A Particularly American Distinction?

If the theatrical exhibition of television points to the boundaries that media industries draw between themselves, it may be productive to consider how these circulation strategies play out on a global scale where the questions of borders and territories enable and constrain the shapes that media cultures can take (E. Elkins 2019). Television scholars have frequently discussed the ways in which television travels across international markets (Bielby and Harrington 2008; Havens 2006, 2013; Straubhaar 2007). Less explored, however, has been the way in which television has at times transformed into cinema in that process, and the role of theatrical exhibition in making it happen. By looking back to the broadcast era and considering the case of the original Battlestar Galactica television series, we can see how the circulation of “failed” television content as cinematic fare in international markets reveals contingent and culturally specific perceptions of these two media in the US context. Caetlin Benson-Allot (2021) has already made use of this television series as a way of revealing how “the commodity form—the commercial framing—of different video formats change consumers’ perception of television’s historical value.” In her analysis, the multiple home video releases of Battlestar Galactica over several decades altered the interpretative and evaluative frameworks that could be brought to the series in its initial airing. International theatrical film release is an important part of Benson-Allot’s account in that it generated new edits of Battlestar Galactica that could circulate in home video and (much as we saw with “The Best of Both Worlds,” above) alter its televisual character. Yet while Benson-Allot is primarily concerned with the circulation of these home video commodities, the analysis here centers international theatrical exhibition to assess the way in which it, too, generates a significant commodity form and global refraining for television programming.

In the United States, Battlestar Galáctica originally aired in the 1978-1979 television season as part of the ABC network’s primetime line-up. Designed to tap into the hype surrounding Star Wars (1977) (and even employing some of that film’s designers to do so), the series was at that time one of the most expensive television series ever made, incurring significant costs in its efforts to bring those big budget blockbuster movie appeals to television production. Each episode reportedly cost $1 million to produce, over double the average of $450,000 for scripted series in the United States at that time (Jay 2018; Shales 1978, Bl). The series premiered on Sunday, September 17, 1978, with a special three-hour event episode called “Saga of a Star World”—which was extended to four following interruption that evening for breaking news coverage of the Camp David Peace Accords. Even with this interruption, the launch drew strong Nielsen ratings and proved to be the fifth-highest-performing program of the week (Jay 2018). Subsequent episodes would adopt a standard hour-long format, and by early October, Battlestar Galáctica outperformed the competition from the other two US broadcast networks to win its Sunday time slot, as one of four new series on the ABC schedule that rated among the top-20 programs in the Nielsen ratings (Deeb 1978, A7). However, as television historian Robert Jay (2018) explains, this story of success would be short-lived, as the series soon faced stronger competition: CBS decided to move the hit sitcom All in the Family (1971-1979) to Sunday nights. Although Battlestar Galáctica still showed “some ratings strength” against this new competition, the impaired ratings performance and the overall expense of the series raised questions at the network level about its sustainability (Jay 2018). ABC was not having a bad season, as many of its other new series were performing well, so the network questioned continued investment in this big budget sci-fi spectacle—particularly when its demanding production had led to delays. Ultimately, Battlestar Galáctica was canceled at the end of the season. The next year, ABC would place an order for a revamped series that brought the space opera to more familiar settings on Earth (and thus potentially reduce costs). However, the new Galáctica 1980 (1980) would similarly be canceled by the end of the next season.

As an attempt to bring the cinematic spectacle of Star Wars to television, Battlestar Galáctica proved to be a significant failure. However, at the level of exhibition, this failed television series would remain in circulation in theatrical settings, particularly outside of the United States. The special three-hour premiere of the series was cut into three parts for reruns in US syndication, removing the feature-length presentation of its original broadcast to transform it into something that could fit the temporal rhythms of everyday television scheduling (in some ways the opposite of the efforts to turn Star Trek’s “Best of Both Worlds” into a cinematic presentation 35 years later). Yet the feature-length “Saga of a Star World” persisted in other contexts—including, appropriately enough, in theatrical settings. So much money had been spent to produce what Variety called “a poor man’s version of Star Wars” (Knight 1978) that Universal, the studio that produced the series, had sought to recoup some of those costs by releasing the feature-length debut episode theatrically (Jay 2018). Notably, this was not an afterthought or an attempt to repurpose the series following its failure in US network broadcasting, but part of an initial release strategy. Although the television series premiered in the United States in September 1978, a theatrical version had previously been released in April 1978 for the United Kingdom and in July 1978 for Canada, Australia, and other territories in Europe. This international theatrical release was not identical to the version that would air a few months later on US television: in addition to commercial interruptions, the US television version presented a somewhat different narrative outcome. While the villain Baltar was beheaded in the international release, he survived the US television version of “Saga of a Star World” in order to continue menacing the protagonists in series production. Nevertheless, it would be in the international cinema that the Battlestar Galáctica narrative would first be seen, and with those immediate box office revenues, Universal began to make back its investment in the series before it ever aired on television (much less before the syndication revenues that would follow years later).

This international release raises important considerations about the mutability of film and television at the level of exhibition. When traveling across international boundaries, content that could function as cinema in one country or region could serve equally as television in another. Translation across cultures could also involve fundamental transformations in media form—or, perhaps, problematize the distinctions between those media forms. Although it circulated before media industries framed entertainment in the explicit terms of franchised intellectual properties, Battlestar Galáctica seemed to function as content equally viable as film or as television in a global marketplace. Yet this content did not function equally in all places; Battlestar Galáctica was held back from initial theatrical distribution in the United States, designed (and reedited) to fulfill a different, televisual function than in cinematic function in international markets. What could be cinema and what could be television had been strategized and territorialized across these global boundaries. Although the practices and technologies of geo-blocking have more recently worked to impede the free flow of content across international borders (E. Elkins 2019), the 1978 release of Battlestar Galáctica represented an attempt to regulate what would and would not flow across the borders of different media platforms as they moved between territories. This industrially coordinated move from Europe to the United States was one of geography and of media system. As a result, Battlestar Galáctica offers a point of comparative analysis not just between cinema and television, but between content constructed alternately as international cinema and US television. In that move, we can see that distinctions between television and film can be nationally and culturally specific, in that the content that functions as television and distinctly not cinema in one national context can nonetheless serve as cinema when exhibited in another.

This distinction takes on ideological valences, too: in the United States, the claim that Battlestar Galáctica was, when reviewed as a cinema presentation, a “poor man’s Star Wars” cemented its better suitability for television, even as the theatrical release proved successful elsewhere in the globe. The denial of cinematic status in its US circulation implicitly frames international film cultures as an inferior, third world, “poor man’s” cinema.

Although the international release of “Saga of a Star World” was thus not a dumping of failed television product on the global market but a simultaneous and parallel manifestation as cinema, the failure of the US television series did trigger more action in these theatrical venues. For theatrical release in Europe, Mexico, South America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Australia, Universal cut together the episodes “The Living Legend” and “Fire in Space” as a single presentation renamed Mission Galáctica: The Cylon Attack (Greenwood 2017). As the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth episodes aired in the United States, these episodes had already been aired on television in November and December 1978 before the first international theatrical run in West Germany on August 9, 1979. Mission Galáctica then ran intermittently in different international markets for the next several years—beginning runs as late as June 1981 in Japan and December 1983 in Finland (IMDB, “Mission” n.d.). Following the failure of the Galáctica 1980 television revamp, Universal would once again employ this successful theatrical release strategy, offering the episodes “Galáctica Discovers Earth” and “The Night the Cylons Landed” as a single, feature presentation for international markets beginning in May. Although the episodes may have been “mashed together” (Greenwood 2017), they represented the persistent ability of US television to function as cinema beyond its national boundaries.

This strategy did not go unnoticed by Universal distributors responsible for the US territory. As Variety suggested, the prior theatrical release of “Saga of a Star World” in European and Canadian cinema was sufficiently successful— “enough to encourage a domestic release” (Knight 1978). This led to a US release as well, where Saga of a Star World was one of four films Universal released with a Sensurround sound mix (Greenwood 2017). Thus, the transformation of this television production into a theatrical presentation was not unique to the international market, even if initially driven by that market and sustained much longer in it. This development demonstrated that while Battlestar may have been a “poor man’s Star Wars,” it did, in that reputation, still have the capacity to share the same spaces of exhibition as Star Wars. Failed television, in this instance, could still function as cinema in the United States, even if marked as inadequate to that task.

Battlestar Galáctica is certainly not the only television property to be reconfigured as cinema in international distribution. Made-for-television movies, in particular, have held significant potential for international cinema sales. For example, the Cold War drama The Day After, one of the most notable TV movie events of its time, was released into the international theatrical market following its November 1983 US debut—only a week later in the case of its run in Denmark. Many more examples could be traced. This is not to say that all television has been able to make this transformation into theatrical exhibition by tapping into an international distribution culture that troubles these media-based distinctions. Focused on the Black experience in America from the 18th to 20th century across eight episodes and over nine hours of programming, the immensely successful 1977 television mini-series Roots might have presented a greater challenge than other television properties for distributors envisioning theatrical strategies, given its length alone. Thus, in international distribution to territories including France, West Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, and more, Roots remained a television product as it traveled the world from 1977 to 1980 (IMDB, “Roots” n.d.). However, as Tim Havens (2006, 2013) points out, distributors have also discounted the appeal of African American stories, stars, and reputations in the global market. So while the event status of the original Roots mini-series gave it a visibility that drove international sales, its subsequent sequels and spin-offs proved less mobile, both across borders and across media. The 1988 TV movie Roots: The Gift saw international television distribution in Finland alone (IMDB, “Roots: The Gift” n.d.). With a runtime of one hour and forty minutes, this television movie would have been well suited to theatrical exhibition. Yet its mobility in this intersection of television and film distribution appeared considerably less than an imitation of Star Wars. Havens’ claims might then have relevance not just for understanding whose television travels, but also whose television is allowed to transform when it crosses global boundaries. Some creators, genres, stories, and representations have the privilege to escape the contingent and constructed boundaries drawn between film and television, while those more marginalized may not.

In fact, while this chapter considers exhibition plans and strategies, its interest in the intersection of television and film globally demands recognition of the ways in which American or Western perceptions of these media and these essential qualities do not enjoy universal status around the world. Instead, exhibition spaces throughout the world challenge these distinctions considerably. As Jonathan found in his ethnographic work in Malawi in 2008 and 2010 (see Gray 2011), for instance, the theatrical spaces available for public exhibition of films consisted only of an 80-person capacity room in each of the two largest cities, Blantyre and Lilongwe—with the former having reportedly been closed. This changes the very terms of filmgoing, where the primary means of watching film was either to do so at one’s own home, or else to attend a video show in which paying patrons sat on planks of wood set over plastic cartons to watch films in a shared space. In both settings, film would be watched on a television set, usually a small tube device. Video shows, moreover, would run content back to back, with no distinct start or finish times; though film content predominated, it would frequently be mixed with content originally produced for television distribution. At the marketplaces, meanwhile, pirate stalls did not distinguish between film and television in the organization and presentation of their offerings. Not surprisingly, then, when asked about their interest in American “movies,” retailers’ answers could often turn to Lost (2004-2010), Prison Break (2005-2017), CSI: Miami (2002-2012), or other locally popular television series. Malawi is a country too poor to factor into transnational media companies’ release and exhibition strategies, but in this respect, it is representative of much of the Global South. Thus, if this section has illustrated how the distinctions between film and television can break down in studio release and exhibition strategies the second we look outside the United States, it ends with acknowledgment that those distinctions further crumble when we look beyond those industry strategies at the level of everyday screening realities for much of the world.

When the Theater Shuts Down

While both the broadcast and digital eras have clearly afforded opportunities for television to double as cinema through theatrical exhibition, film too has frequently transformed into television in sites of domestic consumption. The film libraries controlled by studios have been sold into television distribution from the earliest days of the electronic medium (Kompare 2005), and on platforms like Netflix and Hulu, that content now streams into our homes on smart television sets, cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Furthermore, in this intersection between television and the cinema, the domestic space has often been transformed into a theatrical one. Consumers have invested in complex home theater systems meant to remediate the filmgoing experience in the living room. As Barbara Klinger (2006) writes, these post-theatrical exhibition cultures have not just created a new domestic space in which films can be shown, but have also transformed cinema in the process. Film cultures have been reshaped by their encounters with the domestic exhibition technologies of television.

However, as with all the potential convergences of film and television exhibition in this chapter, these encounters are not even or essential, but instead determined by the social and industrial contexts that impose boundaries and hierarchies on these distinct media. Perhaps most exemplary of the persistent imposition of difference between film and television is the US industry response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the 2020 closure of theatrical venues due to social distancing policies prompted a reinvestment in television technologies as a means of distributing cinema product. At the same time, however, ingrained industry assumptions about the value of theatrical exhibition have limited the potential of film products to be rerouted to television markets that remain more viable.

In early 2020, the spread of COVID-19 across the globe required nearly every industry to reorganize and rethink to adapt to a changed set of socioeconomic conditions. Throughout much of the world, consumers’ abilities to leave their homes were curtailed due to government policies that restricted the opening of businesses and limited the size of social gatherings; “stay-at-home” orders required all but “essential” workers to shelter in place. Meanwhile, with many businesses forced to close (whether temporarily or permanently), many individuals found themselves out of work, drastically reducing the consumer spending power upon which global capitalism depended. In April 2020, unemployment in the United States rose to 15% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—an increase of over 10% from the beginning of the year before the impact of the pandemic began to be felt (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020). Overall, the US economy suffered the largest quarterly decline ever recorded, shrinking by almost a third at 32.9%. Previously, the largest quarterly drop in gross domestic product had been a 10% drop in 1958 (Ivanova 2020). For many industries in the United States—and elsewhere throughout the globe—these conditions imposed new challenges and even existential crises.

For the Hollywood film industry, the pandemic disrupted its supply chain from production to exhibition. The production of film content—an intensively collaborative, close-quarters enterprise often involving hundreds of on-set crew people—was not compatible with new social distancing measures. Studios thus found themselves forced to engage in a production shutdown, cutting off their supply of new content. Some projects in post-production could still be completed by editors and effects artists working remotely from home, but within months there would be little to prep for release. However, distributors also found themselves sitting on a supply of finished product that they could not release theatrically. Because consumers were unable to gather in the public spaces of movie theaters, there was effectively no market for films released theatrically, and major Hollywood releases like Mulan (2020), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), Black Widow (forthcoming), Top Gun (forthcoming), and more were delayed—often multiple times, and sometimes pulled from the schedule indefinitely (Zeitchik, “Mulan” 2020). By late 2020, distributors increasingly battled over crowded release dates in 2021 and beyond as so many films were repeatedly delayed into the future; as one executive put it, the typically considerable challenge of scheduling releases now heightened to the point of “playing four-dimensional chess on acid” (McClintock 2020). Even when local governments began to allow the limited reopening of movie theaters, distributors appeared reluctant to start the flow of content again, knowing that a depressed audience turnout would limit the revenues for blockbuster films in which hundreds of millions of dollars had been invested on the promise of pre-pandemic returns. For all intents and purposes, the flow of new Hollywood films from producer to theater-going consumer stalled.

In this environment, the ability of theatrical exhibitors to survive appeared dubious. As reported in The Los Angeles Times, movie theaters faced “an existential threat” (Faughnder 2020). Although some 293 drive-in theaters were doing brisk business (mostly showing library fare as studios continued to hold back major new releases like Black Widow), the one thousand indoor movie theaters in the United States remained closed by July 2020. With summer blockbusters typically accounting for 40% of theater revenues, this continued closure meant a significant loss, with Wedbush Securities estimating that the 2020 North American box office total would drop 61% from the previous year due to the impact of the pandemic (Faughnder 2020). Many theater operators elected to remain closed due to doubts about audience readiness to come back to the public space of the theaters, while those that did contemplate reopening imagined a changed experience with mandatory masks, hand sanitizer, and temperature checks coming to be more important than the high-end amenities that had previously defined the 21st-century theater experience (Molnar 2020; Truitt 2020). In this environment, the largest theatrical chain in the world, AMC, anticipated near-term bankruptcy before striking a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake Group for an injection of cash needed in the efforts to reopen its theaters. This deal, however, did not eliminate bankruptcy fears, as it was somewhat pessimistically seen as a means to improve the outcome for investors “if AMC does end up filing for chapter 11 protection” (Fox Business 2020). All in all, the COVID-19 crisis did nothing less than decimate the business of theatrical exhibition.

Undoubtedly, this crisis had similarly negative impacts on the television industries. The shutdown that put film production on hiatus equally curtailed the creation of television content. Prior to the pandemic, analysts spoke of an era of “peak TV” in which the demand for original content across so many competing channels and subscription services had led to a boom in the sheer number of scripted series being produced. The shutdown, however, triggered declarations that peak TV was over, as the supply of new television programming appeared sure to run out in a matter of months (Baysinger 2020; Guyette 2020). Yet while the production of television faced a similar threat, the domestic exhibition context of television afforded potential opportunity. For some sectors of the television industries, the pandemic proved to be a boon. With consumers trapped at home, television viewing increased. Research by Comscore revealed that in the broadcast arena, viewership for the four major US television networks had increased by 19% in March 2020 compared to a year prior (with children’s television programming increasing by an even larger 31% as younger viewers looked to television during school closures) (Sullivan 2020). Other research confirmed that the bulk of this increase appeared in daytime television when many viewers had previously been out of the home (Watson 2020). While traditional television outlets gained additional viewership, new online competitors also saw surges in consumer interest too, estimated at a 34% spike in March (Epstein 2020). Netflix reported a gain of 16 million new subscribers in the first three months of the year (doubling those who had signed up in the previous three months), attributing that interest to the increased demand for the entertainment it could offer (Thomas 2020). Similarly, although the Walt Disney Company faced significant losses due to its disrupted film investments, its Disney+ streaming service offered a singular ray of hope. In February, the service had attracted 29 million subscribers after three months of operation. By April, that subscriber base had grown to 50 million, a sustained growth credited to the “global health crisis forcing hundreds of millions of people to stay home” (Epstein 2020). These positive indicators did not come without some caution—the surges in viewership and subscription in March, for example, fell off as the pandemic wore on (Lane 2020). The sustainability of growth was further put into question by the coming content drought that the production shutdown would bring (Albasi 2020). Nonetheless, the domestic settings in which these television services could be consumed gave them a significant advantage over the exhibition models of theatrical film.

Given these conditions, it might seem logical for the film and television industries to consolidate their exhibition efforts. History has shown the ability of film and television content to be repurposed across exhibition contexts. Television had a secure pipeline to the consumer still in place, whereas the cinema had a glut of unreleased content that could make use of that pipeline while helping to put off a television drought. And in some cases, Hollywood did indeed look to home entertainment as an alternative means of distributing the content that it could not release due to the pandemic. The animated film Trolls World Tour (2020), for example, was originally slated to be released theatrically on April 10, and instead of delaying that opening, distributor Universal decided to make the film available for digital rental on platforms including Apple TV. In the first three weeks of release, the film earned S77 million through these rentals—exceeding what the original 2016 Trolls film made in five months of theatrical exhibition (Schwartzel 2020). This rental model represented a commitment to continuity with theatrical business models—S19.99 bought the consumer a window of access to the film at a price point far more comparable to a family night at the movies than a monthly subscription fee that provides longer-term access to a whole library of content. While piggybacked on platforms like Apple TV, this was only a limited experiment in redirecting film content to the television industries. Nevertheless, it seized on the potential to embrace the domestic context of television consumption as an alternative to the theatrical model.

Although Disney was slower to embrace streaming as an alternative to theatrical release, analysts and fans alike wondered if long-delayed films like Mulan might ultimately debut on Disney+ (Pallotta, “Here’s Why” 2020). As the pandemic wore on, though, Disney became more open to the possibilities. The company’s first move in the United States was to release a film version of the stage hip-hop musical Hamilton, originally scheduled for release in October 2021, on the Disney+ streaming platform in July 2020. It may seem surprising that Disney would choose to release this film well over a year early with so many other films already delayed by that point. Yet compared to big-budget blockbuster spectacles in which Disney had invested hundreds of millions of dollars, less was at stake in this experiment—the relatively small $75 million spent to acquire the rights to a filmed version of the stage show (Lindahl 2020). Given the visibility of Black Lives Matter protests and anti-racist activism in summer 2020, this early release also communicated a timely corporate commitment to Black consumers and experiences. By contrast, Disney was far more reluctant to consign to Disney+ big-budget productions like Black Widow and Mulan intended for theatrical release. The former was ultimately moved to 2021; but in the case of the latter, Disney finally relented and planned a streaming video-on-demand release similar to Trolls World Tour. However, to access Mulan upon its September 4 release, consumers had to have a base Disney+ account and pay an addition $30 for “Premier Access” to the film, which would persist as long as the account remained active. For many, this seemed a fairly hefty price for home video; for others, it posed a bargain compared to a night at the movies that might cost a family far more than that after accounting for concessions. Assessing the success of this strategy remains difficult, however, as there are few benchmarks for video-on-demand releases, and analysts are at the mercy of the information Disney wishes to provide (Brueggemann 2020). Moreover, Disney’s decision to release Mulan in this form in the United States did not preclude different release strategies elsewhere in the world (especially where Disney+ does not operate) or subsequent theatrical releases in the future. A week later, Mulan did open theatrically in China; but it debuted to only $23 million in box office revenues in the largest market in the world, hamstrung less by the pandemic and more by a government-imposed media blackout as the film had become a lightning rod for criticizing human rights abuses in the region in which it was filmed (Davis 2020). Mulan therefore remains an early proof of concept rather than commitment to streaming release strategies.

Yet while experiments like Trolls World Tour, Hamilton, and Mulan hinted at new distributional possibilities that could transform filmgoing into something experienced through streaming services, established industry norms and hierarchies of value reasserted the necessity of boundaries around theatrically exhibited cinema. Beyond the threat to the economic survival of these industries, the disruption of exhibition boundaries threatened to destabilize some of the fundamental assumptions about what makes a film different from television and how that distinction can serve as a means of aesthetic evaluation. Recall that HBO considered releasing the final season of Game of Thrones theatrically: such a move would challenge fundamental ontologies of the cinema as constructed in professional and consumer cultures. While such a theatrical release could be profitable, it would also raise questions about what counts as cinema.

Even those who advocated for the theatrical exhibition of cinematic television content recognized that the strategy would cause confusion. If a television series like Game of Thrones were to have been released theatrically, would this have qualified it as a film eligible for Academy Awards (Kohn 2019)? However, only a year after the series’ conclusion on television, such questions would be largely moot amid the pandemic-driven collapse of film exhibition. Indeed, at that point the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had to revise its longstanding policy that only films released theatrically could qualify for its awards—lest the 2021 ceremony be forced to focus on the much smaller pool of films that had seen theatrical release. Thus, the Academy rewrote the rules of eligibility to make an exception, allowing that “Until further notice and for the 93rd Awards year only, films that had a previously planned theatrical release but are initially made available through commercial streaming, VOD service or other broadcast may qualify for awards consideration” (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2020).

As much as this exception shows flexibility, it also reveals a refusal to dissolve the boundaries between film and television cultures; a “planned theatrical release,” even if it never came to fruition, remains the marker of eligibility, even if a film is eventually forced to release through other means. Despite the disruption of the pandemic, theatrical exhibition remains the defining characteristic of film for organizations like the Academy. Ironically, a Netflix film like The Old Guard (2020) starring major Hollywood talent like Charlize Theron and Chiwetel Ejiofor and featuring the same slick action scenes as a summer blockbuster still would not be eligible for an Oscar, despite these changes, while Mulan will—even though both seem to share the same aesthetics, production values, and release platforms. This insistence on the symbolic importance of theatrical release, while highlighted in the pandemic, also has a long tradition in genres such as documentary, which can similarly confuse the boundaries of film and television. Feature documentaries regularly make their money from television release, but moments of exhibition at Sundance and other prestige venues—however more fleeting—matter for attracting Oscar nominations and other marketable markers of prestige that can help drive success on Netflix, HBO, or Amazon Prime Video (Stone 2018). The theatrical appearance marks as non-televisual that which depends on television.

As media analyst Paul Degarabedian explains, there are “both financial and symbolic” reasons for Hollywood to defend its investment in and insistence on theatrical exhibition as the essential component of film cultures (Pallotta, “Here’s Why” 2020). These financial reasons are considerable: a film like Millan costs hundreds of millions of dollars and depends on the direct revenues of ticket sales (domestic and global) to generate a definite return on investment. Studios must also consider their relationships with exhibitors to whom they have promised these releases; for example, the release of Trolls World Tour via digital home entertainment prompted the AMC theater chain to ban Universal films from its screens (Pallotta, “AMC” 2020). Pursuit of a new set of financial transactions could come at the expense of the old. Yet the symbolic proves equally important, as Hollywood attempts to protect the “event-like feel of going to the movies” and the rituals that come along with it (Pallotta, “Here’s Why” 2020). Once studios start releasing films directly to home entertainment platforms, they risk evaporating that cinematic prestige and giving audiences the chance to decide they can live without the practices of filmgoing, concession buying, and more. If audiences begin to feel like the theatrical experience doesn’t matter, efforts to resecure that revenue stream might be doomed even if the public health crisis came to a quick end.

The symbolic value of theatrical release as a means of legitimating cinematic work also underpins Hollywood’s cultures of production. The New Mutants, a 20th Century Fox superhero horror film directed by Josh Boone, had been scheduled for theatrical release as early as 2018, but due to production delays, reshoots, and strategic reorganization following the studio’s acquisition by Disney, it was delayed until August 28, 2020. The pandemic, of course, threatened to impose further delay, compounding the frustration of anyone anticipating the long-awaited film. Yet as the director explains, alternative forms of release are simply not possible to contemplate without disrupting both the expectations of creative professionals and the legal practices designed to manage those expectations in their relationships with employers. For filmmakers like Boone, signing a contract to direct a film means signing a contract to direct something that will be released theatrically. “With most movies, you sign contracts that guarantee a theatrical release, so it needs to open to ever go digital in the first place,” he explains. “We just, too, would like to see people to see it in the theater. But it needs to obviously be at the right time when it’s safe to go back” (Gemmill 2020). Boone essentially communicates to those impatient for film releases that they should buckle in for a long wait because studios had effectively promised their filmmakers that their work will debut theatrically. Without renegotiation of those contracts—and a transformation of the creative norms by which film directors expect theatrical release to be commensurate with that role—the potential for film work to release on television platforms remains limited.

What Hollywood’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as the writing of this book reveals, then, is that despite the potential for the film industry to look to domestic television release as an alternative to public exhibition spaces decimated by public health crisis, such a transformation was shaped by both economic and cultural frameworks that insisted on limiting that transformation or reimposing fundamental distinctions. Film content could easily run on television exhibition platforms—but doing so threatened the cultures of exhibition around which film consumption and creation had been defined. Indeed, it was the sense of greater value and prestige in theatrical exhibition that industry strategies deemed essential to preserve, and that circulation in the domestic spaces of television might have cheapened. Hollywood was willing to risk losing money by keeping films off television in order to maintain its investment in the value and prestige of this distinction. The story of the pandemic is one of television and film’s potential convergence as well as the efforts made to reassert exhibition as the site of their distinction.