By George Robbins
Movies are in a little bit of trouble at the moment due to the most recent surge in coronavirus cases and it appears that this isn’t likely to change any time soon. The moment that the initial spike in cases was announced, many films pushed back their releases dates with some at the end of the year being moved to some time next year. These changes are evident that it just isn’t safe for studios to release their movies in the current climate that we have found ourselves in. If they were to try and release their films now, it would only spell ruin for the company. Thus we now have the information that the newest movies are going to keep getting pushed back in an effort for them to try and make the most amount of money back possible.
The problem as of late is that the number of new cases just keeps increasing which is, in turn, pushing state officials to possibly shut down their states again. This has just been done in California again because the number of new cases there was so high and this also means that all non-essential businesses there have yet again been shut down. Thus the news is relatively grim for businesses like movie theaters that have had no choice but continue keeping their doors shut anyway. Without new content, many theaters, mostly theater chains, have had no choice but to keep their doors shut because it would not be cost-efficient. This is why we currently have theater reopenings chasing down movie releases.
One of the releases that is really trying to be the first movie available in theaters when they open their doors back up again is the movie ‘Tenet.’ Director Christopher Nolan has been advocating and pushing the studio to release his film as soon as they possibly can. The film was originally scheduled for release on July 17th but has since had to be changed to the middle of August. Even this change in dates has not exactly been cemented because the number of new Covid-19 cases keeps rising and it has many studios on edge. On top of this, they also want to make sure that when it does get into theaters, that the theaters aren’t immediately going to shut down and that people will actually go out to theaters. If no one goes out to watch the film, then they are massively “in the hole,” so to speak.
According to a recent report, just to break even on how much money was spent on the production and marketing of ‘Tenet,’ the movie would have to make $800 million. It is no wonder that the studio is being cautious about the release, but it may just be a massive loss on their part. According to some they cannot keep pushing back the release of the film but if they release the film and everything shuts down or isn’t even open to begin with, then they are going to have an even bigger issue. They need a good time frame to release their film where they know people will be able to go out to the movies and a majority of theaters will be open at least. They have about a month now to decide what they will do, so hopefully they come up with some solution, otherwise they are going to be in trouble.
By George Robbins
Movie theaters opening up has been something that has been in discussion for months at this point due to the state of affairs for the theater companies. From the day they first shut their doors they started suffering from the lack of income and employees were either furloughed or laid off entirely. Theater owners very quickly pushed to be allowed to reopen when states were given the opportunity to allow businesses to reopen to the public. However, this would not end up working out for many theaters as the states had started taking a so-called “phased” approach to reopening businesses to the public. This meant that high-risk businesses that could spread the virus quicker would be among the last places to reopen their doors to the public.
Eventually, theaters were given the greenlight to reopen their doors to the public after a few weeks had gone by, at least for some states. However, this didn’t exactly help anyone but private theater owners and even then they were in trouble. With some theaters reopened it was hopeful that things would soon be able to pick up a little bit. Unfortunately, opening businesses up again had the double-edged sword effect of spreading the virus even more rapidly than when the pandemic began. Thus many states that had reopened the doors of many businesses too quickly ended up with virus cases spiking almost over night. Queue the issue we are now dealing with where the discussion is being held for many states to shut everything down again.
California’s theaters, despite being told they would be able to open sooner than they had originally anticipated, had a lot of issues to sort through. Not just Californian theaters, but numerous other theaters nationwide have had the issue of opening their doors with no new content to show the customers that walk through their doors. This is how we have ended up with the major theater chains delaying their reopenings nationwide so that they can both reopen all theaters at once and have new films to show. Unfortunately, the new delays due to spikes in the virus cases has even further pushed back the opening dates for these theaters. Now it seems that this might just be for the best as discussions are in place all over the country as to whether each state affected harshly will shut down again.
California seems to be the first state to reach a decision as Governor Newsom recently announced that the state will be going back to its shelter-in-place rules. This means that all businesses that are considered non-essential will be closing their doors to the public once again and it will probably be a long while before they reopen. This just goes to show that things are getting so bad that the worst is starting to come back and businesses are going to suffer. There is no word as to whether this will affect the reopening of the theater chains due to it interfering with reopening plans, but it is safe to say this shut-down will probably not be the only one. Thus, it can also be safe to say that theaters will probably be shut down for awhile longer as it just isn’t a good idea to open any time soon.
By George Robbins
The Star Wars franchise is one that spans a couple of generations and has reached a level of worldwide acclaim that many series hope for. It has become a franchise that has become known as the “most successful film merchandising franchise” according to the Guinness World Records. The franchise has even managed to solidify its place as the fifth highest grossing media franchise of all time. This just goes to show how popular the franchise is as a whole and this gives a lot of leeway with how Disney can handle the franchise moving forward. They have already tried doing everything they could within the past few years just to make the franchise even more marketable than it already is. From the newest films to the series that they have been showing and developing over the years since the acquisition.
As of recent releases, we got the sequel trilogy which has been relatively hit-or-miss with long-time fans and liked by the newest generation of young fans. With those movies came the opportunity to create all new kinds of merchandise which further expanded upon the marketability of the franchise as a whole. Disney had expanded upon the already successful franchise with the release of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ and gave themselves an entirely new opportunity to make the franchise even greater. This is how we ended up with not only the newest trilogy, but also the side story films that we got in the off years. Unfortunately these films were not really meant to last and the ideas for any new ones were scrapped after the release of the second film.
The first of the side stories to release was ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘ which told the story of the rebel team that obtained the schematics for the Death Star before the events of the first film. The film ended up being relatively successful but not as much as the new trilogy that Disney had been working on. Still, they would go on to release the next side story two years later, ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story.’ While reviews for the film were generally mixed, the overall consensus was that the movie wasn’t really bad, but it was not really what people wanted to see. This resulted in Disney taking this fact to heart and cancelling any more side story films that were supposed to release. Now that the new trilogy has ended and the newest series based in the universe, ‘The Mandalorian,’ has been successful the possibility of new side story films has become a reality again.
While people may have made complaints about the ‘Solo’ film, many fans actually want a second film to continue the story of the first. By the end of the first film, there was a cliffhanger that showed a possible conspiracy against Han Solo moving forward. So with a cliffhanger ending for the first film and a decent crowd asking for the sequel to the film, there is possible talk of a new film coming at some point. Actor Alden Ehrenreich, who played the titular Han Solo, has said that he is willing to return to the role if certain conditions for the film are met. For those wondering what those conditions are, he did actually say that the biggest thing for him would be the quality of the story. This was the biggest point of contention for the first film, so it isn’t much of a surprise that this would be the case. If the story content is compelling and interesting while also making a lot of sense, then both the actors and the audience will love the film. So hopefully we will see him return to reprise the role because it will mean that the story may be worth it for fans.
By George Robbins
As of now most, if not all, live-events in the U.S. have been canceled through the remainder of the year due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has resulted in a number of events either being delayed to a later date or canceled in their entirety with refunds given out to people who paid to go already. Thus we now have numerous people that can no longer go to any live events such as conventions and they now have refunds or they put their money towards admission for next year or the year after. Of the remaining events that had been planned for the year was Comic-Con which sees some of the largest crowds with people from all over the world. It is no surprise that of all of the events this year, this would be the one that would get canceled.
While it may not be much of a surprise that San Diego Comic-Con was canceled for this year, it was a surprise that they would have an online event. Many other conventions have been canceled for this year and many will not have online events in their stead. For instance, the Star Wars Celebration convention is held every year to both give praise to the series and to announce new content for the universe. This event was canceled just like everyone expected it to be, but what no one really expected was that the event would not be back until summer of 2022. At this point, many companies are expecting things to carry on as they are for years and this is shown with this announcement.
Comic-Con announcing the fact that it will be having an online convention to help make up for the lack of the live-event gives a little bit of light for people. It means that they can now attend the convention they love, albeit in a different way than usual. While it also means that they can not meet people face-to-face, it does mean that they can see what they might have wanted to see if the convention was still going. Another up-side to this whole thing is that the admission for the online event is totally free and it appears as though we will be able to explore a virtual hub and marketplace. This gives an opportunity for vendors to market some of their new wares even though they can’t show them off the way they usually do. They are also not the only ones doing something like this, with DC FanDome taking place next month.
Unfortunately, there are some things that just end up being lost in translation between the actual live event and the new plans for the online edition. The first notice that this would be an issue was that Marvel Studios announced that they will not be showcasing anything and will not be attending at all. Now it appears that nothing will be appearing from Star Wars at this new At-Home Edition of Comic-Con and this is in light of it being only a week away. This doesn’t exactly bode well for the event because with DC hosting its own event and Star Wars and Marvel Studios not appearing, there leaves some outside groups to make up for the lack of content. Thus the event may not end up being what people expect it to be and it could end up being a total wash. There is no knowing for sure until the event takes place next weekend, so let’s hope it is what people want.
By George Robbins
There has been a lot of heat on the Disney Parks sector of Disney as of late and it is for a relatively good reason, but it seems they are trying to assure people’s safety. The reopening of Disney Parks all over the world has managed to keep itself in the news and most recently, Disney has been trying to reopen their parks stateside. Following their announced intentions of opening the parks stateside again, they announced the official reopening date for Disney World as being on July 11th and over a few days they would be opening all of the Disney World parks. This announcement was met with almost immediate backlash due to the fact that the State of Florida was beginning to have surges in coronavirus cases again. Despite these protests, they reopened their gates to the public and gave them the chance to re-enter the park.
Disney World was not the only set of parks that Disney wanted to reopen as they also wanted to reopen their Disneyland Park in California. When the surge in virus cases was announced, the state government in California said that they would not allow the park to reopen like they planned. Otherwise the plan was to reopen the park on July 17th with the same limited capacity that they had planned on giving all of their parks along with other safety restrictions. Not only was this plan scrapped due to the rise in cases, but also due to the fact that most of the state is once again shut down. The rise in cases has been dangerous enough to warrant the Governor to shut down many businesses across the state again.
This has been something that was anticipated and it is not at all that surprising because California was one of the states that was taking the longest to reopen its businesses. Now that they have seen the spike in cases, it was only a matter of time before everything shut down again. So with plans for reopening Disneyland thrown out of the window, the Disney Company had nothing other than Disney World to turn to. This has been a heavily conflicted topic for the past couple of weeks now with many of the Disney Parks employees worried about what will happen now that the parks are opened up. Disney has assured people that they will be keeping people in check so that the virus can’t spread any more than it already is.
The State of Florida is one of the worst states currently in terms of how many new cases there are on a daily basis and how many deaths there are daily. With this in mind, Disney World is trying to enforce the rules that are in place to keep people from further spreading the virus. One of the biggest things they are doing to address the issue is having people maintaining social distancing and limiting the number of park occupants per day. On top of this, all guests to the parks must keep their face masks on at all time, even when they are on rides in order to keep things as clean as possible. They are even going as far as not allowing people to buy their ride photos if they don’t keep their masks on. We’ll see how their efforts pay off in the coming weeks and if it was a good idea for them to open at all.
By George Robbins
The ‘Power Rangers‘ series is one that has been around for many, many years at this point and still continues on to this day. It has stayed within public knowledge due to the many years spent by the TV series building up knowledge of the titular characters. No matter what the subject is or how crazy the plots of each serialization end up being, the ‘Power Rangers’ has remained essentially the same as time went on. There are many who grew up watching it that keep the flame alive, so to speak, for the series today and it is the reason why they are still prominent in this day and age. It should really not be any kind of surprise that there would end up being yet another ‘Power Rangers’ film in production, but unlike the last film that was made as a reboot, the new one will continue with the continuity of the TV shows.
The original serialization, otherwise known as the ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers,’ was a show that children born in the late 80’s and children born in the 90’s fell in love with. The first series ran for a strong three years with a movie to help encapsulate what made it great and to revitalize the series. After that movie, there was another one which led the way into the next series of the show and served as a perfect tie-in to explain how they planned on moving from one generation to the next. These were met by a lot of fans falling in love with the series; with fans of the originals going on to watch the next few iterations of Rangers. When Haim Saban made the serialization and put it on TV, he created a fan base that would go on for generations.
While many of the original fans of the series have stopped watching the newest iterations of the Rangers and their exploits on television, it hasn’t changed the fact that those people still love the characters. The most recent film, aptly named ‘Saban’s Power Rangers,’ was not a big hit like the studio thought it might be. The film was a reboot of the original story and it was supposed to tell a story that took seasons to tell on television within a limited amount of time. This gave fans of the original characters something to complain about and resulted in the film not being as well done as they would have hoped. There is now some glimmer of hope for fans as it was recently announced that there would yet again be another film based upon the characters.
The biggest worry going into this new film is that it will just repeat what the reboot film had done, and we will end up with something that people feel doesn’t really encapsulate what the original series was. While this new movie will be a reboot of sorts, it will also tie into the stories that people have seen over the past 27 years of the serialization’s existence. This new movie is reportedly going to include the past series’ and will include suits from those series as well as past Zords. This lends a lot of opportunity to the movie which is supposed to somehow tie-in to all of the previous years of content. Hopefully it will end up being a film that fans of all ages enjoy, but it is a steep hill that the movie will have to climb as time goes on.
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