by Emily Nagle
A little over a year after its launch, Disney Plus has reached 100 million subscribers.
The news was broken by Disney CEO Bob Chapek at a shareholders meeting on Tuesday, who added, “the enormous success of Disney Plus has inspired [Disney] to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content.” Disney+ had already announced 94.9 million subscribers last month.
Chapek explains that the media conglomerate aims to create at least 100 new titles each year across any of its properties, including but not limited to Star Wars, National Geographic, and Disney Animation. “Our direct-to-consumer business is the Company’s top priority, and our robust pipeline of content will continue to fuel its growth,” he elaborates.
While the amount of subscribers for the streaming service has been skyrocketing each month since its November 2019 launch, one of the major contributions to its worldwide success was its launch on Star India, an Indian media conglomerate, last month.
This boom has helped Disney reach record-breaking numbers on the stock market, closing at $201.91 on Monday. This is a significant improvement from the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, when the company’s shares were at $79.
By Kurt Balingit
As one of America’s biggest movie theater markets, New York City opens up at 25% capacity, vaccine levels rising and recently president Joe Biden claims vaccines will be available for every American by the end of May. Every day life seems like it may go back to “normal” soon. Especially movie studios who continue to make schedule moves. Last week allowed studios a chance to test the waters again.
Box Office for Weekend of March 5 – 7, 2021
- Raya and the Last Dragon: $8.5M (Premiere)
- Tom & Jerry: $6.6M ($23.0M Gross Sales)
- Chaos Walking: $3.8M (Premiere)
- Boogie: $1.2M (Premiere)
- The Croods: A New Age: 788k ($53.6M Gross Sales)
“Raya and The Last Dragon” was the top grossing film over the weekend with an underwhelming $8.6 million at the domestic box office and did $17.6 million in box office returns in the global markets. This is the first animated film released to theaters by Disney since the pandemic began. The film opened to mostly positive reviews, but this did not guarantee box office returns. Last week’s box office winner, “Tom & Jerry” from WarnerMedia, raked in $13.7 million, the highest opening weekend since the pandemic started, for its premiere despite mostly negative reviews, including our review.
“Tom & Jerry” also tallied an additional $6.6 million in it’s second week in theaters. Those results, along with additional premieres for “Chaos Walking” and “Boogie,” and “The Croods: A New Age” and “Wonder Woman 1984,” helped this weekend’s box-office results to $24 million in total.
by Emily Nagle
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I was never super into Tom and Jerry as a kid, but I was familiar with them and their slapstick antics. With Cartoon Network being one of my go-to channels for years, it was one of those shows I’d sometimes watch in the mornings while eating breakfast, or if I was out sick from school.
When I watched the trailer for the new Tom and Jerry movie, I was initially a little skeeved out by the lineless, three-dimensional visual style of the iconic cat-and-mouse rivals. I understand they were trying to do something a little different from their usual 2D appearance, but it reminded me more of one of those AR Snapchat filters than animation for a feature film. Regardless, I decided to give it a shot and see how it was, since I’ve always admired animation. There’s so many different ways to do it, from CGI to clay to hand-drawn mediums. Based on the vibe you’re going for, there’s often multiple approaches that can be taken – you can go for a darker, creepier style, or you could create something on the bouncier, more colorful side based on what type of story you want to tell. There’s nothing wrong with trying out a different approach.
In the case of Tom and Jerry, the film was a combination of live-action and animation, with the plot being set in New York City and all the animals, even fish and birds, being animated with CGI. The animation style they chose felt out of place set against the real-life backdrop of New York City, and it was too brightly colored. The characters may have looked better if they had been portrayed a more realistic, textured style, like the animation styles used in Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog. Pikachu and Sonic started out as 2D characters, but the way they appeared in those movies worked because they fit the environment they were in. Since they’re supposed to be furry animals, their 3D designs were made to look fluffy, and almost like you could reach through the screen and touch them. With Tom and Jerry, however, the animated creatures look like somebody placed them into the scene from a completely different film. They don’t blend in at all with their environment.
Among this colorful cast of animals is a group of pigeons (all voiced by director Tim Story) – credited as the “Pigeon Announcers” – who don’t contribute anything to the film other than performing a rap at the start of the movie and telling the audience what’s going on, even when it’s clear what’s happening. When it’s finally the day of the wedding, they fly up to the camera and explain that to the viewer, even though we had spent the last 20 minutes watching Kayla meet with the bride and groom to get everything ready for the big day.
The human characters in this film aren’t much better. The people in it are flat and boring, and have no personality. The main human character is young, ambitious Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), who talks her way into a job working an upscale, elaborate wedding at the swankiest hotel in the city by using somebody else’s resume. She walks into the hotel and scares a woman who’s applying for a job out of it, and then hands in that woman’s resume to the hotel staff, passing it off as her own and lying that she has all this experience that she doesn’t actually have. The movie delves a little bit into the bride and the groom’s dynamic, but it doesn’t really go that deep. Ben (Colin Jost) has visions of a big wedding, with the couple riding into the room on British-accented elephants, but bride-to-be Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) doesn’t see why it’s necessary for the couple to have all these things at their wedding, and just wants Ben to listen to what she wants. Why doesn’t she just talk to Ben? Who knows. We don’t really get to see much about the couple’s relationship, other than the fact that they don’t communicate about what they want. They don’t even open up to each other until the end.
So, where do Tom and Jerry come in? Even though the film is titled “Tom and Jerry,” it’s actually not even really about them. The two are more like side characters, as opposed to the stars. All they do in the movie is cause chaos by destroying the hotel and the wedding, as well as blowing Kayla’s cover, causing her to get fired from the job she never deserved in the first place. The slapstick humor that they’re known for doesn’t even last for half the movie. A teaser from last year shows us that they’ve left their home for some reason, but this is cut from the final film, so the audience is left wondering why Tom and Jerry are wandering around the city. What happened that made them end up here? Tom lives on the street making money by playing piano, while Jerry has a luxurious home living inside the walls of the hotel. When the kitchen staff (the head of them being played by Ken Jeong) discovers him, Kayla takes on the task of discreetly catching and getting rid of the mouse, so as to not ruin the hotel’s reputation or disrupt the wedding. Meanwhile, Tom is on the street and notices Jerry through a window, and pursues him, wrecking the whole hotel room. Kayla happens to be passing by and checks the room after hearing the commotion, and joins forces with Tom to get Jerry out of the hotel, reigniting the cat and mouse’s 80-year rivalry.
The jokes in this movie aren’t funny, either. I found myself cringing multiple times throughout the 101-minute film. A lot of the jokes were awkwardly delivered, or they just weren’t clever at all. One that stood out to me was when the couple first arrives at the hotel, and their dog Spike lashes out when he sees Jerry, to which Ben says, “I’m sorry, he’s a little animated.”
The film as a whole was disappointing and I didn’t find it to have any redeeming qualities. It didn’t have much in common with the traditional animated Tom & Jerry shorts, as it was focused more on Kayla and the wedding than on Tom and Jerry.
Tom and Jerry is being distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and is available now in theaters, or free on HBO Max for the next month.
By Kurt Balingit
Due to the pandemic, fans of the “Fast & Furious” franchise will have to wait longer to see the next installment in the series. Originally scheduled to hit theaters May 22nd 2020, Universal pushed the release of “Fast & Furious 9” date to May 28th, 2021 in light of the pandemic. Today, March 4th 2021, Universal announced again that it is postponing the release again. This time postponing it 28 more days to June 25th, 2021.
The delay comes after President Joe Biden announced that the US is on track to have enough vaccine doses to vaccinate “every adult American” by the end of May. The delay will allow for more potential movie-goers as there is strong chance that vaccine distribution will surge by June.
The more people getting vaccinated, the likelihood of theaters opening up and boosting their capacities increases. The most recent state to open it’s theaters, New York theaters can only run at 25% capacity. With a $200 million dollar production budget, it was a good move for Universal to hold out in hopes of a more packed theatre, as “the more seats sold = the more money made”.
The movie industry has hit an all time lows as the biggest debuts have been “Wonder Woman 1984” ($16.7 million) and “Tom and Jerry” ($14.1 million). in 2020, box office revenues in the U.S and Canada hit an all time low at $2.3 billion dollars, compared to the $11.4 billion made in 2019. Having “F9” only being delayed by 28 days (and of course Biden’s vaccine announcement), it is a great sign that the end of the pandemic may be nearing.
by Emily Nagle
Matt Groening’s multiple-award-winning animated series The Simpsons has been renewed for seasons 33 and 34 on Fox.
Season 34 is set to air in 2023 – once it has been released, the series will have a grand total of 757 episodes aired. The Simpsons has been the longest-running primetime scripted in television history since 2017, when season 29 was released. This is when the series took the title from Gunsmoke, which released 635 episodes in its 23-year run.
“Everyone at ‘The Simpsons’ is thrilled to be renewed once more, and we are planning lots of big surprises,” Matt Groening expressed in a statement. “Homer will lose a hair, Milhouse will get contact lenses, and Bart will celebrate his tenth birthday for the thirty-third time.”
More than three decades after its debut in December 1989, the show has an average of 7 million viewers across its many platforms. To date, it has won 34 Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, 9 Environmental Media Awards, 7 People’s Choice Awards, 13 Writers Guild of America Awards, and a Peabody Award. Its worldwide cultural impact is evident through its billions of dollars worth of merchandise – the iconic series has spawned a wide variety of products including comic books, a 2007 film (with a sequel in the works since 2018), video and board games, toys, and clothing, and even has its own areas at the Universal Studios theme parks.
The show’s renewal on Fox is part of the network’s effort to expand their adult animation lineup, titled “Animation Domination”. While The Simpsons is their longest-running animated program, Bob’s Burgers and Family Guy have also been airing on there for more than ten years; recent additions to the block include Bless the Harts, Duncanville, and The Great North.
The 700th episode of The Simpsons, titled “Manger Things,” will air on Sunday, March 21 on Fox.
By Kurt Balingit
Showtime has casted Dakota Fanning as Susan Ford in the upcoming anthology series “The First Lady”. The show will follow the lives of some of the most famous first ladies and their time in the White House.
Susan Ford is the only child of Betty Ford, played by Michelle Pfeiffer and President Gerald Ford, played by Aaron Eckhart. During the time Gerald Ford was in office, Susan was just a teenager. It is said that Susan was responsible for introducing progressive ideas to her family. Dakota Fanning will be a regular to the series and will appear in six episodes. This role reunites Dakota Fanning with Michelle Pfeiffer, who both starred in the 2001 film “I Am Sam,” which saw Fanning become the youngest person to be nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Fanning joins a cast that also stars Viola Davis a Michelle Obama, O-T Fagbenle as President Barack Obama and Gillian Anderson as Eleanor Roosevelt. The series is will relive some of America’s most famous (and infamous) events through the lens of the women at the heart of the White House.
The series was written and will be executively produced by Aaron Cooley. On February 25th, 2021, it was announced that filming had begun and will premiere later this year.
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