necessitated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic closing theaters. At CinemaCon in April, Chief Executive David Zaslav said, "We believe in full windowing of the motion pictures. We do not want to do direct-to-streaming movies." This was a hearty reversal from the strategy when Warner Bros. was owned by AT&T and set out to put all of its movies on its streaming service at the same time as in theaters.
