- Movies and shows are licensed rather than sold outright
- Pay-TV and video on demand are usually licensed before streaming
- Rights are increasingly being licensed to multiple platforms
If like me you enjoy nothing more than watching a great new movie on great home cinema kit, you've probably asked this question more than once about an exciting new release: when's it coming to one of the best streaming services – and which streamer is it coming to? And the answer is: it's complicated.
In a simpler world every movie would come to every streaming service. But of course we live in a world that's much messier, which is why we write separate guides to cover the best movies coming to Netflix, to Disney Plus, to Max, to Prime Video, to Paramount Plus and to Apple TV Plus.
So how do certain movies end up on certain streamers, and who decides who gets what and when? Let's find out.
How movies aren't sold
It's important to clarify what it means when we talk about films being released. Films aren't sold outright; in most cases, the companies that paid for them own them and like to keep it that way. What studios and their distributors do is sell licenses to show, sell or stream movies in a particular way, in a particular place, for a particular period of time.
When your local megaplex shows Wicked, it hasn't bought the movie; the theater chain has bought a licence to screen it in certain territories for a few weeks or months. Similarly, when Prime Video, Max or Paramount Plus offers a movie as part of your membership, the streamer has bought a licence that gives it the right to stream it – again, in certain territories for a certain period of time.
In addition to being licensed to different companies in different parts of the world, movie licenses are also sold in several stages. A studio movie will typically be shown in theaters first, made available digitally as pay-per-view or buy-to-own, and then made available on streaming.
Things are slightly different with TV shows, because of course there's not a theatrical release. But unless a show is made in-house by a streamer, it'll be licensed in much the same way that movies are.
Windows on the world
The movie business uses the term "release windows" to describe the different stages of a movie release campaign. So you have the theatrical release window, the pay-per-view window, the first streaming release window and so on.
The first release window is the original theatrical release. That used to be very long, typically three to six months or more, and then COVID came along. With theaters shut the studios either massively reduced the theatrical release window or abandoned it completely, turning to pay per view and streaming deals instead. And while COVID closures are thankfully a thing of the past, the much shorter theatrical windows remain.
Theatrical licences are traditionally exclusive: you won't usually be able to rent or buy a movie anywhere while it's still having its initial theatrical run. But the time between a movie hitting theaters and being available to rent, buy or stream is much shorter than it used to be.
Everything's accelerating
According to Indiewire, the average theatrical window across all the big studio movies in 2023 was just 37 days. There were outliers such as Oppenheimer, which spent 122 days as a theater-only release. But that one was really unusual. The same studio's Super Mario Bros Movie was more typical (and more profitable), ending its theatrical run after 41 days.
Indiewire's analysis shows that Taylor Swift's Eras Tour movie ran for 60 days while Disney movies averaged 62 days, A24 movies 48 days, Paramount 42 days and Sony 35 days. The shortest theatrical window? Five Nights At Freddy's, which didn't have one: it was available on Peacock from day one.
FNAF was the third-biggest horror movie opening in cinema history but its release isn't likely to be widely copied. The consensus is that simultaneous releases are more likely to cannibalize box office sales – especially in genres such as horror, which teens like to see together in theaters – and by missing out on the word of mouth that can turn modest successes into big ones.
When the run is done
Once the theatrical run is done, it's time for the release window that matters to streamers. That's called the Pay One Window, and it's when movies move from theaters to home viewing.
During the Pay One Window, the rights to show a movie are sold to two different markets: the PVOD/TVOD market (paid/transactional video on demand, aka pay-to-rent and buy-to-own) and the SVOD market, which is short for streaming video on demand.
SVOD means streamers such as Max, Prime, Netflix and Hulu; TVOD means rental and purchases on the likes of Apple TV (but not Apple TV+), Google Play, the Microsoft Store, Amazon (but not Included With Prime) and other digital storefronts.
It's always clearest if we use a real example, so let's take Barbie. Barbie's theatrical run started in July 2023 and stayed exclusive to theaters until September 2023, when it became available through TVOD platforms as a pay-to-rent and buy-to-own digital release. It then became available for Max subscribers to stream in December 2023.
When the Pay One Window expires, it's time to sell more licences. This next release window is known as the Pay Two Window, and it's when older movies are licensed, often to other streaming services than during the Pay One period. For example, Sony has a Pay One deal in place with Netflix but a Pay Two deal with all the Disney platforms.
Of the two windows, the Pay One Window is the more desirable: pent-up demand for big-name movies drives sales of new streaming subscriptions in a way that older movies don't. But Pay Two Window licences tend to be cheaper, and that means they enable streamers to expand their catalogs relatively cheaply.
Relationship status: it's complicated
Traditionally, Pay One Window deals were for up to 18 months and were exclusive – so if a movie was going to Peacock then it wouldn't also go to Amazon Prime for at least a year and a bit. But modern movie markets are much messier, and as Variety reports, most studios now licence to multiple streamers either simultaneously or slightly staggered.
As if that wasn't complicated enough, some of the movie studios also own streamers and some of the streamers make movies. So for example Apple TV+ and Netflix make movies that hit theaters first but which were made with streaming in mind; Disney the company owns Disney the studio and Disney Plus the streamer, so Disney movies will move to Disney Plus after their theatrical run finishes. But Disney also owns 20th Century Fox and Searchlight, and those movies don't just end up with Disney+ or the Disney-owned Hulu; they are usually licensed to HBO and Max too.
Here's how Variety describes it. "Netflix gets major studio fare from Sony Pictures and additional prestige films from Sony Pictures Classics, while Prime Video offers rotating selections of Universal and Paramount titles, alongside Amazon’s MGM films after they’re done on MGM+. Disney’s streamers eventually get Sony titles, too, and Hulu is also where art-house distributor Neon’s films stream after their theatrical runs."
As we said, it's complicated – and it'll only get more so.
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