By George Robbins
For those who think that ‘New Mutants‘ sounds familiar but maybe don’t know much about it, it is a film that has had a wild development ever since its first teaser trailer dropped. It has been a few years since the first teaser for the movie has dropped for the public and the film still has yet to be released. The film originally had a release date for the beginning of April, but with theaters shut down due to the pandemic the date had to be pushed back to August. This new release date may be the most recent, but until there is actually a release for the movie, there is no telling if it will release when they say it will. This is just one of the issues to befall this movie since its announcement, but that won’t stop the movie’s director.
‘New Mutants’ has had a considerable number of delays since its initial conception with one of the biggest being the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney. This issue finally being settled put the film’s release back on track until the coronavirus pandemic yet again put it on hold. This makes it difficult for fans of the X-Men and other mutant characters to maintain excitement and some have even forgotten it entirely. The movie focuses on a group of young adult mutants who are trying to understand their own powers while getting out of a horrifying situation. This is a story that a lot of people have been wanting to see and is still sure to draw people in.
This movie still holds a lot of interest for people because it tells a new story with new characters that have yet to be realized outside of their comic book medium. That has managed to keep a lot of X-Men fans at least somewhat interested so that there will be a crowd for when the film finally releases. Director Josh Boone has said that this film that he has put all of his time into has turned out to be what he has wanted to be and is excited that it will finally be able to hit the big screen. He is so excited by the release of the film, in fact, that he announced that he already wants to start work on sequels, but there is no telling if this will end up happening yet or not. Ultimately, this be decided after the film releases and Disney can see if it does well at the box office, but due to the way theaters will be, it doesn’t seem good.
It has already been a topic of discussion that ever since Disney acquired Fox, there will eventually be some rebooted form of the X-Men that we could see in the MCU. If ‘New Mutants’ does well, we could even see this being the entry point into the MCU that fans may be looking for, but if it doesn’t do well, then it could just be labeled a one-off. Information around this movie is complicated, but that still doesn’t change the fact that the director is trying to assure people it will be worth it and that it deserves sequels. If all does actually go well with its release, then Boone wants to make two more movies to go along with it in order to make a trilogy that he has envisioned for the story. At this point all we can do is wait and see how the film turns out.
By George Robbins
Ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, movie theaters have been in a lot of trouble since they were forced to shut their doors to the public. In an effort to keep the rate of infection from rising even more than it already was, they closed their doors. This, combined with the fact theater productions have been shut down has resulted in their being a lack of support for the industry to some degree. Theaters have no way of making income and even when they do actually to reopen their doors, the amount of income they bring in will be severely reduced from what they were getting before.
Many theaters in the United States will be reopening by the summer in order to try and get back some of the business that has been lost due to the pandemic. When those theaters actually do reopen, they will have to follow guidelines to keep people from getting infected including reducing overall capacity. In order to reduce overall capacity and ensure that people are actually keeping distance from one another, they won’t be able to sell as many seats as they’d like. On top of not being allowed to sell all of their tickets, they will run into the immediate problem of having almost no new movies to debut to the public. Since this is a major selling point for theaters, this presents a massive issue for those businesses.
Theaters over in China are starting to see the effects of this just soon after reopening many of their doors. As we know by this point, China is the center point of where this outbreak began and it means that they had to shut down many of their businesses before the worldwide pandemic was even announced. Not too long ago, some theaters there attempted to reopen their doors to the public, but almost immediately had to close them again because there were so few moviegoers. The risk of infection coupled with the lack of a good reason for people to even go to the movies in the first place resulted in theaters not being able to stay opened. It appears as though this issue is starting to present itself again with some theaters trying to reopen their doors.
With the pandemic situation being as fluid as it is, the possibility that theaters will be able to remain open for long periods of time seems unlikely. Until there are more good reasons for people to go out to the movies than there are bad ones, theaters will just keep losing money. By the time new movies will actually release, the amount of money that will have been lost will be too much for theater owners to handle. It is estimated that due to this financial loss, there could be a permanent closing of over 5000 different theaters throughout all of China. While unknown if something similar may happen in other countries, it is probably a good guess to say that this sort of thing will likely happen all over the world.
By George Robbins
Video on Demand, or simply VOD, has become something of a rising star these past couple of months due to the pandemic. This release platform has really started to find its footing since movie theaters have been shut down. After the pandemic was announced and theaters were shut down, movies that were in theaters had no choice but to release early to VOD so that people would have a chance to see the movie and the studios could make some of their money back. Something else that ended up happening when theaters shut down was the fact that movies that were supposed to release to theaters were forced to delay their theatrical releases. However, not every movie that was meant to release theatrically was delayed, which is why the current VOD climate is doing so well.
Movies that did not have their theatrical releases delayed were instead released straight to Video on Demand in an effort to make sure that the movies would still be able to make money. One of the biggest problems for a lot of film studios at the moment is making sure that they can release their movies at the proper time. This has sort of become an issue since no one is sure just when the right time would be to put those movies out there. Thus, some companies took the initiative to release their films to the public when they should have come out originally. For the most part, this plan has actually worked and a lot of money has been made in regard to these films.
This has ended up causing a lot of tension and distrust between studios and movie theater companies as of late. After all, these studios did essentially take away potential revenue from movie theaters by releasing these films now without any kind of theatrical release. AMC theaters even said that they would no longer show any more Universal films after their CEO said they would continue releasing films straight to VOD even after theaters reopen. This ended up making the CEO of Universal rephrase his statement by saying that they will still release movies theatrically, but simultaneously they will release them to VOD. This has created a few questions in people’s minds and has people wondering what the future of movie releases will really be.
It is believed that the current and only reason that VOD is doing so well right now is because of the pandemic and people don’t have much else to do. This may very well be true but even after theaters reopen, there will be a lot of tension around moviegoers since it will still be dangerous to go out to the movies. So the newest question on people’s minds is when is it a good point for movies to be pulled from theaters and put on VOD? After all, theaters won’t be able to function at full capacity or even normally for a while after reopening, and for the studios it would make more sense to release movies to VOD early to make as much of a profit as possible.We may just end up seeing movies release earlier from now on after theatrical releases, at least for the foreseeable future, since this may just be the best way to do business moving forward.
By George Robbins
The coronavirus pandemic has been a massive drain on just about everyone at this point and there is absolutely no telling when it will end. Due to the fact this pandemic won’t really end any time soon, many have been forced to find a way to adapt to the new world order around them. Among those businesses are the ones that are in the entertainment industry such as production studios and movie theaters. All movie theaters were forced to shut down when the pandemic was announced back in mid-March and simultaneously all movie and television productions shut down as well. Now that businesses are slowly starting to reopen we are starting to get new information in regards to how the entertainment industry will function moving forward.
For starters, businesses that are starting to reopen will have the same rules in place that businesses that have been open have. They will need to have people wear masks if they want entry to the building and they will need to keep them on. Also, the businesses must keep their establishments sanitized properly at all times especially if they have customers coming through. Places that will be reopening soon like movie theaters, which are mostly set to reopen by the beginning of July, will have extra guidelines in place. They will have to enforce the social distancing order, but also keep people from sitting near one another during movies. This is something that is similarly shared by movie and television productions that will need to be adhered to.
Guidelines are being established almost everywhere in regards to how things should be moving forward when it comes to people going back to work. So of course there are going to be new rules in place for production companies to follow. This has been something that was being discussed ever since this all began and it seems that now there is a true national set of guidelines for people to follow. The state of Georgia already created its guidelines which are very similar to the guidelines in place for other businesses and especially movie theaters. There are just a couple more things that they must include while working on films to keep in accordance with the rules.
The new official guidelines that production studios must follow to continue working on their projects is a 22-page document consisting of mostly similar rules for other businesses. Also included in those rules are guidelines to keeping people separate by creating zones, when possible, for different groups during production. Actors must not get close to one another during scenes, which means camera tricks must be used to create the illusion that they are near one another. When off camera, all actors must keep masks on and adhere to the social distancing rules. Also included is the fact that cast and crew on set must be very limited with some parts of crew simply not allowed to be there at certain times. These rules are now a part of the guidelines that all productions must now follow in order to get back to work.
By George Robbins
The story of the DCEU film series is one filled with a lot of mixed criticism regarding the films that have currently had theatrical releases. Most films in the DCEU have been met with lukewarm receptions and the studio is still trying to figure out the formula for their movies in order to make them work. For now they have been relying on people to see their films out of curiosity that perhaps the next one will end up being good after all. Perhaps with the next few movies they are putting out, the reviews for those films will be much more favorable than their previous films have been. In the meantime, people will just have to wait for those films to release when the time is right since many are still in development.
‘The Batman’ will be one of the newest DCEU films to release some time in 2021 and it will feature some of the older Batman villains. The movie will be Robert Pattinson’s first film as the titular character and we will be seeing Colin Farrell as Penguin, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, and Paul Dano as the Riddler. Farrell has already stated he won’t really play a major part in the film, but Kravitz has already mentioned that she has had to put a lot of physical training into her role already to play it convincingly. Dano has made a point recently to ease that the script of the movie is a powerful one, which could mean it might be a movie people can get behind.
It is important that the DCEU gets its hands on a film that people will like and will get favorable reviews from critics if they want to maintain any faith in their franchise. While the script for the film might actually be pretty strong and the plot might be pretty well done, the problem remains as to the outcome of the finished film. Warner Bros. has been known thus far for interfering in some of the films which in turn results in films with plots and tones that seem incoherent. Films that they haven’t done this with have usually ended up being films that have been at least liked by the public. Hopefully ‘The Batman’ will be a film that will be as good as people hope it will be.
By George Robbins
Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, amusement parks have been shut down in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Now that we are getting closer to the summer season, however, parks are planning their reopenings to the public. They will not be able to reopen in any kind of official capacity and will only be able to reopen with reduced park capacity with other restrictions involved. Within the next week or two, many different parks will have their gates opened to the public, but the question is how many people are they really expecting to get and will this work out the way they plan on it. Of the parks that will be reopening, Universal in Orlando, Florida will be opening at the end of this week.
Universal will officially be reopening their park to the public on Friday, June 5th in order to kick off their summer season and are hoping to draw some people in. While the parks may be opening, they still need to draw people’s attention and they have a plan in place in order to try and get at least some people to go into their park. Before the parks reopen, however, Universal has plans to reopen some of their hotels to guests by Tuesday, June 2nd. These guests would then get some perks exclusive only to them when they get to go into the park earlier than anticipated. Guests at their hotels will be able to go into the parks after being screened on June 3rd and 4th before the park officially opens on June 5th.
Like all other amusement parks and hotel chains, Universal must have screenings set up in order to allow in guests. These screenings are simple things like temperature checks and to make sure people are wearing masks to prevent spread of disease. This is a part of the new health guidelines to prevent spread of coronavirus and will be adhered to by everybody regardless of early entry or reduced capacity in the parks. This will be what it is like to go to these places nowadays and it is becoming part of the training employees must go through before then. It really is a strange time to be alive and maybe not too long from now we will see parks being allowed to relax a bit on protocol, but as long as the virus is around, this is how things are.
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