Mission: Impossible 7 , A Quiet Place 2 to stream on Paramount+ after 45 days in theaters
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Paramount is changing the theatrical-release game yet again.
Mission: Impossible 7 and A Quiet Place Part II will debut on the rebranded streaming service Paramount+ after just 45 days in theaters, along with the animated Paw Patrol: The Movie. The studio's parent company ViacomCBS announced the news during Wednesday's investor day event promoting the streaming platform, which will replace CBS All Access on March 4.
Though Paramount has not currently set the same 45-day window for the rest of its theatrical slate, this marks another major studio's departure from the traditional theatrical release agreement, requiring movies to play on the big screen for 90 days before studios make them available for home viewing. That precedent, however, has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated movie theater attendance and forced cinemas in some major markets to remain closed for almost a year. Paramount had previously been offloading its titles to other streaming services, sending Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 to Netflix and Coming 2 America with Eddie Murphy to Amazon.
The long-anticipated shift away from the 90-day window began in July when Universal struck a historic deal with AMC Theatres to allow the studio's movies to arrive on VOD after just three weekends, or 17 days, of theatrical release in the U.S. Then in December came the jaw-dropping news that Warner Bros. would release each of its 2021 films in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously. Paramount's new strategy is the latest step in a larger industry shift toward streaming, reflected by corporate reorganizations at Disney and WarnerMedia to prioritize their proprietary platforms.
"Direct-to-consumer content is the wave of the future, and all major corporations are already pivoting in that direction," Jeff Bock, a senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations, previously told EW.
Bringing blockbuster titles like M:I 7 to Paramount+ is undoubtedly a strategy to draw subscribers to the fledgling streaming service, which will enter an already crowded market. ViacomCBS' platforms CBS All Access and Showtime boast just 30 million global subscribers combined, compared to 95 million for Disney+ and more than 200 million for Netflix.
Mission: Impossible 7 is currently slated to hit theaters on Nov. 19, with A Quiet Place 2 scheduled for Sept. 17.
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