The online entertainment space has been moving through change year after year as different platforms add further features that make them much more appealing than alternatives – things such as online gaming provide a perfect example as the ease of access and utility many provide such as these online gaming sites that have been able to benefit throughout the past year despite initiative aimed at slowing them down – but perhaps the most notable name in the online entertainment space remains to be Netflix, as the platform has continued to push change that has encouraged many others to follow, and this year looks to be no different.
The big announcement came as Netflix released a statement back in late 2020 that they would be releasing a massive 71 new original titles throughout 2021, at least one new movie per week – and whilst the platform does have a bit of a spotty past with unique content with some of the biggest titles on the roster being incredible award-winning shows, and others falling a little short of the post, even having just a few of the titles be successful will be a huge moment for the platform. With a star-studded cast of some of the biggest actors in the world starring across a number of the films too, finding that success shouldn’t be too difficult.
Not the only one looking to make moves throughout 2021, however, as both HBO Max and Disney+ seem to be looking to follow the huge success in online movie streaming that started with Netflix and take things a little further. Hollywood studio Warner Bros announced that all of its big releases set throughout 2021 would release both in cinema and on the online streaming platform at the same time being the first big shift away from traditional cinema release for the latest blockbusters, and with Disney announcing that it plans to focus more heavily on its own streaming platform and many believe this means they could be doing the same – if both are successful in the change, it could spur many other studios to do the same and cause a more permanent change in the way future releases are handled.
With that being said, it’s unlikely that even Netflix will be able to match this same schedule again with such a huge number of releases in a single year, but with others in the space having often only done a third of this number, it’s a big step up from what many have come to expect, and could be a future change if other studios intend to up their own release schedules in the coming year or two in order to discover if it’s possible they’d be able to match this schedule.