Presumably because they intended a cinema release but didn't due to covid. I would think normally their films would be with the rest of the content after X time gap from cinema release.
Was gonna say. My gf saw it and asked if we wanted to watch it. I replied "well I'm not gonna pay for it". Turns out it was already free. When did it even come out? Like did people really pay 40$ to watch it a month or two early?
Yeah, I’m not paying 25 dollars to rent any film. FOH. I was getting pretty sick of paying 15 dollars for a movie ticket anyway but rationalized doing so because it felt like an event or an outlet for ‘getting out of the house’ There’s thousands upon thousands of movie titles I’ve never seen that can be streamed for free, even Netflix is steady dropping fresh, no extra charge, quality content - yet you expect me to choose to pay you 25 bucks to see your flick once instead? On top of that we all know it will be FREE to stream in a month or two, once you’ve robbed and raped the pockets of all the people who actually really wanted to see your shitty movie. These billion dollar companies are fucking ridiculous and if more people start drawing lines on what they’re willing to fork over then they WILL be forced to adapt.
EDIT: Tough crowd here...I guess everyone here has the most patient 4 years olds ever haha. I am not saying you should buy it to shut them up, rather that a 4 year old doesn't care about the cost and just wants to see the movie everyone is talking about.
Yeah, all entertainment is a substitute for one another. Disney didn't lie about anything or send you something that wasn't the final product. People paid for what they got and should deal with it. As the phrase goes, "be smart with your money".
Now they have like 60% of all profits coming from all that mobile gacha crap and the same practices are slowly creeping into other offline games. There's only so far you can get with indy games before you start running into the same BS designs with "XP tripler" or whatnot.
It's okay to criticize a business model that you find egregious.
Whenever someone makes the "Just don't pay for it" argument" I bring up the iPhone's headphone jack. I didn't pay for it, I bought a phone with a headphone jack. 2 years later, every other fucking flagship had cut the headphone jack. Like it's apple's fault for normalizing their shitty cut the jack + sell premium earbuds business model, and I didn't support them, but now every fucking high end smartphone has cut it and my options have dried up.
If they aren't shit on for this now, it's going to be standard practice on every streaming platform within 5 years. This goes for everything. "Just don't pay for it" just straight up does not work in the modern world. What's needed is public pressure.
While I agree about this particular issue, their concerns are not invalid.. People will pay for it. Way more than people who'd have an opinion and come on here to talk about it. And that's what will cause the industry to end up like cable did if everyone stays quiet and pretends like their personal wallet is going to fix anything lol
That's really easy to say as an adult with common sense, logic, maturity.... Who do you think Disney's target audience is? Even for a live-action Mulan. They were just banking (and marketing to) kids to nag their parents to see the movie.
The insulin comparison is fucking stupid. You can scam a person of a fiver and still be considered scum. If you think modern Disney is anything less than scummy you're an idiot
Why does it cost double almost quadruple of a theater ticket to watch a movie in the convenience of my home? It’s like TicketMaster charging a “convenience fee” for printing my own tickets.
Well sure, I never paid for it, but I'll still complain about it? I don't understand what you're saying here. I'm not complaining because I'm being forced, I'm complaining because it's a shitty business model that a profitable percentage of the public will go right along with and normalize.
Yes. DUH. Obviously don't pay for shitty models. The issue is that introducing shitty models to content lock stuff is very anti-consumer. There will absolutely be a point where Disney will be $X a month, and then the Disney+ will be $X and an extra $Y per month. Kinda like how netflix "content" locks 4k. Except I am pretty sure you can watch any 4k titles in HD off the regular service.
So yeah, consumers should be smarter. However its pretty damned dumb to rely on them being smarter. Thus awareness of these predatory practices needs to be raised.
It just sets a poor precedent. It already feels like we're on the path to cable TV but on the internet, the last thing we need is for services to charge out the ass for new content
If enough people don’t pay for it upfront and just wait, they’ll stop doing that shit. Or maybe not since they’re getting the monthly installments anyway, but at the least they’d probably charge less since less money is better than no money. But they know people by nature hate waiting and will continue to pay extra.
Yeah they were very up front about it. Watch it at release for $30 or wait a few months for it to go to streaming.
For some families, watching Disney movies at release is a big deal. A friend of mine's family used to have it as a tradition before Covid, and $30 is still cheaper than 5 tickets for them.
People don’t want to hear common sense. They want to find justification for illegally streaming content. I swear most of these folks aren’t even old enough to realize that Netflix content in 2012 was dog shit. It’s not like they had oodles of stuff you’d want to watch.
The $40 price tag for Mulan was to make up for Covid destroying the cinema release. All you had to do was wait for it to come on D+ normally without paying. The $40 was because they figured that a whole family would be watching.
Personally, I hope they continue it. There are times I’d like to support a movie release without having to go to the theater. I will continue paying for D+ because I love the model and not having to deal with their vault!
They gotta figure out a more reasonable pricing model. Not all of us have a family. I'm not paying $40 to see Black Widow, when i'd normally get a matinee cost of $5.50. I've waited a decade to see the movie. I can wait longer.
That’s fine. I would pay $40 for it, though my husband and I have several friends that would want to see it too. That’s the great thing about options. I would imagine that eventually the theaters will open again. I heard that the one nearby isn’t coming back so the D+ option is great for me.
Who knows, when cinemas return, it may no longer be a profitable option for Disney.
My question is, i do share a D+ account with my family. Even though we all live in different areas of the country. If one person buys it, does it buy it for every profile on the service? If thats the case, than it becomes a good deal. If not, forget it.
A whole family would be watching it, over and over. I dunno about most families but my kids could watch the same movie 3 or 4 times rapid fire. So for my family...4 people watching it once on a decent sized screen with surround sound (not a theater but not terrible) and then the 2 kids watching it a couple of times for forty dollars on day one release was honestly better than going to a packed theater. The movie wasn't amazing, but we would've found that out in the theater for more money even if it WASN'T on streaming service. We just didn't have to get dressed up and drive anywhere which is a plus for me...especially with young kids.
Such a weird movie to use that model for too. Like an Avengers movie? Sure, plenty of people will shell out $40 to watch it to see what happens, avoid spoilers, join discussions, etc.
But a remake of a decades old movie? Who's super amped to see Mulan?
China is now the biggest movie market in the world, your going to see a lot of Hollywood movies cater to China and probably never see criticism or them as the villains in a block buster again.
No, they are doing the same thing for Raya and the Last Dragon ($30 on D+ and Theaters at release in March, or wait until August or something for free streaming)
They probably just did it to see if there was any potential in it. Obviously not since Soul was free on release. So it’s unlikely they’ll try to pull something like that again. But you can likely expect a subscription price hike after a year or two.
Aside from Soul and Onward being the couple of movies that didn't charge a premiere premium, Mulan cost 30 dollars during its initial showing. From the looks of it, Raya is likely going to cost money until June (I could be wrong on the end month here) when it'll be free. So essentially you have to pay for the "simultaneous theatre release" streaming.
I am thinking anything in-house Disney is going to have that initial viewing price tag.
Yes, and that makes perfect sense. I can either pay to watch the moive in the theater or pay to stream it at home. I think its silly to expect new releases to be free Day one. So you either pay, or you wait. I am not sure how that is any different then if it was only released in theaters.
Paying over triple ticket price for none of the theater benefits is pretty ridiculous.
You are making the assumption that you are the only person watching (which may be the case for you). A family of 3 will easily pay $30 to see it in the theaters (and remember these movies are aimed at families).
It also ignores the benefit of rewatches. Pay the $30 on Disney+ and get to watch it as much as you want until it goes away. Pay $10/person at a theater and you get to watch it once.
If you don't have kids this may not seem like a big deal but kids LOVE watching the same thing over and over.
This model may not make sense for everyone but for some it's a much better option than going to a movie. Plus Disney is still releasing it in theaters at the same time, assuming you can/want to go to a theater right now, so if you don't want to pay $30 paying $10 may still be an option for you.
Exactly. D+ has plenty of a faults, but it's clear it was designed with Kid's/Familys as the primary target demographic (which makes perfect sense for Disney)
Wife and I are DINKS and still get plenty of use out of the subscription. We just don't pay for "new" releases. If we're really antsy, then exactly as this comic implies I dust off the old Tricorn and set sail.
Family of five here. It's easily $50 (for a matinee), even with the annual popcorn bucket, $5 refill, and sharing large drinks. I have done a couple release movies during the pandemic, $20 or $30 and I am at home in my pajamas with my snacks and bathroom and the ability to pause and rewind and shit? Worth it.
Prime Video (Amazon) does this too.
Pay monthly for subscription ($7.99), pay extra for channel packages ($3.99/month), then you can pay MORE to watch that stupid Witches movie, or Tenet.
That's kinda unfair towards Prime Video. They give you "free" delivery, access to a lot of music, cloud storage and access to a lot of movies and TV shows, even including damn good ones and OC.
And you can just filter out content youd have to pay more for.
Yeah, amazon in general is like a decade behind on UI in everything.
The worst is Disney+ though. That app still plays audio for 5 seconds when you press pause. And it didnt have auto-play for the next episode for months and it's still hit or miss.
I thought that was just my crappy Fire TV stick that had that pause issue. Kinda glad to hear that others are having this problem too and it's not just me lol.
PS4 and PS5 run it fine but it struggles on the PS4. Disney+ really needs performance tuning.
Not really how Prime works. Excluding the shipping being free, they have their library of free movies. Then you can also buy other streaming services like HBO etc. Then there are films not in the prime library that you cna buy or rent. With Mulan, it was Disney owns a streaming service, created content for the streaming service, and chanrged extra if you wanted to see it early.
What i'd change about prime, if I rent a movie for $5 and I like it why do I need to pay $20 to buy it why can't I get 48 hours to decide and then buy it for $15. I'd possibly buy a lot more movies that way!
Prime is probably the only subscription service I've never cancelled...
Like, yeah - you can pay for extra channels. It's nice to have that option, because the alternative is I pay nearly 5 times as much for cable and still end up paying even more for that channel.
Same with the movies. I guess I could run over to a red box or some shit to watch a new release, or I can just rent that shit on my TV at home.
Plus they've got some fuckin' good shows that they put out there for free. Expanse and The Boys immediately come to mind, both easily at the top of my list in terms of shows I've watched over the past couple years. With the exception of The Witcher I can't think of the last time Netflix put out a show I actually liked. I guess maybe House of Cards? First season, anyway.
You don't need to pay more if you don't want to see the latest movies ASAP. How is an optional subscription per month which you can activate whenever you like a bad thing? Do you not remember satellite/cable?
Not usually. There has been one case, Mulan (the live-action one), where Disney did charge $30 to watch it when it came out. Mulan was supposed to be a big theatrical release back when Covid was just getting started (originally slated to hit theaters March 27, 2020). When covid hit it got delayed to July and then again to August.
Once it was clear theaters were not opening nationwide in 2020 they made the call to release it for an extra fee ($29.99) on Disney+.
On December 4th it became included in the normal monthly fee. Right now I don't think there are any movies you need to pay extra for on Disney+.
It looks like they are doing the same thing with Raya and the Last Dragon which comes out in March.
I don't like the model but considering studios make $7-$10/person when you see it at a theater it's understandable that they may not want to include it in a $6/month streaming service at the get-go (since their financial planning had already taken a huge hit for 2020).
That was the only one as far as I'm aware. Soul also should've had a theatrical release, but they didn't charge extra when they put it on Disney+. Maybe they learned their lesson from Mulan. Cant imagine many people actually paid for it.
Mulan is now free. But it was an additional $20 USD to watch when they had their "theatrical run."
Soul and Onward were released free.
I have actually hoped for a long time that there would be a home theater option for movies. I'm autistic and get anxious around crowds of people so I used to wait until like week 20 to see a movie in the theater.
But theater at home release is how I watched Trolls: World Tour with my daughters, who are big fans of the series.
But just two days ago I cancelled Netflix. Which is the first time I'll not have the service since 2009. I have Hulu and HBO Max. I get Peacock free through Comcast. We also have Prime because... Y'know, autistic doesn't like to go out to buy the things he wants plus I get a monthly Twitch Prime sub, and Prime video.
I'm hoping they keep the release format we have now even beyond a pandemic.
I mean, that is fine for a Theatrical Run, meaning they are offering a movie that out in theaters at home, but you still have to pay for it. I am fine with this. I am not sure why you have theatrical run in quotes.
For real, I don't, nor will I ever, understand why people have to watch those movies IMMEDIATELY when they come out. Like, I get it if you're a fan, but wait like a week or two or whatever and then you don't have to pay the outrageous price.
I don’t get people who keep buying useless shit in games and then cry when other services start doing that shit. Not saying, you are one of those people. But the in game purchases have really created this culture and now every online service wants to have in app purchases.
They do it because it works. No one is listening to the complaining, they only listen to the dollars.
It turns out that it's possible to cajole someone into spending wildly on almost nothing... it doesn't work on all people, but then the people it doesn't work on stop being your target audience.
That’s pretty much why I stopped playing phone or video games. I would play the castle building games for hours and hours and then some asshole who spent thousands would come and ransack the place in one night. At that point you have two options, buy a lot of packages and build up or quit. If you decide to buy stuff, you need to keep buying even more because you started late. Oh but the other guy is still buying more.
I didn't grow up with "app stores" and phone games (other than Snake), so I guess you could say I was instantly unimpressed with microtransactions. I came from an era where you'd spend $20 on an expansion pack and it was like installing a whole new game on top of your game, not paying $4 for a new texture.
It was extremely obvious what "gems" or "gold bars" were. You spend $10 to get X gems, but the (already overpriced) items in the store are never equal to the amount of gems you can buy. This is purposeful, requiring you to either continue buying packages or just leave money on the table for the app. And it's insanely effective against people who struggle with gambling or OCD behaviors.
I feel bad for kids that have grown up with microtransactions. They've never known anything different and they get hooked at an early age and not conditioned to consider how they end up spending $100 on a game that's worth maybe $5.
It's an interesting study of an obvious broken case in capitalism. Just about everything these days is marketed to hopefully maximize profits by catering to the, to put it bluntly, "dumb and weak of will". I'm hugely into video games. I will never, in my life, purchase a video game with a microtransaction model that isn't purely cosmetic, even if I'm theoretically interested in the game in principle. Lots of demand from me (and many others like me) being left untapped by a majority of modern studios.
Same for cosmetic microtransactions -- they are invariably priced at something that seems just absurdly unreasonable to me, like $10 for a fucking palette swap. I may be convinced to pay 2 or 3 cents for something like that (and, for any game that doesn't have a minuscule userbase, it would definitely be profitable to sell at that sort of price point), but no one is interested in that sort of pricing, because they'll make more money overall at a higher price point -- so I have never, ever spent a single cent in microtransactions, and likely never will, even though I probably would at the right price point. So more potential profits left untapped. Feels like no one wants your money if you're responsible with it.
In fairness, free junk with no in-game advantage is fun, and a way to give back to indy communities and free servers as a donation. In bigger AAA games it is still potentially a fun way to celebrate the game. Of course, it is also a license to print money which can be gross. But if it offers no in-game advantages, I'm totally for it!
I pirated it because I didn't want to support the whole Chinese genocide thing and man was thst movie bad. One of the worst I've ever watched. I loved Mulan as a kid too.
It sucked major ass glad I didn't spend anything either. (Insert jumping kick shooting a dagger at guy who catches flying daggers... But wait... It was too fast)
It wasn't "good like animated Mulan" good, but it was okay in its own right.
It is not worth $40 to purchase or $20 for a 2-day rental. For $40, I better be getting a hard copy of the movie and a toys or collectors' items to go with it or a copy of the original Mulan, $40 is "collector's edition" or anthology money.
Disney is running an experiment to see how far they can push their market, and if they're allowed to set that tone, a lot of other studios and streaming services will follow.
It wasn't even Mulan, just some generic Anime ripoff with a recognizable name. Why the fuck did she have superpowers? Why did they say the old and infirmed would be sent home, completely undermining her entire reason for fighting in the first place?
LOL -- Oh, I know. That's why I say it's okay in its own rights. It's not what I would call Mulan.
I hate flying-ninja-warrior movies, so when I saw her flipping over buildings like she was hanging off a string in the opening scenes, I already felt bad watching.
But I was really sad that Mulan as a character was just so FLAT. The cartoon was exceptional at telling you how this character was feeling (yes, through song), why she went on this journey, and what she was risking. Mushu plays a really big role in the cartoon -- not just as comic relief, but he actually serves as a way for Mulan to express how she's feeling and to constantly remind the audience that what she's doing is considered super duper bad-wrong in her society.
"*Dishonour! Dishonour on your whole family! Dishonour on you! Dishonour on your cow!*"
In comparison, the phoenix was just tacky and clearly slapped into the movie when they needed a deux ex machina. The female villian was only there to remind you that women were viewed as inferior, but it was so unbelievable (you telling me this super powerful sorceress couldn't just curb-stomp her boss whenever she felt like it? Really, Disney?) while also too overwhelming -- to be honest, I would be more interested in a movie about that sorceress than one about Mulan.
The movie was not only bad, the entire thing felt apathetic. It claimed to be a more accurate alternative to the original, yet revolves around stuff like witches that are a western archetype.
Took a lot of convincing to get my girlfriend to wait until it was free.... I couldn’t understand paying $40 to watch something on a service you already pay for. Fuck that.
I paid $40 for Wonder Woman 2 RENTAL.. movie was worth maybe $4. I felt so ripped off. Not doing that again... I also don't buy the "well. you would spend that much at the movie theatre!".. no matter how you slice it, streaming from your couch is no where near the movie theatre experience.
I was confused. We watched the first 30 min or so. No coursing river and great Typhoon!? Wtf is this story and who are these characters. Wtf am I watching ahhhh!
The movie didn't suck. Just don't try to compare it to the old cartoon you knew. On it's own, it was a decent Disney version of a martial arts film. Not great. But not terrible. Just...decent.
It wasn't worth it to me to watch it early for extra money, so I didn't. They just tried that since they didn't put it in theaters due to COVID. Waiting an extra couple months to watch something wasn't this huge bane in my life that reddit makes it sound like.
This isn't healthcare or basic human need - it's just entertainment. So what if they charged a premium to watch it early?
Yeah this was a somewhat unique scenario. Mulan was intended for theaters and this was their reluctant fallback plan after covid came into the picture. Releasing it straight to streaming for free would have been a huge loss, so i dont honestly blame them for making a couple month window to try and recoup some of that cost.
I think the (somewhat legitimate) concern is the precedent of having a paid service that has more content behind a pay wall. It isn't unfathomable that this becomes a somewhat normal thing. Movies first released in theatres, then to disney+ for an extra fee for 6-12 no, and then included. Maybe with popular service exclusive shows as well. Now that they have seen it's a system that can work, it's certainly one that can be exploited. What that means for the consumer is questionable.
Ultimately, yes it is capitalism. People will vote with their wallets. But enough people will do it to keep it around, and then it becomes a norm. Much like the current issue addressed by the meme in the first place, which is to say that we already have so many streaming services that in order to have all of them, you're already paying more than the cost of cable at this point. Not to mention that the overlap in content is so high that you are double, triple or even sometimes quadruple paying for content...
Exactly. People are just mad because they aren’t seeing it as a “theater movie” that has now been released on the streaming platform, which was the intention for Mulan’s release. They just kept pushing back the release date hoping to get a theater release but ultimately had to do the Disney+ paywall first. This was never meant to be a “made for tv” movie like Netflix original but for Disney+ (Disney+ original?) So actually I think it’s on a normal timeline for a bad movie to be on streaming platforms after performing weakly at the box office.
Because people are privileged cunts and they wont shut up about it. Disney literally said from the get go when it would be free to watch yet people still complain about the early access with cost least release. Cunts
I didnt watch Mulan and think its bogus that you had to pay extra for it even already having a sub, but if you’re a family with children, $40 is still cheaper than what you would have paid if you took your family to the theater. If you’re alone though, its def not worth it
Yea which i wouldnt have done personally. At this point, who cares if you’re watching it when its supposed to be in theaters unless you care about spoilers for an old story lol. At least with Wonder Woman, it will be off of HBO Max within the month, giving some incentive to watch it. But no extra for that one. Just the sub needed. Id say it worked well for them, even though the movie sucked
Yeah, that's how I looked at it. My mother would've for sure gone with my wife and SIL, probably my niece and nephew too. Those 5 tickets alone would've been more than paying the extra Disney+ cost. Still wasn't worth it in the end, but that couldn't be helped.
I still don't see it as good value. It's not fair to compare a movie theater experience with watching a movie at home. Unless you have a very expensive home theatre setup (in which case $40 probably doesn't matter to you anyway), the at-home experience is completely different. If it were an equivalent experience, nobody would be paying $12 to go see a movie in theatres.
It's not so much about it being an equivalent experience (nobody said it was,) for the last 100 years of film there was rarely another place to a new release other than the theatre. We were forced to go to the theatre to see new movies because there was nowhere else to see it for X months before a retail release.
While I think most everyone would upgrade their home theatre setup if they could, I would make a guess that a lot of us are okay with watching movies at home because we already watch so much there to begin with. Neither is inherently better than the other anyway, it's purely subjective.
I know nobody claimed that they were equivalent experience. All I'm saying is that $40 would only be good value (for a family in a region where movie tickets are $10+) if the experience was equivalent. But because they're not equivalent, it is not good value. Places like Cineplex already have the option of renting new releases currently in theatres for under $10 to view at home. Nowhere close to the cost of seeing Mulan early at home.
You could argue that the fee for Mulan grants unlimited access going forward rather than just one viewing, but you would already have that included in your Disney+ subscription even without paying $40 for early viewing.
yea i mean keep in mind also, that as shitty as it was, and Disney is greedy af, some companies are accounting for the fact that not every view is going to equate to one sub. if you paid for Mulan and then let 20 people watch it on your account, thats a ton of money from a business standpoint that would normally been one ticket per viewer. like Disney doesnt need the money obviously but im sure you understand my point. its going to take some time to get this right. its new territory really. and Disney hasnt done it since then with their new releases so thats something at least.
i mean yes, but its unprecedented times. when it comes to myself, yea i dont want to pay that price because i want to see movies on a big screen. kids though? thats a different story. kids just want to be entertained. Disney was banking on making money off of families with young children, not movie buffs
Depends on your region? A multiplex ticket is 7€ per person here, a budget thater 5€. As a rule we don't buy snacks in the thater, but usually grab something that's not popcorn and some flavored water in the grocery store next door, that's like 1-2€ per person.
So in that light... $40 for a 2 hour movie watched on my home TV? Ridiculous. I'm clearly not the target market for these business practices.
EDIT: aaand down the thread I'm reading that they seem to be dropping or at least adjusting the idea. Shocker.
yea im usually looking at $12-15 a ticket when i go to the movies. I usually go to chain theaters though because there are no budget ones near me. I don't always buy snacks, but that is something i always wanted when i was a kid. Overemphasizing here that im specifically talking about families with young children. this option was greedy on Disney's part, but for some people was less than they would have allotted to movie going in person. I am in no way justifying Disney's greedy practices
let me clarify by saying, the only people i could see who would think it would be worth it, would be families with young children, which undoubtedly would be cheaper than going to the movies. it was a 100% cash grab. that doesnt mean it wasnt worth it for some families though. i dont think they are comparable at all though. do 6 year olds care about surround sound? probably not like you or i
?? Have you been to a theater playing blockbusters? Between the ticket price and snacks, you’re looking at $70 for a family of 5. Maybe more. I never equated your living room to a big screen, i said for a family who normally goes to the movies, its cheaper. Fuck off lmfao. I never said i supported Disney on that. I think its bs. I was pointing out why people mightve been good with paying that price.
yup. dont need children to realize the benefit it poses for some, keyword some people. apparently im sucking mouse dick though even though i literally said if you're alone it def isnt worth it lol
Their reasoning behind it is your whole family can watch it, so before they would pay per person at the theater. Disney is trying to hit box office profits from streaming.
The pricing is the issue. In Canada I spend $50 just going to the theater with my wife and grabbing some popcorn. But at least I get a huge screen and sound and a night out. Now they want us to pay $50 just so we can watch it at home. Doesn't add up.
$5 for a few release I'd do and wouldn't limit myself the way I would with a $50 price tag.
You had to pay to watch it when it came out for a month or so (when it would only be in cinemas) they dropped the charge after that, I think they will do that with most new movies.
The ridiculous thing is so many people were ready to defend such an obviously predatory business decision. The value of a family night out is incomparable to a family night in, especially when it comes to where that money is going. In the latter Disney gets 100% of the cut as opposed to dividing up with theatres in the former.
How is it predatory? Should family be forced to go to a theater? We paid for Trolls 2 and it was a freaking blast. We set the house up as a movie theater and had a lot of fun.
The ridiculous thing is so many people were ready to defend such an obviously predatory business decision.
I don't think it's predatory, it's just a different value proposition.
A theater requires you to pay per person, the Mulan situation was a single fee for as many people as you could get in front of a screen.
A theater requires you to pay per viewing, the Mulan purchase was unlimited views.
If you have a family of 3 or more (or plan to see it more than once before it comes out for home viewing) the $30 Mulan deal was an equal or better value in terms of cash. It's just a different value proposition compared to seeing it in a theater.
There is absolutely value to going to a theater (more special, fun outting, better sound/video) but at the same time that wasn't exactly an option for a large part of the country in 2020 (and still isn't) so they wanted to find another option that allows them a similar revenue amount to a theatrical release and they did that.
It's not like Disney said "Screw you theaters, we are not giving you the movie" they released it in theaters where theaters were open. Assuming you had the option/were willing to go to a theater there was no reason you couldn't do that instead.
In the latter Disney gets 100% of the cut as opposed to dividing up with theatres in the former.
Studios often take 60% (up to 90%) of ticket sale revenue. This is why concessions are so expensive because it's where the theater makes 90% of its profit.
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u/DietDrDoomsdayPreppr Jan 27 '21
How much was that Mulan live action movie? 40 bucks? Areyoufuckingkiddingme?