Universal Studios is giving theaters a longer minimum exclusive run

While the Oscars has dominated the world of film for the last week, the most consequential news of the last few days may have been from Universal Pictures, which announced last week it would guarantee a longer, five-weekend exclusive playing period for theaters in 2026, ending a pandemic-era policy that capped the minimum at only three, with a plan to move to seven weekends in 2027.

The decades-old 90-day standard has slipped out of the cinema playbook since the great Covid reset, leaving a jumbled mess of studio policies. Paramount, for one, allowed movies to play exclusively in theaters between roughly 24 and 88 days last year, Warner Bros. had a 17- to 52-day window, and Sony Pictures had a range of 24 to 45 days, per The New York Times. 

Out of the major studios, Disney had the highest average of some 58 days between its box office and digital release in 2025, per data compiled by Screen Rant, as well as the highest revenue from theaters, racking up $6.58 billion at the global box office last year — Universal execs might have thought that wasn’t pure coincidence.

Gone with the wind

The change is part of Universal’s efforts to squeeze as much juice out of its movies as possible before they go to streaming services — a strategy that’s even more important when you consider the fact that studios like Universal itself have been making fewer movies over the past decade. In 2016, Universal produced some 33 films, per Letterboxd data; in the last two years, it’s produced less than half of that figure.

Indeed, across the board, distributors posted revenues from only 668 films last year from theatrical releases, down from 993 in 2018 and after falling to sub-500 releases in the trough of the pandemic, per data from Box Office Mojo.

One concession after another

Winners from the change include people who prefer to watch things on the big screen rather than at home, and, of course, theaters themselves.

Indeed, the move is an “extraordinarily beneficial” turn of events for theater operators like AMC, whose CEO spoke to Variety, saying that the move “strengthens the entire theatrical ecosystem.” More people in seats means more ticket sales, yes, but more importantly, it means more opportunities to sell popcorn, hot dogs, and soda — revenue that came with an eye-watering 81% gross profit margin last year for AMC.

That’s significant for AMC, whose profitability never fully recovered after the pandemic, despite avid cost cutting and debt refinancing measures. Indeed, since partially recovering from a pandemic low of $4.6 billion in losses to just under $1 billion in the red in 2022, AMC’s bottom-line improvement has pretty much stagnated, coming in with $632 million in losses in 2025.