Theatrical window

For decades the window was a convention so stable it was treated as a law of nature: roughly three months of cinema exclusivity before home release. It survived video, DVD and the first decade of streaming largely intact.

It did not survive 2020. With cinemas closed, studios pushed titles straight to home, and when cinemas reopened the old convention did not come back. What replaced it is not a single new number but a negotiated range — shorter for titles that open modestly, longer for those that perform, and different again for a studio with its own streaming service to feed.

The pattern that emerged is roughly: a few weeks of exclusivity as standard, extending for titles that are still selling. Performance-linked rather than fixed.

Mostly it compresses everything. The revenue from a title arrives in a shorter period, so the opening weekend matters more and the long tail matters less. Programming turns over faster. And the audience knows the window is short, which changes the question from "shall we see it?" to "shall we see it now?"

The practical answer to that question is urgency and experience, and both are marketing problems more than programming ones. Knowing which of your customers came to the last three action titles and telling them directly about this one is worth more in a three-week window than in a three-month one, because there is no time for word of mouth to do the work. Which is why the cinemas that adapted fastest were the ones that already had their own audience data rather than renting attention from an agency each week.