Nickelodeon/ViacomCBS has announced plans to release the new Spongebob Squarepants movie will be released direct-to-consumer. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run was set to be released on August 7 and now will be digital.
The move follows Trolls: World Tour‘s release to streaming for a steep $20 rental. Troll: World Tour also caused issues between Universal Pictures and movie theaters. The Trolls release was a major success for Universal but AMC and Regal theater chains have threatened to not release future Universal titles.
As part of the announcement, ViacomCBS announced that the entire library of Spongebob Squarepants will be available on CBS All Access, the ViacomCBS owned streaming app.