Studies are experimenting with launch models of what this means for film piracy

2021 will be a very different year for the film business. The studios, hoping to find ways to make a profit on budget blockbusters, have resorted to new methods for releasing films.

For Warner Bros., the pandemic led its parent company AT&T to decide to release all of its films in theaters and HBO Max on the same day. Universal, owned by Comcast, has opted to enter into agreements with individual theaters to shorten the length of time its films have to remain in cinemas before moving to premium on-demand video.

Then there are those like Disney who, for the most part, have postponed most of their films until 2021 and put a handful on their own streaming service.

But box office analysts won’t be the only ones who will be excited to see how these films work next year. Piracy experts are eagerly anticipating how these new launch methods will affect illegal transmission.

“As a data science researcher, this is a dream,” said Brett Danaher, a professor of analytics and entertainment technology at Chapman University. “It’s such a fantastic experiment.”

By 2021, piracy experts told CNBC that they had theories about how hackers would react to these different models, but they don’t quite know what will happen.

On the one hand, piracy is a difficult thing to track down. Experts can track some downloads from major piracy websites, but once this file is downloaded, it can be distributed and streamed privately to thousands of other viewers.

That’s also why experts provide a range of what piracy can cost the US economy rather than a firm number. Last year, the Global Innovation Policy Center estimated that online piracy around the world cost the U.S. economy between $ 29.9 billion and $ 71 billion in revenue each year.

But you can learn a lot from people who hack. Looking at the data, experts like Andy Chatterley, CEO and co-founder of MUSO, a global authority on digital piracy, can provide information to media companies around the world.

For one thing, Chatterley noted that the bigger the buzz around a blockbuster, the more piracy you’ll see. Movies that have big marketing campaigns, the accumulated demand from fervent fans and a lot of media exposure will generate more illegal online downloads.

MUSO data also suggests that piracy increases when higher quality movie versions are available at piracy sites. For example, “Bad Boys for Life” hit theaters in January and saw a “fairly mild” amount of piracy, Chatterley said. However, when it became available on demand for videos in mid-March, there was a sharp rise in online piracy.

By contrast, Disney’s “Mulan,” which immediately went live, saw a massive rebound on the day of its release and then a decrease in overtime.

“The piracy was frontally charged,” Chatterley said. “But piracy wasn’t necessarily bigger or smaller.”

For companies like AT&T that will release high-quality movie versions on the first day, there are some ways to deter piracy. For example, two weeks before “Wonder Woman 1984” debuted in North America in theaters and on HBO Max, the film premiered internationally.

This allowed the audience to see the film in cinemas before there was a high quality copy on piracy websites. This is especially important because HBO Max is only a domestic product at this time.

“Of course, you have people who are always pirates,” said Michael Smith, a professor of information technology and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University. “The people you care about are the people who would have bought your content legally, but found it [piracy] it is more convenient “.

Smith said most people who hack do so because they have no other legal way to consume a product. If an easier legal way had been provided to these viewers, they would have paid to see the film.

While online piracy can have negative financial impacts on media companies, the data collected by experts can also help these companies determine what their audiences want to see. Data from groups like MUSO can tell companies which movies or TV shows they should buy or license nationally or internationally.

For example, the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office determined that “The Mummy” was disproportionately pirated in Spain and the TV show “South Park” was a popular illegal download in Finland.

This information tells Universal that you may want “The Mummy” to be more available in Spain and Viacom that you want to make a deal with a Finnish broadcast service.

As Danaher said, 2021 will be a big experiment for the industry when it comes to piracy. This is the first time there will be multiple different launch strategies, all at the same time and over an extended period of time.

Even if some titles are more popular than others, there should be trends in the data that show how people consume their entertainment.

As in the previous year, it will be difficult for experts to determine a clear financial impact, especially because the pandemic is likely to affect the way people choose to watch certain films. Those who are unable to go to the cinemas may choose to be legally broadcast when they are available, but may choose illegal methods for major films.

Also, with the fact that premium video-on-demand video becomes an option to buy earlier than usual, it may not be immediately clear whether on-demand shopping or piracy cannibalizes theatrical revenue.

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who will win the horse race,” Danaher said.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.