More money isn't just new subscriptions, it's also revenue from existing subscriptions (which can be cancelled any time).

By this logic, platforms will never need new content ever in order to keep existing subscribers happy.

It's not just new subscriptions, it's also retention: do people stay subscribed to platform X because movies like The Matrix Resurrections are on the platform?

It'd be rather hard to measure for a single film, it's the aggregate of platform content that dictates retention, I would think.

If the answer is yes, then the platforms will continue to pay companies like WB to film "box office bombs".

I watched the movie via HBO Max. I’m sure that on one set of calculations (HBO), a good chunk of my monthly fee is assigned to the Matrix Resurrections account. But on another set of calculations (Warner Bros), I’m a negative because I would have likely gone to see it in a theater.

Nevermind that they are the same company.

While I can't answer your question, just using a calculation like "box office receipts" - "movie making expense" is surely disingenuous. In that case every single direct-to-netflix release would be considered a money loser.

They had a deal for home streaming simultaneously with the box office release. This means that yes it is highly likely that far more people streamed this movie than movies that do theater-exclusive releases.

And people with existing subscriptions don’t matter, because Warner Bros isn’t getting subscription money directly, they’re getting money from deals with subscription services.

Edit: HBO is owned by Warner. So even if they don’t do accounting such that HBO pays Warner but just track subscription revenue directly, it still doesn’t matter. Retaining subscribers is hugely important, not just getting brand new subscriptions. It does make it a lot harder to compare box office receipts though.

The point isn’t that there are 2 revenue streams instead of 1, is that they own it forever and there will be unlimited ways to make money on it over a long enough timeline.

For a film, the present value of the unlimited future revenue is only a single digit multiple of its short term box office. Perhaps low doubles given the proportion of release attention accumulated on HBO Max.

I'm not sure the specific licensing agreement between HBO and Warner Bros, but it's likely they agreed upon a flat fee with additional $ per viewer. I don't think these deals would ever hinge solely on how many new subscribers joined the platform specifically to view that movie, which would be difficult to prove anyway.

From HBO's perspective, they also benefit from having a 'blockbuster' in their catalogue since it signals to potential subscribers that they're a platform you can expect to view high-budget movies.

HBO is owned by Warner

That doesn't mean that there isn't a contract between HBO and Warner Studios involved for this, as crazy as it sounds. It doesn't mean that there definitively is one, either -- but depending on how the different divisions are structured, HBO may well be paying Warner for the streaming rights.

My impression is that this sort of deal -- where the production arm may well shop around a product to different networks/services, even if the parent company actually owns one -- is becoming less common as nearly everyone's starting their own streaming service, but AFAIK it still happens, particularly for movies.

Anecdotally I did. Well for that and Dune - and I’ll probably keep it, I was surprised and impressed with the selection.

HBO Max is not a global service. There is a ton of money to be made selling the movie to other streaming services.