$13.2M previews for Black Widow, by far the biggest since Star Wars Ep 9 in 2019. Expectations are its heading for about a $85-90m weekend given that its on Disney+ and fewer families will turn up at the cinema. Without D+ probably would be thinking over $100m with those previews.Weekend is gonna turn out way lower than thought, gonna be about $78-81m. Seems disney plus premier access has really killed the money from family audiences at the cinema. Saturday for an MCU film would always increase from friday before but now we're looking at over 10% down. There's no way BW should have only opened $10m about Fast 9. If they both came out as expected last year you'd be looking at a $30m difference at least according to expectations. But the main difference here is F9 was a theatres only release.
Its an interesting situation. For Disney the money they receive will have increased on the opening weekend, but they'll lose out big time on repeat viewings from people rewatching on D+ or pirating. And other countries like China will be affected big time by the easy piracy that it gives, so overall they probably lose money from this approach. And then movie theaters lose out the most of course because they just straight up lose revenue due to the hit on ticket sales from this.
That's probably why they're going away from it soon, we'll see how Shang Chi does with the strategy of Disney+ PA 45 days after theatric release, that's probably a good middle ground.