In seismic shift, Warner Bros. to stream all 2021 films

Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Canal discusses the move by Warner Bros. to launch all 2021 movies on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: What's happening in the movie world because there was news today about HBO Max and Warner Brothers. Let's bring in Ali Canal to explain to us where you're going to see your next flick. Ali?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yes, a bombshell announcement from Warner Brothers that sent the major theater chains cratering. If we look at how some of the major theater stocks ended today's session, we'll see IMAX off over 8%. AMC finished the day down nearly 16%. Cinemark down over 22%. And the reason was this announcement from Warner Brothers.

So basically, what's going to be happening is, Warner Brothers came out today and said that all of their 2021 films-- that includes big titles like "Dune," "In the Heights," "Matrix 4," they will be available on HBO Max the exact same day that they are in the theater. And these are very buzzy titles that people really thought would help theater chains get out of the misery of 2020 and hopefully enjoy some sort of profitability in 2021, especially with the potential vaccine.

But if it's all available on HBO Max for that first month-- it's only going to be on HBO Max exclusively for one month and then will continue at the theaters. But there is this question of, well, if I'm a consumer, I might just pay 15 bucks for that HBO Max subscription, rather than paying 15 plus every time I want to see a movie. So it's certainly a devastating blow for theaters.

Although it's a bit of a surprise, I think it's something that maybe we shouldn't have been so surprised about. The writing has been on the wall when it comes to how production studios have been handling this pandemic. We saw Disney decide to go direct to Disney Plus with "Mulan" as a $30 PVOD offering earlier on in the pandemic. "Trolls World Tour" completely bypassed that theatrical experience and went directly on demand as a PVOD offering. That, of course, leading to that historic deal between AMC and Universal. So it's something that, you know, we're watching closely. And hopefully, it's not the end of theaters.

SEANA SMITH: Ali, we only have about 30 seconds here. But is this exactly what HBO Max needed? You hear about Disney Plus all the time. You hear about Netflix. You don't hear about HBO Max as much.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I think it's certainly what they needed, and that was exactly the goal. They want to drive consumers to go and purchase an HBO Max subscription. If HBO Max wants to compete with the likes of Disney Plus and Netflix, they have to have the content. And this is certainly going to set them up well.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Ali Canal, we appreciate it. When you mentioned "Dune," by the way, the answer is [INAUDIBLE]. All geek losers out there like me and tech sci-fi people will love that reference. It's the old [INAUDIBLE]. All the best to Ali. Thank you very much.

I want to let you know we've got the jobs report tomorrow coming up. You can tune into Yahoo Finance Live starting at 8:25 in the morning. Jobs report is going to be a very important one. We're going to get the November number. Now of course, it's looking backwards, but still, it sets up a lot of where we're headed.