• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 10 hours ago

Cinema United, the movie theater owner trade association, is piling on efforts of over 2000 actors and creators who have said to expect major negative outcomes if the Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery merger goes through.

Specifically, there is one challenging, ongoing issue for movie-theater owners that has been there since the dawn of the premium streaming age, which started in 2019 -- films moving too quickly from theaters to streaming.

Movie-theater business, which is still recovering from that time, now needs to deal with the possibility of more movie-studio leverage when it comes to serving their still slow-growing premium streaming services.

The bottom line comes at the expense of cutting into big-screen movie-theater revenues.

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has attempted to quell criticism about the deal, in part, promising 30 films a year from the combined companies.

But as yet Ellision has not talked about the other end of the financial spectrum for those films.

How soon will those movies move to their streaming platforms -- Paramount+ and HBO Max -- after their exclusive debut in theaters?

Also, what types of movies will miss movie theaters entirely, starting and ending exclusively for those streaming platforms?

According to one report, the average exclusive theatrical window for wide-release movies in 2025 was a fairly short 37 days.

But there is some hope. Universal Pictures recently instituted a standard 45-day exclusive window for movie theaters.

Will Paramount do the same?

Some positive news comes from the current movie theater business, which has seen strong box-office growth in the first three months of 2026 -- with “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Project Hail Mary” scoring strong results.

In particular “Super Mario” has now easily posted big revenue, the strongest box-office movie of the year so far.

So major movie studios might see this as a sign of the earning power of movie theaters for their content.

Even better news for those movie theater hopefuls is that “Super Mario” comes from Paramount Skydance.