The ongoing coronavirus crisis has thrown the release schedule of cultural products into chaos, as now is an exceptionally bad time to drop anything that isn’t a government check for lost wages. Jeremy Gordon, writing for The Outline: Our cultural producers — movie studios, publishing houses, television networks, and so forth — must decide whether to go ahead with previously made plans, or wait until all of this is over. The new Fast and Furious movie, for example, has been pushed back from its May 2020 release date to April 2021, in hopes that mass gatherings will be back on the table by then (maybe!) and we’ll all be in a better mood to watch some big cars go boom. But as more people are driven inside for the time being, it’s also true that everyone is looking for something to do at home. As a result, unconventional solutions have emerged: Last week, Universal Pictures announced it’ll make several of its current film releases available to stream on-demand at home, as movie theaters around the world are being closed. Beginning Friday, movies like The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt will be rentable for $19.99 apiece, with Trolls: World Tour set for a similar release.
Emma and The Invisible Man were finished products already in theaters, so Universal just had to skip the typical waiting period between when a movie is released, and when it’s available for purchase. But there are so many more finished products waiting to be released in the coming weeks, which publishers may now consider delaying until a time when everyone can go back outside. While they may be reticent to promote anything in the current climate, I would submit an opposite suggestion: Release that shit. While everyone is sitting at home stewing in anxiety, people have never been more desperate for distraction. We have all become a captive audience with the free time to give that show or game a try.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot