10 Reasons Huge Movies Keep Flopping

Perhaps the single most seismic change to the movie industry since the pandemic is the shortening of theatrical release windows.

Gone are the days of most movies taking 60-120 days to hit streaming services, with even commercially successful films often landing on PVOD within just three or four weeks, while outright flops might do so even faster.

While a shorter gap between theatrical and streaming is absolutely beneficial for customers, it's also conditioned audiences en masse to simply wait for the streaming release if they're not 100% sold on a film.

Unless something's successfully marketed to them as a must-see event film, why spend money on tickets for the whole family when you can stream it for a much smaller fee in a mere matter of weeks? Many cinephiles may venerate the experience of "going to the movies", but audiences, by and large, seem less sentimental.

Animation has clearly been the most blatant victim of audience habits changing around streaming, given how few animated films have been true smash hits at the box office since the pandemic. As per Screen Rant, Disney CEO Bob Iger even went on the record to lay part of the blame behind Pixar's recent box office disappointments on the company's approach to streaming.

As such, it's easy to see why the industry's biggest advocates of the theatrical experience - namely Christopher Nolan and Tom Cruise - have contractually stipulated theatrical windows for every movie they work on, to ensure as much big-screen revenue as possible.