All the best happy endings have a plot twist. So it is in the real-life film business. Cinemas battered by forced closures, nervous consumers staying home, and Hollywood studios delaying the blockbuster releases they depend on, had hoped miracle drugs could save them from extinction. Good news on coronavirus vaccines recently sent shares soaring in debt-laden cinema groups such as AMC, Cineworld and Cinemark. But they plunged last week after Warner Bros said it would debut its films in the US next year simultaneously in cinemas and, for a month, on its HBO Max streaming service.

The Warner Bros move is the most dramatic yet by a Hollywood studio to break with the usual playbook for blockbuster releases and bring them more rapidly into living rooms. Cinema chains have spent years resisting studios’ attempts to reduce the time they can offer new films exclusively — and fighting off demands from Netflix to stream them at the same time. It gives a boost to online viewing and dents cinemas’ narrative that, once vaccine rollouts were well under way, audiences would rapidly rebound — enticed by a backlog of blockbusters such as the Bond movie No Time To Die, delayed from November to next April.

Warner Bros said its move was a one-year plan reflecting the likelihood cinemas would “operate at reduced capacity throughout 2021”. It also seems designed to boost disappointing sign-up rates to HBO Max, which launched in May. Either way, it is a serious blow to film theatre chains. AMC, which also filed last week to raise up to $844m by selling stock to keep it afloat, said it would not allow Warner to boost HBO at the cinema group’s expense.