This article wasn’t the one I had planned to write. Initially, I simply wanted to measure the impact (or lack of impact) of how quickly theatrically released films arrive on streaming on their performance in the United States, drawing on Nielsen data that I’ve been collecting for more than five years. I also intended to add a variable I had so far left aside: the delay between a film’s theatrical release and its availability on streaming.

Then a “small” event came along and turned everything upside down: the official announcement of Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. A deal that is still far from finalized (Paramount is back in the race, and a long regulatory journey awaits everyone), but one that has already had an immediate effect on the global entertainment industry. Ted Sarandos, one of Netflix’s two CEOs, took the opportunity to question the exclusive theatrical window for future Warner Bros. films under the Netflix banner, calling the current U.S. window “anti-consumer.” The message is clear: Netflix wants to shorten it.

However, the debate around this exclusive window is often confused. PVOD (Premium VOD, available as early as 17 days after theatrical release for some films at fairly high rental prices, around $20) is frequently lumped together with SVOD (availability at no extra cost within a paid streaming subscription), even though these are two distinct windows that currently follow one another at the major studios. In the future vision for Warner outlined by Sarandos, Netflix would undoubtedly like to be able to offer Warner films on SVOD under a window that we can imagine being shorter, without really knowing what that would mean in concrete terms. Personally, I imagine something between 21 and 45 days after theatrical release, and that’s what I’ve highlighted in the charts in this article. Such a window is bound to provoke the expected reactions from theater owners and moviegoers, who see it as a direct threat to the economics of movie theaters.

But it’s worth remembering that in the United States, the time between theatrical release and availability on SVOD has never been a fixed barrier, unlike in France, where it is set by the Chronologie des Médias, an industry-wide agreement. Over the past four years, it has fluctuated constantly across the Atlantic, in line with the studios’ shifting strategies.

For this analysis, I therefore reviewed more than 200 U.S. studio films that had wide releases in theaters between 2022 and 2025, as well as their subsequent availability on the major streaming services. The goal: to observe the delay between theatrical release and streaming debut in order to see what strategy each studio is adopting, and whether this window has evolved between 2022 and 2025. I deliberately set aside 2021, because decisions made at the time were shaped by movie theater closures linked to COVID, which was truly an exceptional situation. Let’s dive in!