ALL TOGETHER NOW
IT WASN’T MUCH OF A SURPRISE BY THE TIME NOMINATIONS were announced: Netflix, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, became the first home entertainment platform to snag a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards thanks to Alfonso Cuarón’s ROMA. Within a matter of hours it was revealed that Netflix had become the first streaming company to join the MPAA. The line between cinema and home entertainment is becoming harder to maintain—perhaps more so than ever before.
That isn’t to say ROMA did not receive a theatrical release. Netflix reportedly reached out to exhibition circuits with the intent of four-walling premium auditoriums nationwide, targeting rooms equipped with 70mm projectors and immersive audio systems from Dolby Atmos. It was always going to be a hard ask, but especially as the industry entered a Thanksgiving holiday weekend packed with premium releases from Hollywood studios also vying for the space. Deals were done across a few key circuits and a network of art-house cinemas, culminating with a Netflix press release claiming a three-week exclusive theatrical run at over 100 cinemas in the U.S.
The press release seemed somewhat misleading. Netflix doesn’t provide box-office figures for their theatrical releases, meaning investors and industry rivals have had to take them at their word when it comes to viewership volume and location counts. Doing an audit of ROMA’s scheduled showtimes, however, provides a neutral glimpse into the film’s theatrical release. In its “exclusive theatrical rollout,” ROMA received a smattering of screenings between Thursdays and Sundays. Its high point during that run came on Saturday, December 8, where it apparently played at 40 cinemas nationwide—less than half the count Netflix had claimed, limited to 171 showtimes.
The film’s biggest expansion only came after it had premiered on the streaming platform (December 14) with Landmark Theatres representing the overwhelming majority of the film’s 559 showtimes across a total of 144 cinemas. Putting that in context, the high point of last year’s Academy Award–winner, Fox Searchlight’s , was 6,841 showtimes across 2,341 screens in the had achieved a high point of 3,373 showtimes across 853 cinemas. The Searchlight release grossed $63.9 million in its theatrical run.
