Back in 2011, when Universal experimented with offering its comedy-thriller Tower Heist on video on demand three weeks after its theatrical bow, several of America’s largest theater chains announced they would ban booking the film in retaliation. Prior to Tuesday when the deal was announced, such a theatrical release and PVOD drop could not peacefully coexist. Under the deal’s multiyear, U.S.-only terms, when a tentpole release like, say, Minions: The Rise of Gru arrives in wide release on July 2, 2021, fans will have the option of watching the animated sequel in theaters or waiting almost three weeks to either rent it or buy it (films will not be available on NBCUniversal’s new OTT service Peacock). The deal also establishes a new profit-sharing model intended to bolster the exhibition community at a cultural inflection point when theaters are facing existential peril from the so-called “ streaming wars.” In addition to shattering all precedent at a time when Hollywood is operating in a blind panic, uprooting the release dates of megabudget popcorn movies such as Tenet and Mulan almost weekly in real-time response to spiking COVID-19 infection rates and continuing theater shuttering, the agreement has wide implications for the film biz, with the potential to fundamentally reorder how, when, and where moviegoers see major titles going forward.

Under the agreement, AMC - the world’s biggest theater chain, which teetered near bankruptcy this year but recently re-collateralized billions of dollars in debt to avoid Chapter 11 - will share in revenue from the studio’s paid video-on-demand rentals, although specific details have not yet been announced. Such a move dramatically shortens the so-called theatrical “window”: the 70-day to three-month span between when a film typically arrives in multiplexes and when the powerful film-exhibition industry has permitted the movies to move onto digital platforms such as premium video, cable, or streaming services. That is to say, America’s largest theater chain and one of Hollywood’s five major studios have agreed to put aside their well-publicized differences to strike a historic deal permitting Universal’s movie releases to stream on paid video-on-demand platforms a mere 17 days after they are shown in theaters. In a summer when global pandemic has plagued the movie industry with a rash of theater closures, turning soundstages into ghost towns and infecting the global filmmaking and distributing ecosystem with job losses, AMC and Universal have agreed to roll up the window.

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