Paramount‘s new President Jeff Shell might have experimented with windowing at NBCUniversal during the pandemic and after it, specifically dabbling in the controversial day-and-date strategy. However, the exec said Wednesday at the new conglomerate’s media event that he’s “100%” on board with theatrical.
“That’s what makes a movie a movie, and we’re all united in that,” Shell said, referring to his co-executives, CEO David Ellison, Motion Picture Co-Chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, and DTC Chair Cindy Holland, who were among the top brass sitting with him today on the dais.
“I believe in windows, and I think we all believe in windows,” continued Shell.
“Do I believe you can maximize value in windows? Absolutely, and we’re going to be looking at our windows across each thing,” he added.
“I don’t think each movie is created equal. Different movies deserve different windows sometimes. I think we’re pretty united up here in terms of theatrical being critical and it has to be part of the equation, but we’re also going to be much more diligent about looking at the value,” said Shell.
As Peacock was coming into existence and the industry was emerging out of Covid, Shell, then CEO of NBCUniversal, put a downstream waterfall in place at Universal Pictures whereby theatrical films went to Premium VOD depending on their box office performance after 17 to 30 days, followed by an exclusive window on the streamer, and then a window on either Amazon’s Prime Video or Netflix (depending on whether the pic was animated or live-action). The model was a means of making money on a movie in its home entertainment window.
Meanwhile today, former Netflix Head of US Scripted TV Cindy Holland exclaimed, “Made-for-streaming movies are not a priority for me.”
Speaking separately with Deadline at today’s post-event lunch, Shell told us that when it comes to all streamers making money and talent receiving back-end, the industry is bound to go “back to the future” — meaning each streaming service would ultimately license to the other and not keep their content solely siloed to their service. That was Shell’s prognostication.
As he starts his new job at Paramount, he’ll be looking closely at hammering out solid pay-one deals for the studio. Currently, Paramount Pictures has a shared pay-one that’s exclusive to Paramount+ and Prime Video.
In underscoring the new Paramount’s commitment to cinema, Ellison said today, “The movies we make will be made for theatrical.”