Amazon is about to start releasing its movies in a very old-fashioned way

LOS ANGELES -- Looks like Amazon Studios is finally ready to play nice with movie theaters.

In a new (but very old) strategy that could give it a leg up over other streamers breaking into Hollywood, Amazon is preparing to allow a 90-day window between movie theaters and Prime streaming for many of its upcoming films, allowing for more robust and mainstream cinema runs, Mashable has learned.

For the past year-plus, as Amazon and Netflix (and even Hulu) started hacking their way into the movie business, their plans included a rascally end-around that irked theater chains and had Hollywood wringing its hands.

That strategy: to utterly ignore the 90-day window between opening weekend in theaters and home video. Hollywood studios and other distributors have been honoring this time period, designed to protect the exhibition business, for decades.

Window, schmwindow, Netflix said with Beasts of No Nation, its first original movie with a theatrical release, which went up on the streaming service Oct. 16, the same day it went into theaters (the result: a pathetic $51,000 at the U.S. box office). 

For its part, Amazon severely squeezed the window with Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, which it put in theaters on Dec. 4, then released on Prime just two months later.

Theater chains aren't having it, and won't anytime soon. Their longstanding policy is to refuse any films that skirt the 90-day window. And filmmakers, who are known to be precious about getting their creations seen on big-screens, were wary of selling to streaming services.

So the streamers get around that by "four-walling" theaters, paying large sums to rent out entire cinemas, which enables them to play whatever they want there. It's typically a money-loser, done only to help market movies as theatrical releases or qualify them for awards (which is why Netflix didn't care that it took a bath on Beasts).

But as Amazon (which declined to participate in this story) rolls out its more serious offerings later this year, it's going to try something different. It's going old-school.

While Netflix continues to bull its way into trying to buck the system, Amazon is embracing it. 

According to multiple people familiar with Amazon's plans, it will release several of its upcoming titles across major theater chains, collect half the box-office receipts, then wait the requisite 90 days. 

Just like a real studio.

That could include Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan's awards-worthy drama that Amazon bought at Sundance for $10 million; fellow Sundance pickups Love & Friendship and Wiener-Dog; its upcoming Untitled Woody Allen Project (the film, not the forthcoming TV show); and many more.

After that 90-day period they'll go exclusively to Prime for awhile, before they're made available for purchase or rental elsewhere. The company has learned that Prime members want new releases fresh out of theaters -- another old-fashioned idea that's working in a new paradigm.

"There is a value for consumers wanting to see films in theaters, there’s also a value in what theatrical does to create greater awareness of a film through all its platforms," Gregory Laemmle, co-owner Laemmle Theatres, told Mashable. "It also certainly makes a film seem more 'theatrical,' for lack of a better word."

Amazon plans a "bespoke" treatment of its forthcoming releases, people familiar with its strategy told Mashable, meaning some will get the 90-day window while others -- like this coming weekend's release, Creative Control -- will come to Prime much sooner.

Amazon Studios' Ted Hope with "Creative Control" writer/director/star Benjamin Dickinson at the film's LA premiere. Credit: Getty images

Creative Control, a modern sci-fi drama about a thirtysomething ad exec who uses a new virtual reality platform to have an affair with an avatar of his friend's fiancee, hits theaters Friday. While its Prime date has not been released, sources tell Mashable that the theaters it's playing in have been four-walled, and Prime customers should expect it in about 60 days' time.

After that, Amazon's movie releases -- in particular, its awards contenders and more mainstream offerings -- could start showing up at the big chains alongside releases from Disney, Warner Bros., Universal et al.

Sources at the major theater chains tell Mashable that they're happy to let Amazon do its business a la carte; just because some movies will skirt the window is no reason for them to discriminate against the studio as a whole, they said.

And just because Amazon is tinkering with the old ways doesn't mean it won't keep looking for the new.

"There are plenty of films that have succeeded to some extent or another with a day in day platform with VOD and some other different platforms for a variety of different reasons," Laemmle said "But there is value in theatrical, there is value in getting the word out for a film of that fashion."

Saba Hamedy contributed reporting to this story.

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