The filmed entertainment business has always had side hustles.
Even normal theatrical releases in the Studio System era had side hustles in the form of Roadshow releases. Gone With The Wind, for instance, spent months touring America in special Roadshows with prices 5x - 10x the price of a normal ticket in each market. Great theaters, special handouts, and other perks were a part of the hustle. (Here is a guide to presenting the film, meant for the theaters.)
The only Roadshow I ever attended was for Fiddler On The Roof, on December 14, 1971, at The Sheridan Theater on Arthur Godfrey Rd on Miami Beach. The theater no longer exists, but the Cinema Treasures page on it coincidentally features just this engagement. My father took me and my sister out of school one day to go see the film at its gala opening. If you are wondering, the average ticket price for a movie in America in 1971 was $1.65. As you can see in the ad above, the tickets for this Roadshow started at double that. (Here is another site with info on Fiddler’s Roadshow.)
Of course, the ultimate side hustle is Disneyland and Walt Disney World, which became the biggest part of Disney for a long while and remains the most profitable segment of the company today.
Merchandising has been a side hustle that rises and falls in significance over the years. Famously, Fox believed so little in Star Wars that they let George Lucas keep the merchandising rights.
Of course, that was back when $100 million was real money. It took the film, Star Wars, 12 weeks to gross $100 million domestically and 37 weeks to hit the $200 million mark, which returned roughly $100 million to the studio in rentals.
SMASH CUT TO 2024:
We are now heavily ensconced in The New Side Hustle Era. Just in the last week, there have been 2 major side hustle announcements.
First, Sony “bought” the 35-theater, 380-screen Alamo Drafthouse business. I use the quotes because we don’t know the structure of the deal at all, no financials. We only know that the Drafthouse team is staying on aboard at this point. Keep in mind that 6 of what were then 41 theaters declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy just a week before the “purchase,” closing 5 in Dallas and the only Alamo theater in Minnesota. Still, the connection is significant, even if none of the players have expressed specifically what Sony’s intentions are.
After a week reading well-intended but deeply irrelevant dramaturgy around the Paramount Consent Decree - which is a non-issue and no, the Biden government won’t be blocking this - the question still remains… what could this become, aside from another variation on in-theater promotion strategy?
The chain expanded extremely aggressively since 2017, with theaters from 5 to 14 screens each. Obviously, some of the expansion was overly ambitious, while some suffered greatly from COVID. Alamo is one of the chains that partners with Netflix for their 4-wall-ish theatrical efforts. The programming mixes mainstream wide-release movies with art films.
Years ago, I advocated for Netflix to buy the Landmark chain, which was of a similar size to Alamo. My feeling was that they could generate a constant flow of films, whether their big commercial efforts or docs or even TV shows. But the notion, back then, that they had the money to experiment (aka lose some money), they could really have led the way to new ideas in exhibition.
For instance, imagine if Netflix pushed out a season of Bridgerton or Stranger Things 2 episodes at a time, in movie theaters only, say 2 a month for 4 or 5 months. Or if you like, 2 episodes at a time, with 2 week runs, playing the season out in 8 or 10 weeks. And then, a couple weeks or a month after the last release of the finale, they all hit Netflix, binge-style. Or hey… do the theatrical release of all but the finale and save that for Netflix only. There are plenty of strategies that could be attempted and you could find out which would work.
There is no reason why the script could not be flipped and work really well… they have hard core followings… and you could assume that the theaters would be filled with people who share your affection… make TV shows movies instead of dragging movies into TV-only releases.
Speaking of Netflix, the second big side hustle story of the week is Netflix House, a 2-house test, in King of Prussia, PA and, ironically, Dallas.
Imagine waltzing with your partner to an orchestral cover of a Taylor Swift song on a replica of the Bridgerton set –– and then walking around the corner to compete in the Glass Bridge challenge from Squid Game. After pretending to fight for your life, you’ve worked up an appetite and want to get a bite. You see a nearby restaurant with food inspired by Netflix shows from around the world; the meal is memorable, but you still want to buy some Stranger Things merch. Luckily, there’s a shop that sells that Hellfire Club T-shirt you’ve always wanted.
Sounds great. You might have to excuse me from the fun as I gouged out my own eyes after the first sentence.
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