Yeah, I really don't get why these companies make these big budget movies available for streaming so quickly.
It's a really good question you are asking. The faster you get the film to streaming, the more you can take advantage of the marketing rollout and those costs that were intended for the original theatrical release. For some films, we are talking over a 100 million in expenses there.
Also the various competing streaming services are starved of new content. They have to justify the continued subscription money per month by continuing to offer something new. If you keep paying each month, and the content never changes, then why should you stay subscribed? Now in the old days, when basically everything was under one banner ( old Netflix ) , that was different. You were paying one time for mostly everything PLUS some rollouts of original content like House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black.
Particularly Disney/Marvel/Star Wars type stuff, there needs to be support for the back end merchandising. The "life cycle" of movie related merchandising is pretty predictable at brick and mortars. They only have so much space and if it doesn't sell, eventually they need to resell it to clearance outlets, to make room for new stock. While existing agreements can hold a certain amount of shelf space and some feature positions and end caps for a while, it can't stay forever. But other than Baby Yoda/Grogu and Frozen, nothing that the Big Mouse has done more recently has really turned into a merchandising monster.
Do you remember Sears? This is very close to the Sears problem. Right before Sears died off, it tried to be all things to all people all at once. And they spent an ungodly amount to try to do it. Except most people don't shop like that. The closest approximation is to have a Target in a mostly rural area with literally nothing else around it. The Big Mouse isn't just trying to make a film, they are trying to make broad based content that supports several different distinct entities at the same time. While also adhering to the ESG mandate of it's major investors on the back end.
The sheer volume of content out there, original content, is staggering. Also the production quality is very high. If you watch some old mid 90's episodes of The X Files, that level of production and visuals was cutting edge. No one was making television at that technical level, with that yearly volume, consistently, anywhere else. But if you look at it now, while it looks more than passable in current times, you can see the generational leaps in things like The Last Kingdom, Vikings, Handmaid's Tale, etc, etc. If you don't catch the audience fast, especially if it's mediocre level product (I won't even call them films...), then you risk losing them altogether.
There is nothing wrong with The Marvels. Except it's best chance of success was to be animated. Or direct to video without a theatrical release. And made with a 60 million dollar budget instead of a 300+ million overall cost package. Unfortunately the logistics of the current struggles can only be fixed or worked around if things go back to mostly being under one major banner. But who can do that? Bezos. Musk. Musk is basically fighting for his life each day out there, he's not worried about streaming. Bezos has made himself into a target and I don't see him trying to edge further than what is working for him now ( which is, oddly enough, selling monthly subscriptions to Amazon Prime)
From a content development perspective, the major investors, who ultimately decide what gets financed and thus gets to control much of the "narrative" in tone and theme figured out too late that they needed to kill Amy Robach. Once she went viral unintentionally, that forced major investors to demand hitting the gas pedal hard on ESG, even if it was going to lose money. Even if everyone knew it would enrage the legacy fanbases. This lends to evidence that just because some people have influence and power, it doesn't mean they rise above the status of amateur. In terms of content development, there are two things you can't change 1) You cannot keep telling the general public something vastly different than what they are seeing with their own two eyes every single day 2) You cannot "reframe" social acceptance to issues that are clearly a violation of natural law. So you'll say, Star Wars has been rough so lately because a bunch of hicks in suits couldn't figure out how to put down Amy Robach. Mostly, the answer is "Yes"
But many of you, maybe even most of you, are working in various industries, all over the country, and all over the world maybe. Many of you have had different careers too. How many of you have gone into work and said to yourself silently, "I can't believe the people in charge are doing this. This is insane. These people don't have a clue what they are doing. How many people are going to lose money, get their lives hurt, see disaster because Person X's cousin has to be in charge because his family needs to put him somewhere since he can't get a job like this on his own?" The failures of The Big Mouse is just a supercharged version of what some of you see every single day. Just because you have a big title doesn't mean you stop being an amateur. How pathetic do these people have to be to let a small fish like Robach force their hand?
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) and Boden and Fleck, who managed to retch out CM #1 (and disrespect the character of Nick Fury and the Avengers, because they, too, just wanted to "have fun"
