Turns out Universal Pictures may have been onto something with its recent release of “Trolls World Tour” on premium VOD, the first major studio film to attempt the experiment.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the film has earned around $95 million in rental fees since its release three weeks ago and, unlike with box-office where studios only earn roughly 50% of the ticket sales, the studio is seeing approximately 80% of the rental fees returned to it – around $77 million.
That means that this sequel has already earned more revenue for the studio in just three weeks than the first film earned domestically during its entire five month theatrical run. The first “Trolls” earned $153.7 million domestically, translated into roughly $76 million in revenue for the studio.
Jeff Shell, head of NBCUniversal, tells the paper: “The results for ‘Trolls World Tour’ have exceeded our expectations and demonstrated the viability of PVOD. As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies on both formats.”
Of course the first film earned another $190 million internationally (where its cut is often less than 50% though), and roughly pulled in a further $70 million just with home video. ‘World Tour’ will likely see a big drop in VOD and eventual Blu-ray sales due to the film being in homes already.
