The good guys of Masters of the Universe.
Courtesy Amazon MGM Studios
Masters of the Universe got OK reviews on its release — there was a backhandedness to more than a few of them, in the sense that they were along the lines of “This movie knows what it is and stays in its lane.” But the consensus seemed to be that it was an OK popcorn movie. it didn’t perform well in theaters, though, making about $114 million worldwide against a reported budget of $170 million before marketing. It was a money loser.
Maybe, just maybe, some folks knew it would be streaming less than two months after it debuted in theaters and decided to wait it out?
Masters of the Universe, based on the He-Man cartoons and toys of the 1980s, earned a little under $65 million at the U.S. box office. That translates to about 5.42 million tickets sold at an average price of just under $12, per the box office tracking at The Numbers.
The movie had its streaming premiere on July 22 on Prime Video (Amazon MGM Studios released it) — just shy of seven weeks after it hit theaters. In its first week, it racked up 1.17 billion minutes of viewing time — the equivalent of about 8.38 million complete plays of the 140-minute film. In other words, it’s likely that more people in the United States watched Masters of the Universe in its first week of streaming than bought a ticket to see it in theaters over seven weeks.
Amazon owns Amazon MGM and Prime Video, so the company is controlling both phases of its release here. I am very, very far from an expert on movie economics, so I’m sure there’s a business case for dropping an underperforming movie onto streaming so quickly. Not everything is going to be an Odyssey- or even Devil Wears Prada 2-level success. But it also feels like that short a window is a little self-defeating, maybe not for a would-be blockbuster like Masters of the Universe but for something a little more modest that might need some word of mouth to really get rolling.
TL;DR some number of people who wanted to see Masters of the Universe probably made a rational economic decision to wait until it became part of their Prime subscription.
Moving on: I have the power … to show you the weekly streaming charts for July 20-26.