Due to COVID-19 and the convenience of it, streaming services are being utilized to watch films and television shows over traditional forms of viewing them.

What began with Netflix has turned into a huge phenomenon. Today, there are over 200 different streaming services for people to utilize. In 2022, earthweb.com reported that 1.8 billion people subscribed to streaming services.

During COVID-19, movie theaters were among the many businesses that were shut down. In the face of isolation policies, streaming services became a way for people to stay entertained without needing to leave their homes.

 “Streaming services create more opportunities for a greater variety of stories to be told. When they didn’t exist, there were fewer movies being made,” Juliet Giglio, a writer and professor at SUNY Oswego, said.

Streaming services can also benefit the film industry. Streaming services provide more places to sell screenplays and watch movies, Giglio said.

When movie theaters were shut down for a year, they lost money, which caused many theaters to bump up the price of snacks and a ticket for the movie itself.

The prices of movie theaters going up gives more reason for people to use streaming services, which have the benefits of being available at home and without the additional costs of theaters.

Streaming services are the new wave and can be seen as convenient. This could potentially poses a threat to movie theaters and box office sales. This is even a concern for film studios.

Michael D. Smith, a professor of information technology at Carnegie University has done research on streaming services and the media.

According to Smith, most film studios release movies both in the box office and on their streaming platform. 

“Movie studios are doing both; they worry about what happens when they release a movie in theaters versus a streaming platform,” Smith said.

Film studios, like Disney, worry how much releasing a movie only on their streaming platform will affect box office sales. Streaming platforms, on the other hand, worry about subscribers, as they are trying to sell subscriptions instead of individual movies.

When new films are put on streaming services at the same time or around the time of their theater release, it provides an alternate viewing option, and audiences may not need to go to the movie theater to see it.

“Film studios are coming up with quirky innovations like IMAX and 3D movies to stay relevant, ” Bennet Schaber, a professor of cinema and screen studies at SUNY Oswego, said. “Studios will change the types of movies they will greenlight. It will cause them to create movies that need to be watched in theaters.”

The production, action and soundtrack of a movie might drive audiences to see it in a theater rather than their own home. 

“There will always be a time and a place for viewers to go to the theater, especially for big tentpole movies such as Marvel, Disney, action and thrillers,” Giglio said.

These film studios will make movies made for the theater and try to keep people going, but the theaters may not be the same as they were. Schaber believes they are “going the way of the dinosaurs.”

Schaber does not believe theaters will fully disappear, but he said they will be much like theme parks. They will not be in every town, and a place you visit every once in a while.

In an article from CBS news published in March, they stated box office sales had decreased by 35%. This caused many smaller movie theaters to shut down.

Back in 2021, The Quorum published a study on people attending movie theaters. They surveyed over 2,500 people for this study, which found that 33% of the participants were still going to the theaters after COVID-19. About 71% said they would be upset if the theaters disappeared.

“They’re important because they allow viewers to have a shared experience,” Giglio said. “There’s nothing like going to the movies with complete strangers and getting engrossed in a scary scene together.”

Photo via Pexels by: Pixabay