The company behind Marcus Theatres wants Hollywood to stop advertising a movie’s home release while audiences still have to head to the theater to see it.
“It sends a message you should wait,” Marcus Corporation chairman and CEO Greg Marcus told Deadline in October. His concern goes beyond how many days theaters get a movie to themselves: the sales pitch matters, too.
Marcus wants studios to hold off on home-viewing promotions during that exclusive theatrical stretch. Otherwise, he argued, even a longer wait between the big screen and the living room can lose some of its value.
Think about the decision facing a family planning its weekend: buy tickets now, or stay home and catch the movie later. Marcus worries that an early home-release email can nudge that decision before anyone checks the actual release date or price.
In Deadline’s account of the company’s quarterly earnings call, Marcus said viewers can mistake home availability for something they can watch without an extra charge. A premium rental, he pointed out, could instead cost $20 to $25 for a couple of days.
Those are different purchases. Renting a new release separately is not the same as finding it included in a streaming subscription the family already pays for, and a promotion about a future release does not mean the movie is available tonight.
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The broader argument concerns what the industry calls a theatrical window: the stretch when a new movie plays exclusively in theaters before moving to another viewing option. Studios and theater owners have spent years debating how long that stretch should last.
Some studios have already moved toward longer exclusivity. Deadline reported in March that Universal would extend the theatrical window for its 2027 releases to 45 days, while noting that the policy would not cover its Focus Features titles.
Paramount has also made a public commitment. In its official CinemaCon recap published April 17, Skydance reiterated Paramount’s pledge to a minimum 45-day theatrical window, putting a specific number behind its support for theaters.
But a release calendar and a marketing calendar are not interchangeable. Marcus’s latest push asks studios to consider not just when they make a movie available at home, but when they start encouraging audiences to think about watching it there.
According to Deadline, Marcus also cited industry research suggesting that customers willing to pay for transactional home viewing remain a similar market whether a movie arrives after two weeks or two months. His argument is that waiting can protect ticket sales without giving up roughly the same home-viewing customers later.
That is the business case he is making, not a promise that every movie will perform the same way. Release strategies vary, and families still have their own budgets, schedules and reasons for choosing a night out or a night in.
The request comes as Marcus Theatres reported stronger business. The company’s Oct. 29 earnings announcement listed record third-quarter theater revenue of $145 million, up 20.9% from a year earlier. Those results provide the backdrop, but his message now is about protecting the next ticket sale.
For parents, the useful takeaway is simple: check the date, the price and whether a title is actually included in a subscription before changing movie-night plans. An ad can make the couch sound like the obvious choice long before the offer is what it seems.
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