By George Robbins
Production studios have had a lot of issues over the past few months since the coronavirus pandemic was first announced. Since mid-March, companies have been doing their best to come up with a battle plan to move forward when they are able to start working again. This has resulted in many different productions having to try and find the best chances they have to actually film their movies. Recently, for some movies, there was a small ray of hope in the fact that Hollywood was given the go-ahead to be able to start up productions again. Of course, this comes with a lot of restrictions since the pandemic is still a very real threat that people keep trying to ignore, but ultimately can’t.
Some of the restrictions for movie and television sets include the enforcing of the social distancing rule for all cast and crew. Even while on camera, the cast is still supposed to maintain a certain distance from one another while the camera operators are supposed to change the angle to make it seem like they are closer. On top of being forced to use movie-magic to create illusions in scenes that no one would have expected them to have to do, crews must also be cut down and limit overall capacity. This will ultimately lead to many people simply being too far from where they should be or there will be skeleton crews on sets. Some parts of the crew such as craft services will not even be allowed to be there just to limit the number of crew on set.
On top of these on-set restrictions, there are a number of restrictions that must be followed off of the set while there is a production. Before films can even start up again, there is a period of time being adopted called the quarantine period that cast and crew must be isolated for a couple of weeks before productions can start. There are also other restrictions that they must follow involving cast and crew moving around outside of set boundaries. They aren’t really allowed to leave the place they are filming in until the filming is complete to prevent the risk that they get sick and bring it back to the set by accident. With these restrictions adding up, it can be pretty easy to see why it will be difficult for some movies to even start up again to begin with.
After the announcement that the UK would be loosening restrictions to allow things like movie productions to pick up where they left off, many thought movies like ‘The Batman‘ would be able to resume as soon as possible. With these restrictions in place, this is turning out not to be the case and not just with that one movie, but with most if not all big-budget films. Studios will be having a hard time just getting everything together since they have to make sure they are following the safety protocols without making any mistakes. There will be an inspector on-site at all times in order to make sure that the cast and crew are following the rules at all times so that they don’t slip up. With the exception of ‘Avatar 2’ there is no guarantee that many productions will even be able to restart any time soon.
By George Robbins
Ever since the initial conception of the Godzilla character back in the 1950’s, it has become an icon in monster cinema throughout the years. The character has undergone a number of different reformations and reboots and has appeared in many different forms of media. ‘Godzilla’ films have become a hallmark for monster movie media and have become some of the most favored films around due to the fact people simply want to see giant monsters fight one another. Within the past decade, Hollywood was given the opportunity to show that they could actually make a ‘Godzilla’ film that would be enjoyable. They succeeded when they released 2014’s ‘Godzilla‘ and it ended up with relatively good reviews since most people just want to see giant monsters fight.
The 2014 iteration was released by Legendary Entertainment and easily brought the character back into the eyes of the public stateside. There were still many fans who knew the character from the older Toho films that were interested to see if the film would be better than the 1998 American iteration. This was not a feat that was considered difficult by anybody and they did much better than people expected them to do. Thus the greenlight was lit for the studio to start working on what is now known as Legendary’s MonsterVerse. Of the cinematic universes that studios have tried establishing within the past decade, it has still managed to hold up and is actually considered one of the best.
As stated previously, it is not hard to get people interested in giant monsters fighting one another and this is why the films have been doing well. The next film that they have up on their docket of releases is the ‘Godzilla vs Kong‘ film which will see the two titular monsters facing off since the original ‘King Kong vs Godzilla’ released in 1962. Both characters have been featured in their own movies and despite what some say about those films, the general consensus is that they are well done. The biggest complaint that people have in regards to those films are that they focus entirely too much on the human characters and not the monsters. After all, the reason most people go to see the movies is due to the fact that they get to see giant monsters fighting one another.
Even though the film is still slated for a release some time later this year there is really no information for it, and it has only just been announced what the rating would be. The film will share the same rating that the rest of the films in the MonsterVerse currently share which is a PG-13 rating from the MPA. These two world famous monsters are the headline act that people have been waiting to see fight one another ever since it was announced that they were a part of a shared universe. While Kong won the original battle in the 1962 film, we don’t know just how the upcoming film will play out and we can’t even speculate any plot details since there isn’t really any footage out for the public. All we can do now is wait and hype ourselves up for a very intense match-up that fans have been looking forward to for years.
By George Robbins
Cinemark theaters has very recently announced that they are finally getting ready to reopen their doors to the public for the first time in three months. The theater chain has plans to reopen as many of their theaters nationwide as possible on June 19th in order to start earning revenue again since theaters are in a lot of financial trouble right now. They have been completely shut down since the middle of March when the pandemic was announced in order to try and stop the rate of newly infected people from climbing. So with this in mind the idea for theaters reopening was that they would have to come up with ways to follow the newest health guidelines to prevent the spread of infection. For some reason though, they will not require people to wear masks.
The theater chain will be having a phased reopening, meaning that they will not be immediately reopening every location at once or at full capacity. First of all, their not opening at full capacity is because they are not allowed to have people be close enough to one another to go against the social distancing rules. Next, they can’t reopen everywhere because theaters are considered high risk businesses and are among the most likely places for the disease to spread. This is why many states will not be allowing them to properly reopen until a later date when they know whether the risk will be too great or not. On top of these things, the theater chain must enforce that their employees wear masks and keep the buildings clean.
So with all of this in mind, how does it make any sense that they would not enforce people having to wear face masks. Simply not making people wear them can drastically increase the amount of infected people even if they are not at full capacity. It is understandable that people are starting to get annoyed by the fact that they have to wear them whenever they go out to any businesses, but it is for a good reason. They even have to enforce the fact that people working for them must still wear the masks anyway and yet customers for some reason don’t have to. They are at this point allowing people to be responsible for whether they want to make others sick or not.
While it has been stated that guests will be encouraged to wear masks for their own safety and the safety of others, it is a fact that a lot of people don’t care and don’t want to wear the masks anymore. This is why health guidelines now pretty much dictate that policy is that people must wear the masks in most public places. If it isn’t an enforced rule, that only increases the danger that everyone else is thrust into. As of now the United States has the most number of cases worldwide and the most number of deaths and it will only continue to get worse instead of better like most people hope for if people keep doing stupid things. They shouldn’t make it an optional thing and should at least try and enforce it for health and safety reasons instead of trying to draw people into the theaters by making a statement like that.
By George Robbins
Ever since the announcement that all sporting events would be cancelled indefinitely following the worldwide announcement of the coronavirus pandemic, people have wanted to know when they would begin again. Back in March many different businesses, including all major professional sports leagues, had to start shutting down and the first one to do so was the NBA. Ever since they closed down all functions, people have been wondering whether they would be returning at all this year to finish the season or if they would forego it entirely. With this idea of how to move forward in mind, the NBA has been working on a strategy to deal with this and finish out the season.
One of the most prolific ideas to come forward within the past couple of weeks has been to use ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney world as a hub of operations. This idea is one that would see the complex become the hub that would allow the season to keep going so that it wouldn’t ruin the post-season or anything to follow. Due to Disney’s large amount of hotel accommodations and the number of available basketball courts, this just seemed to be the best possible answer to the problem at hand for the league. The biggest question that has actually just been answered was how the season would be formatted should the idea go through and the season can start again.
In order to get the league up and going again, a season format had to be established in order to make sure things can run smoothly moving forward. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s proposed plan will be decided upon by the Board of Governors meeting, but it will likely be implemented due to how smoothly it should be able to be implemented. The plans calls for 22 of the 30 teams to go to Orlando and they will each play eight regular season games. Then, there will be a play-in tournament to determine the last playoff seeds in the Eastern and Western conferences before the playoffs. The start date for these games would be July 31st with the last possible date for Game 7 of the Finals being October 12th.
His plan eliminates the teams that were far out from playoff contention when the season was forced to shut down back in March. It also gives teams that were vying for playoff contention a chance to be able to qualify for the post-season. Teams that were within six games of their conference’s eighth seed are part of the plan. Silver’s plan will allow teams that were already in playoff contention the opportunity to get themselves back on track and allow them to practice before the playoff games start up. Players on the grounds will have to pay very close attention to guidelines if they want to leave the area and must maintain the same social distancing they should have been otherwise. The prevention of the spread of the virus is still a major issue and it is the reason no fans will be in attendance during the games. So it will be interesting to see how this all really ends up happening.
By George Robbins
Movie theaters are in a bit of trouble in regards to their current financial situations due to the fact they aren’t drumming up any business. This has been the biggest issue for these companies since the announcement of the coronavirus pandemic back in the middle of March. They have been closed down ever since while still having to pay money to maintain their screens should they actually be able to open up any time in the near future as planned. As far as many theaters are concerned, they want to reopen their doors to the public by July so they can start earning some sort of revenue again to try and stay open. There are a lot of things that need to be planned for before they can open up their doors again.
Theaters are among those businesses that must take extra care to ensure that people stay healthy by making sure people are distanced from one another even when seated. They must also make sure that the premises stay clean and sanitary for every person who walks through the door. This will be a difficult task considering they get their money by selling seats and they are now going to be forced to limit the amount of seats sold. This will not stop some theaters from opening their doors since Cinemark just became the first theater chain to announce a reopening date. Cinemark has said that they plan on reopening theaters stateside on June 19th. The question is how exactly do they plan on opening with no new movies.
There are a number of theaters that have stated that they wanted a reopening some time before the start of the summer or by the beginning of July. Cinemark is currently the theater chain the will reopen first, but this means they will be the first ones to test the waters. They won’t be able to reopen in every part of the country immediately because some places have theaters listed for later reopenings, but in most places they will be able to open their doors. This is when the true challenge will start to kick in however, because the real issue is just how many people will actually end up going out to the movies at all. With no new movies to show and the risk of potentially getting infected being pretty high in those circumstances, why would anyone want to go to the movies.
AMC theaters recently announced that, due to the shut downs of their over 900 theaters worldwide, they are in a very serious amount of financial trouble that they may not be able to recover from. On top of loss of revenue in the first quarter and zero revenue in the past couple of months, they understand that they won’t really have a leg to stand on even if they do manage to reopen soon. Without any new content to show the public, they don’t have any way to draw people back into their theaters and they know it will be a long time before people will really start going back to them again. On top of this, due to a conflict with Universal, they will not be showing any upcoming Universal films which will only further ruin any chances of revenue. Overall, it is not a good period in time for any theater chains and it could be a time where many end up being bought out by other companies.
By George Robbins
‘Mission: Impossible 7’ is the most recent movie to be worked on as a part of the franchise led by Tom Cruise. The movie was in production in Italy when the pandemic hit and not too long afterward the production of the film was put on hold. It wasn’t the only production to be put on hold as many all over the world soon afterward began shutting down. Since then, many film production crews have stated that they want to get back to work on their films as soon as possible. The people responsible for ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ have stated that they want to get back to work as soon as they can even if they have to change the plot a bit.
A major plot point in the film apparently has something to do with the filming that was being done in Italy. They said that their wanting to restart filming as soon as possible has resulted in them possibly changing up some of the film. This has been speculated to possibly even change the way the future eight film in the franchise will work out as well. There is no telling whether this will truly end up being the case or not until they can properly get back to work filming. This is something of an issue that they have been working on since the pandemic was announced and they may just have an answer now.
Not too long ago now, it was announced that the UK would start relaxing on some of its lockdown rules to start allowing filming again. This means that films being worked on in the UK could continue starting this month but with restrictions in place. These restrictions include things such as crew keeping masks on, less crew being around on set, social distancing rules being in effect, and actors having to change how they interact with one another. These guidelines are the same guidelines that are currently being adapted by Hollywood to allow other films to keep filming. With these in place, many films will be able to resume shortly given that the locations that they are filming in allow for it.
‘Avatar 2’ was that first to set a date to start filming again when the cast and crew complete their mandatory 2 week quarantine. People thought that ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ had restarted production in England already but director Christopher McQuarrie has said they are waiting for the all clear. This might mean that they are not actually going to cut the Italy portion after all and will mean they will get to continue as they intended. However, it seems that the start date for them to restart filming is some time in September and they will be able to film how they wanted. This has resulted in the movie’s release changing from July 2021 to November 2021.
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