WarnerMedia CEO Admits Day-And-Date Release Model was Rushed

The COVID-19 pandemic definitely changed the entire film industry and helped usher in a brand new era in movie viewing dubbed as the "day-and-date" release model. Several production companies and streaming platforms have been employing the said strategy since last year, most notably Warner Bros. which made films like Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984, The Suicide Squad, and the upcoming Dune reboot available for both theatrical and streaming releases on the same day.

Credit: WB

It's deemed a brilliant move by some people but the strategy also has its fair share of critics, including directors Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve. Even the House of Mouse's namesake streaming service tried to join the trend but it massively backfired when actress Scarlett Johansson filed a lawsuit against Disney last July over the Disney+ Premier Access release of Marvel Studios' Black Widow.

Now, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar is sounding off on the issues surrounding the said strategy and even he admits that they might have rushed it. Speaking during Vox Media's Code Conference (via The Hollywood Reporter), Kilar said: "I will be the first one to say, and the responsibility rests on my shoulders, that, in hindsight, we should have taken the better part of a month to have over 170 conversations — which is the number of participants that are in our 2021 film slate. We tried to do that in a compressed period of time, less than a week because of course there was going to be leaks, there was going to be everybody opining on whether we should do this or not do this."

He added: "We said from the start that we were going to treat every single film as a blockbuster, from an economic perspective, for participants, that we were going to be fair and generous, we were going to do the right thing. The good news is we did, and we worked our tail ends off to do that. And we're now in a very good situation."

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Honestly, the day-and-date release strategy is a double-edged sword and while it obviously has its disadvantages, a lot of fans from countries that are still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic would benefit from the release model. However, I do agree with Kilar's statement that they need better coordination with the day-and-date release model.

Some of WB's biggest releases this year are available for streaming on HBO Max.