The needle didn’t move this past week.   The 2023 forecast for top-box new theatrical
performers remains at 63, with a final total count holding at 502 for all new
films exhibited theatrically during 2023.

There have been rumblings about more effort in that area
(more theatrical releases), but it is not quite there yet.  Eventually it will be a mechanical thing …
only so many play dates, so many screens and so many seats available.   A fixed number that diminishes with each
passing week.   In short, the studios
need to step up.

The pirates were relatively quiet this week.  Another
Barbarian rip off
(whatever happed to writer/director Zach Cregger’s film?  $40 million at the box office and Disney seems
to be ignoring it.), another A Man Called Otto
knockoff, but that’s about it.

And speaking of pirates, we’ve been using the terms “pirates”
and “piracy” to describe the extracurricular activities that are taking place
in the home entertainment packaged media marketplace.   That’s a dated concept and we admit it.  

Those who engage in the ancient custom of film
piracy are actually “vacuum or void filling entrepreneurs.”   As Aristotle so succinctly put it, nature abhors
a vacuum.   These entrepreneurs see a
void, a vacuum … and do the natural thing.

While new theatrical film void-filling has been
around since the glory days of VHS, there are so many vacuums being generated
by streaming these days that it is hard to keep up with nature’s little
helpers.

For example, Blu-ray — launched in 2006 — was
supposed to be an improvement on DVD, and it was.   But, only marginally so when compared to the
VHS to DVD dynamics.   The jump from VHS
to DVD was a quantum leap.

Blu-ray does have one advantage and that is bandwidth.   This expanded capacity was designed to yield
a better image, better sound and space for more extras.

With that in mind, take note of this: the void-fillers
are using Blu-ray for its bandwidth and could care less about the subtitles of
image or sound.  

A favorite target for this strategy are the seemingly
countless number of eight-to-ten-episode series that comprise a full season being
delivered to consumers on the various competing streaming platforms.  

Ozark, You, Better Call Saul, Tulsa King, Willow,
Bosch, She Hulk … the list goes on and on.   Even stuff you’ve never heard of.  You get the idea, the streaming platforms drop
a series of ten episodes for their fan base to binge-watch and bingo, the void
is filled within hours with a single-disc Blu-ray.  Since only a fraction of these series ever
get a home entertainment push, the rest become part of a vast vacuum that needs
to be filled.

The numbers are literally mind-blowing.   In 2019 — pre-pandemic — there were exactly
ten single-disc Blu-ray releases with the product source being derived from
series programming.   Included in this
mix were Crashing: The Complete Second Season, Venture
Bros.: The Seventh Season and Kominsky
Method: The Complete First Season.

Each of these ten releases were on a single-disc
Blu-ray (BD-50) containing roughly four to four-and-a-half hours-worth of programming.   Once you get to those limits, you go to two
discs, but we are just focusing — for this void-filling example — to the use of
a single Blu-ray disc.

The pandemic starts in 2020 and the SKU-count expands
to 79.   It appears, from just following the
scattering of bread crumbs, that there was a demand for such series programming
as the number jumped to 409 in 2021. 
Amazon Prime, Netflix, Peacock — name a streaming platform — were simply
not filling the vacuum with home entertainment packaged media products of their
own.  So they had help.

And, apparently, since we don’t have knowledge of
the inner-workings of these entertainment behemoths, there was either no one assigned
to monitor the after-streaming life of their productions, or tasked with stamping-down
these void-filling activities (legal action).  

Perhaps, they are just blissfully ignorant.   Maybe it is not worth their effort … mordida;
a little bite; a nuisance.   A cost of
doing business.  We don’t know the reason
for the inertia.

So, what is the natural thing — the “nature” thing —
when opportunity presents itself?   When you have pristine masters from the source
and no one is monitoring what nature’s little helpers are up to, you expand!  

That’s exactly what the vacuum-fillers did in 2022,
they jumped the output to 1,098 single-disc Blu-ray series offerings.   From ten to 1,098 in just 36 months.

It would seem that the simple solution for Amazon,
Netflix, Apple, etc. etc. is at hand … be a vacuum-filler of their own product.   Stop sitting on the sidelines and go after
those who are stealing these intellectual properties by the truckload and build
their own on-demand publishing businesses of product they already own.  It’s a vacuum.  Fill it!