Here’s Why Disney’s ‘Free Guy’ Will Debut On HBO Before Disney+
By Jeremy Mathai/Aug. 13, 2021 7:42 am EST
Through that investor’s call, we learned that Disney would be shifting back towards what used to be standard 45-day theatrical windows for Free Guy and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This means that theater owners will be able to exclusively play these movies for that allotted period of time before they’re both made available either through streaming or video on demand. The natural assumption would be that they would then both head to Disney+, but that’s not quite the case with Free Guy.
In the meantime, however, Disney had no choice but to give Free Guy an exclusive theatrical run and will subsequently need to hand it over to HBO after the 45-day window. It remains unclear whether Free Guy will be (briefly) made available to stream on HBO Max, but we’ll be sure to provide updates as the details become official. As Chapek himself put it during the call:
“We acquired [Free Guy] under a different distribution assumption and set of agreements. We don’t have the degree of freedom to do [a Premier Access release] on Free Guy.”
What Other Movies Does This Apply To?
These awkwardly adopted movies, from Disney’s perspective, may ultimately eat into whatever profits Disney was set to rake in as a result of not being able to stream concurrently or even soon after their theatrical releases. Theater owners likely won’t shed many tears for the wildly profitable studio, though this small win for theaters comes right when other movies are being delayed as a result of Delta variant scares. Stay tuned for more updates as they come in.
