As film and TV viewing habits have changed, American movie producers have continued to maintain a 90-day minimum between a film's theatrical debut and its release on home platforms like DVD, Blu-ray, and digital downloads. That old model will soon see a disruption thanks to Paramount Pictures launching two October films' home versions much sooner.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that two upcoming Paramount films, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, will see their home releases "just two weeks after they leave most theaters." This is due to agreements penned between Paramount and two North American theater chains, the American AMC and the Canadian Cineplex. The agreement will pay the chains a portion of the films' digital download revenue in exchange for agreeing to the trial experiment. The report indicated that if the trial is successful, more films will be following suit.

Paramount inadvertently became involved in another break from the 90-day window earlier this year, when Hot Tub Time Machine 2 launched on digital platforms only 46 days after its theatrical launch. That was due to co-financer MGM Inc. owning the film's digital-launch rights and moving forward without Paramount's permission. Wednesday's report confirmed that the surprisingly early digital launch of HTTM2 resulted in "digital revenue more than twice as high as the studios normally expect."

The Wednesday report acknowledged an issue that has been a forehead-smack of a no-brainer for some time: Studios that withhold films' home releases lose out to piracy, whether due to the leak of a camcorder-recorded copy or a critics' screener. Australian film companies responded to that fact in 2014 by reducing their usual 120-day film-release window to a 90-day one.