The digital circus is an indie animation darling. After the pilot was released in 2023 it became an instant success. The show is created by the Australian company Glitch, which started of on the legs of the Mario parody channel SMG4, and the main showrunner is Gooseworx otherwise most known for her short little Runmo. The Amazing Digital Circus follows Pomni as she gets transported into a 90s computer game controlled by the AI Caine. As of now the pilot has has 427 million views and the lowest performing episode has 73 million. It is over all a massive success. Despite this the studio has not sold out to a major streaming platform. The series has since its inception mainly been shown on YouTube and after the 3rd episode’s release they have also been watchable on Netflix.
After a little under 3 Years since the show released, Glitch is finally ready to release the final 1 hour episode but as to much surprise they are looking to make a theatrical release 2 weeks before they put the episode online. The theatrical release will consist of episode 8 as well as the last episode, creating a 1hour and 30minutes feature experience.
There has however been some issues with this decision. Glitch has faced some criticism because of the long wait between the theatrical and online release. Although 2 weeks may sound like a little it compared to the regular time for a movie to be released on other services, for this show it becomes quite a lot. The last episode isn’t exactly standalone, it is a finale, and the last released episode ended on a massive cliffhanger and everyone is eager to find out for themselves and not through spoilers online. You might see this as a reason to just go see it in theaters but problem is that isn’t an option a lot of fans. This is due to the limited theatrical run of the show. Most countries has no chance to watch this before its YouTube premiere. There are no European theatres as of now that will show this and japan is the only Asian country with a planned release.
The CEO of glitch, Kevin Lerdwichagul, explains on their Bluesky that the 2 week window is due to restraints from the theatres and not a decision they made deliberately. He mean that the theatrical release is not a way to only gather revenue but mostly to elevate “indie studios” as a whole by getting their movies in cinemas. They are working on getting it to more theatres.
If you want to watch the movie you can check if there’s a cinema near you on their website: https://www.digitalcircus.movie/
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