COVID-19 has played havoc with the 2020-21 film schedule and thrown into disarray the carefully plotted alignment between release dates and licensed goods.

When Target CEO Brian Cornell said last month that it’s “difficult right now to forecast beyond a couple of weeks at a time,” he might well have been painting a picture of the film licensing business.

Conversations
And when his COO said at the same time that “mostly this is about conversations (with vendors) and then having the agility and flexibility” to make changes because everything is “moving very rapidly,” he gave a cogent description of ongoing discussions among studios, licensees and retailers that may well involve terms such as “cross collateralization.”

For example, items tied to Wonder Woman 1984 moved onto retail shelves in late summer  — in line with its scheduled August release — before the film shifted for a fourth time this year to Dec. 25 – and licensees have been faced with the hard decision of warehousing product or shipping it to retail without the backing of the film’s marketing muscle.

Promotions, too
It’s not just consumer product licensees. Dairy Queen was promoting a Wonder Woman 1984 cookie collision Blizzard drink this summer as the film’s release bounced from June 5 to Aug. 14 and Oct. 2 before landing on Christmas Day. Not exactly a hot time to sell a cold drink.

“We had little choice but to ship the [Wonder Woman 1984] product because it had been designed, made and packaged and shipped to retailers [and] it was too late to pull anything back,” says McFarlane Toys CEO Todd McFarlane. “Retailers made a commitment on a purchase order and shelf space and without the products, those shelves might be bare.”

Licensees are adapting their strategies as release dates and platforms shift. In the spring and early summer, films such as Scoob and Trolls slid from planned theatrical showings to streaming and VOD platforms – cinemas were shuttered around the world —  but late enough in the process to take advantage of theater-like marketing efforts.

The experience with Disney’s Mulan has been more complex. In many parts of the world, Disney launched the film in September as a “premium” streaming event on Disney Plus – charging, for example, $29.95 in the U.S., less than a family might have spent to see it in a theater. In China and some other countries, it went into theaters. Merchandise tied to the film was in U.S. stores as early as spring in advance of the originally planned premier.

Conversations with licensing executives reveal a general willingness on both sides of the contractual equation to deal with the fluidity of the movie market, relying on the realization that these are special times and that even once things go back to “normal,” long term business relationships need to be fostered. (Refer to our movie tracker to get a handle on the latest schedule.)

As the industry works its way through the rest of 2020, and toward a radically recast 2021 and beyond, those relationships will come increasingly into play.