If Christopher Nolan Gets His Way, You’ll Never Be Allowed to Stream ‘Oppenheimer’
The renowned auteur hasn’t toned down his rhetoric on the evils of streaming, which led to a split between him and Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Oppenheimer” is making the most of its time in theaters. In a year where blockbusters have been hard to come by and Marvel movies can’t make any box-office headway, “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic packed with jargony dialogue about particle physics grossed nearly $1 billion at the global box office. As a Universal-distributed film, “Oppenheimer” will stream on Peacock at some point, but when is anyone’s guess.
- “Oppenheimer” arrives for digital purchase on Nov. 21, but still has no Peacock streaming date.
- Director Christopher Nolan is notoriously leery of streaming as a medium, and would prefer audiences purchase the movie via physical media.
- His views won’t affect the eventual release of ‘Oppenheimer,’ but most Hollywood studios are already lengthening theatrical stays for movies past the 45-day minimum after a reckoning with the economics of streaming.
When Will ‘Oppenheimer’ Finally Come to Streaming?
If director Christopher Nolan gets his way, the answer will be never. Nolan has never held streaming in high regard, and his ire was piqued in 2020 when then head of WarnerMedia Jason Kilar announced that an entire year’s worth of theatrical releases would be shown on the company’s streaming service HBO Max (now simply Max on the same date that they were to arrive in cinemas.
Nolan said that the move was essentially the same as telling directors that instead of working for the best movie studio, they now worked for the “worst” streaming service. His views have not softened since; in fact, that decision was part of the reason Nolan took “Oppenheimer” to Universal, after a longstanding working relationship with Warner (now Warner Bros. Discovery). He lays much of the blame for the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in Hollywood this summer at the feet of streaming, saying studios didn’t have the money to meet the demands of content creators because they had so much tied up in unprofitable streaming services.
“Part of the craziness with the labor negotiations this summer has been the studios sitting there and going, ‘Well, we can’t pay you because we don’t have enough money,’” Nolan told Variety in a recent interview. “To which the answer is ‘Well, you don’t have enough money because you’re not managing your business correctly. You’re not getting the same amount of money for your product that you were before.’ The shift to streaming has disrupted the entire industry and created problems for everybody.”
Nolan also spoke about his desire for audiences to watch “Oppenheimer” via physical media, so that no “evil streaming service” could come and steal the movie away from them.
Christopher Nolan talks about “trying to translate the photography and sound [in #Oppenheimer]…for a version that you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come and steal it from you.”https://t.co/UJbRshlGgL pic.twitter.com/Hr5no5TSvX
— Variety (@Variety) November 14, 2023
So, Will Nolan Keep ‘Oppenheimer Off Peacock Forever?
There’s essentially no chance that “Oppenheimer” won’t head to Peacock eventually, despite Nolan’s views on the subject. It can still bring NBCUniversal revenue, both in the form of new subscribers and ad revenues from audiences who choose to watch the film on Peacock’s ad-supported tier.
The Streamable predicted “Oppenheimer” would stream on Peacock in September, which obviously did not happen. The movie will be released for purchase on digital platforms like Prime Video on Nov. 21, and can be preordered now. But the lesson users should take away from the long theatrical window from the film is that they shouldn’t expect many movies to use the 45-day minimum cinematic period that studios and theaters have agreed to.
Few releases from the past year have followed the 45-day pattern, and the ones that do are usually not big financial successes for their respective studios. Last year forced media companies to take a hard look at the economics of streaming, and most of them came to the same conclusion: revenue per customer, not subscriber count is the most important measurement of a streamer’s health, and early releases of blockbuster movies to streaming don’t help improve the revenue metric. That’s before even entering into a discussion of how much extra money studios make from theater box offices as opposed to from streaming subscribers every month.
There are now two logical windows for the streaming release of “Oppenheimer.” The first would be in mid-December, when the holiday viewing period begins and Peacock can capitalize on audiences having more free time. The second is to wait another month or so, then make a serious push for the movie to build awards buzz heading into the Golden Globes and Oscars by releasing it to streaming. If Christopher Nolan somehow convinces NBCU executives to follow his line of thinking, however, “Oppenheimer” will never stream on Peacock.
Peacock
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