• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 11, 2022

Creative for theatrical distributed movies continues to hype up the obvious messaging: A movie showing on a big-screen theater is a major plus for viewers.

TV marketers are getting in gear.

Two actively marketable movies drive home the point: Paramount Pictures’ animated “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” and the new "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," starring Nicolas Cage.

“Sonic” expresses this in its TV marketing -- that with all its live action and animated effects, “this is what the big screen is made for.” For its part, “Massive Talent” just points to the obvious -- as many movies can these days -- that the movie is “only in theaters.”

We get the insinuations. Streaming and connected TV viewing at home is growing wildly -- so much so that movie studios now have a dual purpose -- to cater to consumers who continue to spend a lot on big streaming platforms as well those consumers who want the big-screen effect.

Of course, the “only in theaters” message really helps out all those hard-pressed U.S. theater chains that continue to recover.

Looking more granularly, the key demographics for those really big revenue-producing action/adventure/fantasy movies are young moviegoers -- in particular, young male moviegoers.

You might believe those young consumers are already savvy enough about finding content they want digitally, dramatically shifting their entertainment channels. It would seem redundant to bother them with messages encouraging them to heed to theaters.

But the results speak for themselves. Indeed, just look at recent big box office-producing movie releases “Spider-Man” and “The Batman,” which scored healthy box-office revenue, largely due to pulling in vast numbers of young moviegoers.

Movie studios want to always go further -- finding ways to maximize monetization of their films.

If they can get say young women -- or perhaps older baby boomers -- to also see the movie, that’s gravy. For years, movies studios have called really big anticipated box office “four quadrant” films. That means getting young, old, male and female moviegoers -- under and over 25 years old.

This also can mean films with“family appeal.”

Still, streaming has changed the game -- at least for those adult-skewing movies with little special effects. Many are moving just to a “streaming”-only release.

How many quadrants are streaming platforms looking to seek to be successful? Two, three? Maybe not a quadrant -- just one line.