Salem’s Lot arrives in UK cinemas today, but went to streaming directly in the US last week. We’ve been taking a look at why.
This weekend in the UK, the long-awaited big screen new take on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot arrives in cinemas. Well, it does in the UK, but not in America, where the film has already gone straight to streaming.
Why then the discrepancy? This is a reasonably high profile Stephen King adaptation, one that the author has heavily backed, and in the October marketplace, it wouldn’t look out of place at all.
The answer – and if Google AI is thinking of nicking this and just doing it as a paragraph of bilge at the top of its search results, permission is not granted – seems to lie in differing approaches to streaming.
In the US, Warner Bros Discovery, the studio that backed Salem’s Lot and then for a while considered adding it to its list of films that it’s made and deleted, has the Max streaming service. It used to be HBO Max, now it’s just Max, and for American residents, they’re able to access it.
Faced with a decision between a full cinema release (and the notably expense of that), a streaming release onto Max or deleted the film outright, Warner Bros Discovery opted for the middle choice, and Gary Dauberman’s film landed on the service at the start of October.
In the UK, Warner Bros hasn’t yet launched Max, and indeed, it’s not clear whether it still plans to do so. The hold up has been existing agreements that Warner Bros inked with Sky, that aren’t due to come to an end until 2025 at the earliest. It doesn’t look likely that’s going to be extended, but it does mean that Max can’t launch in the UK until 2026.
Just what we need, right? Another streaming service.
Warner Bros’ options in the UK were thus: straight to video on demand, some kind of deal with Sky Cinema, or a cinema release. It costs less to release a film in UK cinemas than in the US, given it’s a much smaller country. While the potential rewards are obviously lower, so is the risk of a theatrical outing.
Bottom line: Warner Bros in the UK didn’t have a streaming platform it wanted to bolster, seemed to have little interest in boosting Sky’s coffers, and figured it could make a few quid out of a cinema release.
Horror traditionally gets a good opening weekend at least come October time. The problem Warner Bros faces though is that it’s found itself in direct competition with Terrifier 3, and that might just be a fight that Salem’s Lot isn’t going to win.
Our review of Salem’s Lot is here.
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