The Theatrical Window Isn’t The Box Office Boogeyman Everyone Says It Is

The box office isn’t what it used to be, and everyone wants to know why. The pandemic is the answer that’s easiest to reach for, but that was more like a catalyst than a cause, accelerating what was already in motion. The industry has spent the years since 2020 waiting for a box office recovery that is increasingly looking like it’ll never come – or at least not anytime soon. Theaters will have to contend with a market that’s a few billion dollars lighter than it was at the end of the 2010s for the foreseeable future.

Something often cited as a principal factor in this decline is the erosion of the theatrical exclusivity window. In the past, new-release movies had a clear life cycle, spending a certain amount of time in cinemas before becoming available for at-home viewing often months later. The advent of streaming and VOD was already changing that calculus, but when the pandemic suddenly robbed theaters of their leverage, the norms crumbled. Now, 90 days is a rarity, and plenty of films go in less than 30.

This practice, many have argued, is what’s hurting the movies. At the cultural level, that’s pretty undeniable. The moviegoing audience has learned that whatever flashy new film they hear about will be available at home in a matter of weeks, and many no longer feel the need to leave the house for one anymore.

But this same argument pops up anytime a movie fails to meet box office expectations, and I’ve been much more skeptical of its application there. The theatrical paradigm has shifted, but that’s true whether studios continue to fuel it or not. Can a shortened theatrical window really be blamed for an individual film’s performance?

I asked Cinelytic, which (among other things) uses its AI-powered, filmmaker-targeted tools to forecast the box office with remarkable accuracy, to look into it for me – and the resulting data tell an interesting story.

A Short Window Doesn’t Make A Movie’s Box Office Expectations Unreachable

Expanding on Cinelytic’s October 2025 insights, the following table breaks down the domestic box office performance of 30 theatrical films from this year into three performance categories, based on how industry experts and analysts expected them to do (not, I should clarify, necessarily what they might’ve needed to break even): Underperformer; On Target; and Overperformer. They’re sorted by the length of their theatrical window, which ranges from Mission: Impossible – The Final Recknoning‘s 88 days to a smattering of films at just 18.

In this sample, there were seven Underperformers, 18 On Targets, and just five Overperformers. At first glance, there seems to be something to this windowing argument – of the 13 films with windows of 25 days or less, none overperformed. But the majority of this bracket still landed in the predicted box office range, even with the quick VOD releases, and Underperformers are also found among movies with windows at the top end, over 45 days.

In fact, it’s the 26-45 days range that has the best outcomes. All ten of those films either met their expected target or came in above it.

Analysis of this kind isn’t new – and it’s risky to read too much into it. VOD release dates can be reactive, meaning that distributors may adapt their strategy to how their film is actually doing. It’s not too surprising to see Underperformers concentrated at the poles, for example. Getting a movie to digital more quickly is one way to respond to early box office struggles; trying to keep it exclusive to theaters as long as possible is another.

So, this doesn’t tell us if an underperforming film’s theatrical window, whether long or short, is to blame for its box office performance. But if a movie isn’t getting seen in theaters because people are waiting for it to become available at home, that would show in the subsequent streaming numbers.

Streaming Performance Is Where The Windowing Argument Falls Apart

The chart above groups the 30 films into those three tiers of theatrical window length and charts their percentage of market share over their first seven days of streaming availability. 26-45 days, the mid-range that obtained the best financial results, is again the winner here. Films with windows of 25 days or less performed the worst on streaming, while those with the longest windows were only a touch better.

So, studios aren’t necessarily seeing the viewership benefit of a quick VOD release, nor does holding a film in theaters longer increase the at-home demand. A murky contradiction, for the purposes of this analysis. But it gets a little clearer when returning to the box office lens:

It’s in the above chart, which looks at the same streaming market share but organizes the movies by their box office performance categories, that we see the truth about windowing. Both the Overperformers and the On Targets sport similar values, though the latter group tends to spike on day 2 of digital availability. That bump represents the people who saw the movie’s marketing, were interested, but preferred to wait until they could watch it from the comfort of their living room.

If the “short windowing hurts box office” argument is correct, the Underperformers are where we should see that trend, since these are the films people supposedly skipped in theaters to watch at home later. Instead, this category saw no such spike, and performed much more poorly overall than the theatrically successful films.

While changes in the industry’s windowing practice have surely impacted people’s relationship with the movies, blaming them for an individual film’s performance is a step too far. If something underperforms at the box office and on digital, audiences just have no interest in seeing it, in any setting.

Distributors and exhibitors facing that scenario would benefit from digging deeper into why that might be, rather than rushing to blame the usual suspect.