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For many years now, cinema admissions have been under pressure, with only the big-budget tentpole titles — films with a budget of $100-million or more — and animations accounting for notable year-to-year growth in ticket sales, according to Paul Hastings, SVP of EMEA sales for Whip Media Group.

Most everything else — horror, comedies, dramas, family features and documentaries — has seen mostly year-to-year declines at the box office, causing content owners to seek out new revenue streams for their content.

And while rights holders have long eyeballed the premium VOD arena for their content, long-standing (and often-rocky) relationships with cinema owners has resulted in major studios’ hesitancy to take the leap. Then came COVID-19.

“As a result of the shutdown, there’s been an increase by the major studios in the use of (premium) VOD,” Hastings said July 2, during a presentation at the Global Media & Entertainment Day event presented live, virtually, from London. “Because of the entrenched and delicate nature of [the relationships between] studios and cinemas, premium VOD hadn’t really pushed forward the way many thought it would. But because of the lockdown, COVID has forced many of the studios to experiment, release movies straight to VOD platforms.”

With “Trolls World Tour” pulling in more than $100 million in the first three weeks of its premium VOD release — and other studios, like Paramount and Warner, following suit with digital-first releases — even with pushback from cinema owners there’s every indication this premium VOD model will have legs after the pandemic begins to hit the downslope, Hastings said.

“We think the new normal will be a combination of cinema releases and day-and-date,” he added during his presentation “ Defining the New Normal for Theatrical Releases, Opportunities for Studios and Platforms.” Whip surveyed 1,000 UK consumers around their willingness to return to cinemas following the lockdowns, and their sentiments toward premium VOD.

More than 65% do miss the cinema experience, the survey found, and 44% said they would return if social distancing (spaces between seats especially) was employed to make them feel safe and comfortable. “Provided there are sensible parameters put in place, people are willing to return,” Hastings said.

But for those who said they will not go back to cinemas, the No. 1 reason why (with roughly 70%) was that the films they want to see are being made available digitally. “There are more people willing to pay for this VOD experience,” Hastings said, noting that UK consumers mostly felt that the premium VOD price points offered during the pandemic have been just about right.

Top watch the full presentation, click here.

The fourth annual M&E Day event https://www.mesaonline.org/conferences/global-media-entertainment-day-2020/ , presented by MESA, featured mainstage panels and more than 15 breakout sessions, covering the latest it data, cloud, IT and security across the media and entertainment technology ecosystem.

The event was presented by Caringo, with sponsorship by Convergent Risks, Cyberhaven, Richey May Technology Solutions, RSG Media, Signiant, Whip Media Group, Zendesk, Tape Ark, Sony New Media Solutions, 5th Kind, ATMECS, Eluvio, Tamr, the Audio Business Continuity Alliance (ABCA), the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), and The Trusted Partner Network (TPN).