• The summer movie season is back after studios delayed releases last year during the pandemic.
• A new survey asked consumers if they preferred to watch movies in the theater or at home.
• The Marvel films “Black Widow” and “Shang-Chi” were the most anticipated theatrical releases.
• See more stories on the Insider business page.

The summer movie season is back.

With theaters closed from March through August last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, movie studios have pushed many of their biggest releases into this summer.

But while a large chunk of theaters in America are back and movies are coming out, Hollywood is nothing like it was a year ago.

Media companies like Disney and WarnerMedia have reorganized around their streaming businesses during the pandemic. Warner Bros. rocked Hollywood by announcing that it would simultaneously release its entire 2021 movie slate to theaters and WarnerMedia’s streaming service,

HBO Max
. Disney is doing the same with some of its biggest titles this year on its own streaming platform, Disney +, but at an additional cost of $ 30 to subscribers.

Paramount’s parent company, ViacomCBS, launched its expanded version of CBS All Access in March, called Paramount +, and plans to release “A Quiet Place Part II” to the service 45 days after it hits theaters over Memorial weekend. Day. And Universal has made deals with some theater chains, including the world’s largest cinemas, AMC, to reduce the traditional 75-day theatrical window to, in most cases, just 17 days.

In short, consumers have more options than ever to watch Hollywood movies this summer. To see how people felt about going back to the cinema and what movies they were most waiting for, the TV Time TV tracking app conducted a survey, from April 28 to April 29, of 1904 of its users in the United States. United States (results have been balanced to reflect US Census demographics).

Of the summer movie releases, consumers anticipated “Black Widow” the most in theaters. 68% said they would prefer to see the movie in a theater and 32% said they would prefer to watch it at home.

Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which will close out the summer movie season when it debuts over Labor Day weekend, followed by 64% preferring to see it in a theater. There are no plans to release the film simultaneously on Disney +, although its theatrical window will only last 45 days (Disney has not finalized whether it will go straight to streaming after that or if there will be a typical home entertainment window, a Disney rep told Insider).

Warner Bros. ‘ “Space Jam: A New Legacy” was the most preferred movie consumers would watch at home at 69%. The only release from Warner Bros. that the majority of survey respondents preferred to see in a theater this summer was “The Suicide Squad”. The films of Warner Bros. have dominated the box office so far this year, but that could change as competition from other studios heats up.

Titles aimed at families were generally geared towards the “home” option, including “Space Jam,” as well as Disney’s “Cruella” and “Jungle Cruise.” If parents have access to Disney + and HBO Max, they can choose not to go to the theater.

The survey also found that 28% of respondents had already returned to a theater or planned to do so as soon as they reopened in their area. 10% said they had no plans to go back to the movies.

Below are the summer films included in the TV Time survey, ranked according to respondents’ excitement about seeing them in a movie theater (vs. home):