Big-name movies are now premiering on home formats. It took a massive global crisis for this to happen, but could well be a permanent change

EDITED BY ALEX COX

E ven if we’re all allowed out of the house more often soon, major studios seem to have realised where the profit currently lies. Many have big stakes in cinema chains, and there’s obviously some big money to be made from putting bums on seats. But streaming’s rise cuts out a lot of middle men, and can mean some serious ongoing income.

Case in point: at press time, Disney+ stands at 86.8 million subscribers, a figure so impressive Disney deemed it the perfect time to tack £2 onto its monthly subscription fees (from February 2021). For that, though, you get seemingly every one of its new releases straight to your home, hopefully without the extra fees the company was cheeky enough to try to charge for the release of Mulan.

Warner Brothers has also announced that its future releases will be dropping on streaming services first, though us UK customers are left in the lurch: they’re going to the currently US-only HBO Max. Perhaps it’s time for a worldwide launch...

Fire up the microwave – it’s time to settle down with your own popcorn.

You don’t have to include a roaring fire and room-filling screen in your home cinema setup, but it helps… 

How to build the ultimate home cinema

The times, they are a-changin’: if you want the best cinema experience, you can have it from your couch

S ticky carpet, a 95% markup on popcorn, that guy two rows in front texting with key sounds on and his phone on 100% brightness. Projectionists that don’t seem to like being asked to hit pause when the jumbo Coke decides to make its exit. The fact that your cat is not allowed to go. These are just some of the things we will not miss about the cinema experience as was. We’re not about to say that we don’t miss settling down in an auditorium to take in the latest blockbuster, and we’ll certainly be back when cinema rebuilds itself. But if there’s one small positive thing to come out of the recent worldwide catastrophe, it’s a change in focus: those blockbusters are coming home sooner, and they’re becoming more and more accessible.