As we know by now, the economy is in a terrible downward turn, but we are also in the middle of a terrible health crisis. With that in mind, states are working on their plans for re-opening business in order to try and kick-start the economy again. California’s plans for re-opening businesses is currently a four step plan that involves slowly re-opening the economy. The reason for it is the safety of the citizens of the state, which is what all states should be doing. Georgia re-opened all businesses with restrictions, but that doesn’t change the fact that the virus can still spread. With their re-opening businesses, other states are relaxing rules as well with Texas planning to re-open theaters this weekend.
California governor Gavin Newsom has said that it will be months before movie theaters re-open due to the coronavirus. With theaters being among the first facilities to close it isn’t much of a surprise that they will be among the last to open again. After all, it is a place that packs a bunch of people together into a small space. The state will be working towards re-opening them in a way that will be safe to the public at large. While theaters might be opening in other states, they are still going to be closed on a national level to a strong degree.
Newsom has explained that the state of California has a 4-step plan in place to re-open businesses state-wide. In that 4-step plan, theaters opening back up again is in the third step overall. There are still plans in the works to figure out how to properly go about opening businesses in a way that will keep new cases from spiking again. For now, California is one of the top 5 states with cases of the coronavirus, and considering the population size, that isn’t much of a surprise. The California state government will be doing what it can for both its businesses and its citizens in order to keep things moving.
Regardless of what other states are doing, Newsom refuses to lift any of the stay-at-home restrictions that were put in place. He has said that the plan to re-open businesses is one that will take not weeks, but months. Stage three is the part of the plan that not only includes re-opening theaters, but also the re-opening of hair salons, nail salons, gyms, and churches with restrictions. Among the things to be re-opened would be sporting events, but they will not have spectators. So it is clear that safety is one of the first things in mind when it comes to re-opening plans and it is the same type of plan that other states should also be trying to implement.
Movies are having all sorts of delays due to this pandemic, and we knew that these sorts of things were just going to keep happening. As time went on, we heard more and more news about production companies pushing theatrical releases for their films. On top of that all productions that were meant to start on films were halted as well. Now we have to contend with the fact that movies that are a part of a series of films will be affected as well. We have already heard about this with the ‘Shazam’ sequel being pushed back with ‘Black Adam.’ Now the MCU is being affected by delays in production.
‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is meant to be the fourth standalone film for the character and was meant to release in 2021. With a list of delays for films and productions which is growing to be a mile long, it is no surprise that the film has been delayed to 2022. Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ was set to be released on April 24th, 2020, but ended up being pushed back to November 2020 due to theatrical shutdowns. This, of course, complicates the entire scheduled line-up that Disney had planned for their MCU films. In turn, this pushed back production of the next Thor film and its release date.
The movie being pushed back isn’t a bad thing though, because director Taika Waititi has said that it gives him time to work on making the script better. Waititi was the man behind ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ a movie that was wildly successful compared to its two previous predecessors. Returning to the film alongside Chris Hemsworth is Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie) and Natalie Portman (Jane Foster). It has also been announced that Christian Bale will serve as an unspecified villain in the movie and Waititi currently refuses to say who it will be. All we know now is that Waititi is directing and co-writing the film and he will be spending his quarantine working on the script even more.
As of now, any and all rumors about ‘Love and Thunder’ are currently being downplayed by Waititi in order to make everything about the film a surprise. The film was originally slated for a November 2021 release, but was moved to a new release on February 11, 2022. It is unclear exactly when filming for the movie was supposed to start, but star Chris Hemsworth confirmed recently that is was most definitely on hold. So now that the film has been put on hold, we don’t really have much of a choice other than to see this as an opportunity to get an even better film.
Universal is among the many production companies that has been forced to either push back their theatrical releases or put their films on VOD. They were one of the first to put their films straight onto digital with ‘Trolls: World Tour.’ The company also took films ‘Emma’ and horror flicks ‘The Hunt’ and ‘The Invisible Man’ out of theaters and onto VOD for the public. Straight to VOD is a decision that many companies have been wrestling with the idea of ever since the pandemic began. Universal is taking it a step further by releasing their first live-action film to go straight to VOD.
The film that they plan on releasing straight to VOD without any kind of theatrical release is Pete Davidson’s ‘King of Staten Island.’ Pete Davidson and Judd Apatow’s film will hit the home market early, forgoing any theatrical release to start earning money now. Universal has found relative success in their current VOD venture that is making them re-think their current model. Exactly how much they are re-thinking that model is unknown, but what is known is that the company is doing well with what they currently have going for them.
‘The King of Staten Island’ is a sort of autobiographical comedy by comedian Pete Davidson and director Judd Apatow. The movie features Davidson in his first leading role in a movie as a tattooist named Scott in his mid-20’s living with his mother. Scott has had a case of arrested development ever since his father died when he was young. His world is soon rocked, however, when his mother starts dating a firefighter and he can’t deal with the new “loudmouth.” The film was originally set to premiere in theaters on June 19th.
This pandemic has since changed Universal’s plan for releases as it did with many other companies’ plans. Universal has managed to make this new plan work for them with all things considered. ‘The King of Staten Island’ was, like most other films meant to release between now and mid-July, pulled from the schedule to be placed on a digital docket. Now the film will release digitally in the same month it was meant to release theatrically. This release model may not be permanently effective when things go back to normal, but for now, it works.
Due to the unexpected pandemic that has been brought upon the world by the coronavirus, companies have had to change the way they work. Entertainment companies have had to make some of the biggest changes of all to contend with. Production companies in particular have had to deal with what they have to do with movies that were slated for release. Either those films would have to be pushed back to a later theatrical release date or they would have to be released digitally. Those that have been released digitally are fairing pretty well all things considered.
Among the movies that were released onto VOD early recently was ‘Trolls: World Tour’ which didn’t even get a theatrical release. Instead, the film went straight to VOD so that Universal would be able to start making money on the film and they wouldn’t have to wait. This ended up working out for them, at least to some degree, after three weeks of the film being released digitally. The movie has made over $100 million since its digital release, making its revenue on VOD higher than the original film’s. This doesn’t mean that the movie will end up grossing more overall than the first film did, but it is definitely a start.
The movie probably isn’t going to make as much as it would if it managed to have its full theatrical release, but at least money is being made on the film. Of course a lot of money for marketing was lost because of the film losing its full release, but at least they are making money on it. Many companies can’t say the same because they decided to delay their films. That wasn’t necessarily a bad idea though, it just means they will have to wait awhile to put their product on the market. Universal is overall pretty happy with the fact that their film managed to make that much money.
Universal has wanted to try out this format since the release of movie ‘Tower Heist’ in 2011, but this pandemic has given them the perfect chance to try it. In general it works out for the company since they only have to focus on digital distribution, and it saves them the hassle of having to make and distribute physical copies. Also, with so many people at home, this ends up working out for them even more than if they had done this normally. The studio also gets to withhold more money from digital sales than from box office sales, so all-in-all the company definitely made out on VOD.
After ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ we ended up with an excellent rendition of Spider-Man to add to the MCU. Tom Holland wasn’t given a very large role in the film, but it was a role that he played perfectly in tune with the character. Since then, he has become an incredible embodiment of the character and is loved by audiences. Unfortunately for the writers, he also has a mouth that he sometimes can’t keep shut. He has been known in the past to talk about plot points from the movies he has been a part of, and some of them have been huge parts of MCU storytelling. ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely still don’t trust Holland with MCU spoilers.
Holland has already made five appearances in MCU films thus far, and is planned to appear in at least two upcoming films. His enthusiasm has managed to make him a fan-favorite, but his enthusiasm has also gotten him in trouble a couple of times already. Over the past few years, Holland has also become infamous for his leaking spoilers from Marvel films. So notorious in fact that he was paired with Benedict Cumberbatch while on a press tour to keep him from over-sharing movie details. He also wasn’t allowed to read the ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ scripts.
Marvel Studios has used this to their advantage a few times over in the past by having him “leak” images and titles on social media. However, the studio still thinks that he is a liability when it comes to information leaking. Holland has joked that he no longer reveals spoilers for films, but that isn’t going to make people stop watching over him like a hawk to keep him from letting anything out that he shouldn’t be. This is even shown to the point that Stephen McFeely make a joke with a lot of truth in it when asked whether he can now trust Holland with spoilers and he answered, “Would you?”
While Holland might not be the only, or worst, offender when it comes to spoilers for the films, he still has to prove that he won’t spoil films. The other big offender, Mark Ruffalo, has also had to do the same, but he also managed to turn it around by joking with co-star Don Cheadle. Hopefully, Holland will do the same in the near future because he has multiple films coming up soon for him to work on. With that in mind, Holland will be getting many scripts and many chances to prove he can be trusted with spoilers. Eventually, he should be able to become a trustworthy actor for writers and they will not have issues with giving him information in the future.
Today was the second year anniversary since the original theatrical release of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and yesterday was the one year anniversary for ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ Those movies were the end of a saga that spanned over 10 years and gave us a solid end to a generation of films. There are countless moments throughout both films that have paid off due to years of hard work. However, there are a few things that had to be left out unfortunately. So now, we will go over a list of a few changes that had to be made to the films.
One of the first changes to mention was the deletion of the a longer reunion scene between the Hulk and Black Widow in ‘Infinity War.’ As we know, they had a relationship in ‘Age of Ultron,’ but we didn’t really get a longer scene involving them due to time constraints. A big change going into ‘Endgame’ was the addition of Smart Hulk, which seemed sudden and out of nowhere. How he ended up in the film was meant to be explained but, according to the writer it didn’t fit with the plot of the film. Something else that was cut was Iron Man had dying words, but this was decided not to happen in the final cut.
There are also countless other scenes like Rocket talking to Jane Foster in the past for the reality stone and Dr. Strange knocking Thanos out of his body during their fight. Sometimes movies just can’t include everything that was meant to be in them. These two films were no exception to this fact, especially because of their lengths exceeding two and a half hours. On top of that, there was reportedly somewhere around 900+ hours of footage to comb through. So, I guess we can be happy with the footage we got to see play out in the two films.
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