From movie theater to home: An exercise in patience

Hey, this is Gustav. I’m one of the designers here at Datawrapper and work on the user interface of our app. As a parent I often watch movies at home — so I took a look at how long I have to wait before I can enjoy movies from the comfort of my sofa. 🍿 🛋️

Two years ago, I was really excited about Christopher Nolan’s latest film, “Oppenheimer”. I would have loved to see it on a big screen with an epic sound system, but since there was no way to drag my four-year-old and six-year-old to a three-hour atomic-bomb drama, I ended up waiting for its home release — for 4 long months.

I’m not alone in this. People have to wait to watch movies at home for all sorts of reasons. In my case, I rarely find the time to make it to the theater, apart from an occasional Pixar movie with the family.

Curious about how long the wait usually is, I dug into the data. I gathered the highest-rated films from 2000 onwards and tracked the time between each film’s festival or premiere date, its first theatrical opening, and its first home release (on DVD, Blu-ray, streaming services, TV, or as digital download) — disregarding the country to keep it simple. The chart below shows how that window has steadily narrowed over the past two decades.

A few things may have contributed. During the late 2000s, a growing number of Internet video-on-demand platforms made it easier than ever for consumers to access the latest blockbusters. But they had to wait — for half of the movies, more than 6–7 months. Following the launch of Netflix’s streaming service in 2007, the window between cinema and home releases shrunk to roughly 4 months. Later on, when COVID-19 forced theaters around the world to shut down, the median home release window dropped to zero, as many films bypassed theaters altogether and debuted directly on digital platforms. Since 2018, half of all movies have have been released for home viewing in less than 1.5 months. (Premieres, meanwhile, seem to be happening earlier than they did two decades ago.)

If you worry about the implications for the movie industry: according to a study which looked at Korean audiences, releasing films earlier for home viewing doesn’t have to hurt box‐office revenue — in fact, it can appeal to new customers and thus benefit the movie business as well.

The most important takeaways for me? Wait times are decreasing, “Oppenheimer” was an outlier, and hopefully I won’t have to wait as long before I can watch the next Oscar-winning drama in my living room.

Thanks for reading! I hope this article gave you an idea about how long it usually takes for a movie to get released so we do not have to impatiently chew our fingernails. We’ll see you next week with a chart by our co-founder Mirko!