Might Profits for Movies Mean Losses for Streamers? (Or Vice-Versa?)

Reviewing the numbers Deadline offers on the most (and least) profitable movies of the year one sees a differentiation of the revenue streams for those films by type, with streaming indicated separately.

As it happens, streaming platforms are largely studio-owned--with Disney owning Disney Plus, for example. And so an important part of the revenue for Disney movies consists of Disney Plus buying the rights to stream a Disney-made movie. (As Anthony D'Alessandro explains in the item devoted to Guardians of the Galaxy 3 the $180 million Deadline reports for the revenue from streaming "includes the amount for which Disney sells the film to itself, Disney+ being the pay-one window for the studio's movies.")

In and of itself this should shock no one who has been paying attention. In the current world economy, where things like antitrust law are so often dead letters, "related-party" trade in its various forms makes up a very high proportion of the world's total trade. Indeed, of the U.S.' import-export trade in goods in 2021 and 2022 over 40 percent was represented by related-party trade of this kind. Still, as Investopedia explains, while "there are rules and standards for related-party transactions," there are conflicts of interest, and particular difficulties for auditing the transactions, with "improperly inflated earnings, even fraud" something that can--does--happen.

Thus some see such numbers, and wonder. After all, no more are Hollywood studios than the rest of the corporate world known for their impeccable accounting, or for their forthrightness about financial reality--and it is all too easy for a studio to fatten the bottom line for a movie by selling it to its streaming service at an inflated price, or should the alternative prove more desirable at the time, sell the movie at a below-market price to help out the streaming service. And if it seems to me that the entertainment press does not much interest itself in such questions (like the rest of the press they are more likely to do PR for big companies than properly cover them), I have seen in comment threads and various other fora that the "armchair movie executive" at which that press sneers do see, and doubt, far from unreasonably.