By George Robbins
This long past year is one full of ups and downs with a tremendous number of downs attached to it given the entirety of events to unfold over the year. Beyond just the ups and downs were a lot of twists and turns as well, making the entirety of the year just one big rollercoaster for everyone all over the world. Now that we have entered an entirely new year, there are many who are hoping that things will end up being better overall as compared to last year, but the start isn’t so great. To no one’s surprise, the beginning of the year was almost immediately similar to the end of last year, almost as if events are going to continue as-is until later in the year. Surprisingly though, new twists and turns are becoming apparent as time goes on and we reach just a few days into the new year with news being presented to us over the past couple of days.
Throughout the entirety of this past year, the film industry has been trying to figure out exactly how they wanted to handle the way they wanted to get their projects done during the pandemic. This act resulted in the work on many productions going longer throughout the year than originally anticipated which is why, beyond just the fact there was a pandemic, productions were harder to finish overall. What would then follow was a period of time where numerous other projects were announced on top of the fact that most everything was being worked on. This is where we are starting to get into the territory of new films being made that no one would have normally expected. From the very start of the pandemic last year, we started seeing the birth of movies and their scripts which has now given rise to many new upcoming films. Even if we may not end up seeing them for quite a while, it would appear that new movies are abound and they are coming sooner rather than later.
One of the first people to announce the creation of a new movie was Kevin Smith who announced that he was going to take advantage of the time off during the pandemic to work on ‘Mallrats 2.’ This was not the first future movie to be announced as there were a few of them made throughout the entirety of last year. This year has become not much different as it would appear that new movie announcements are being made right from the beginning of the whole year already. Among those announcements are the ones like the fact that there is going to be a ‘Rubik’s Cube’ movie now which makes us all wonder what that really means. Were people really just starting to get bored thinking of ways to make money or was the idea to make a documentary of some kind? It appears as though they will be going with the former option in this situation.
A ‘Rubik’s Cube’ movie is certainly bound to raise some questions such as what it will be about and the primary plot of the film and how it will play out. As of now, it would appear that it will be a puzzle movie of some kind, go figure, and it still doesn’t really have a plot to it as it can apparently play out any number of ways still. This essentially means that they have no way of actually coming up with a plot at the moment, or that they don’t really have a plan in mind as of this moment in time. This isn’t the first movie being made based on a toy or game of some kind, but it has, within the first few days of the year, become possibly the most interesting toy movie based solely on the fact we don’t know what it is. Only time will tell just how interesting this will get as we start hearing more details about the upcoming film over the course of this year, presumably.
By George Robbins
This has been a long arduous year thus far and ain’t quite over just yet with just a couple of days remaining before it finally ends once and for all. Despite this fact, we still have the issue that most everything that has been plaguing us this year which is still plaguing us is going to follow us into the new year. There isn’t really anything that we can do about this mess, but we can try our best to prepare for it before the new year begins and everything immediately starts going down the drain. Many people, locations, and businesses are preparing because it doesn’t matter what year it is, events are just going to keep unfolding regardless of the date. This is why we are now reaching a point where many people are just hopeful that the number of the year changing will genuinely help us in the end after all.
Movie studios easily had one of the more interesting times of what exactly they were going to do when the pandemic first began because they didn’t know how to handle their productions being shut down. When the whole pandemic began, just like everything else out there in the world movie and TV productions all ended up being shut down in order to further prevent spread of the virus. It is due to this that they had to make their plans ahead of time of how they wanted to handle things once they were given the greenlight to resume whatever it was they were working on. In the end, they continued work as usually with the new set rules and regulations in place to keep working on their upcoming projects. Following the reopening of their productions, studios decided to speed things up even more instead of waiting things out any longer.
Even though there was already a massive pile-up of films being put on the backburner because of the lack of people going out to movie theaters, studios have still made it their goals to keep working on new films. The back-catalogs of new films they are producing is going to be so vast that they will not have to worry about having new films to show any time in the near future. This also sets them up to survive the post-pandemic market as well because there is no telling just what the market will end up looking like when everything is said and done. More than likely, they are bound to end up losing a lot of money on their upcoming releases over the course of the next couple of years, but it is not enough to keep them from making mile-long lists of new films they can show off when the time is right. Not only this, but they have been announcing new films left and right all year since the pandemic began in order to keep people interested in what is coming next.
One such film that people found out more about this past year is yet another entry in the ‘Lethal Weapon‘ series, aptly named ‘Lethal Weapon 5’ which is based on the original films. While many people were hopeful that this may be the return of their favorite buddy cop series, it really won’t be as it is being confirmed to be the last entry to the series which will end after its release. Featuring the return of the main stars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, this will be the last movie in the series as confirmed by director Richard Donner who directed and produced every other film in the series in the past. It may have been well over 20 years since the last film, but this hasn’t changed the overall level of excitement being felt for the film’s inevitable release. While it may still be awhile before we get to see the film, it is sure to completely punch fans in the gut knowing that it is going to be the last one ever made for that series. Despite this, people are undoubtedly excited for the movie to end up dropping and giving audiences everywhere one last look at the buddy cop combo they loved when they were younger.
By George Robbins
This has been an incredible year though that does not mean that it has been a good year by any stretch of the imagination, it just means that it was just a different year all around in general. This has led to countless things going into affect this year as we have obviously seen countless businesses going in various directions in order to make up for the fact that they could not compete normally this past year. Hence we now have many different businesses working very differently from how they would otherwise just to try and survive this pandemic. They aren’t so much trying to keep up at the moment as they are trying even harder just to survive what is happening during this pandemic. As of now, many businesses across the world have taken to trying to adjust to the rules and regulations in place just to try and make up for the loss in overall transactions they have been facing since the start.
When this pandemic first began back in March earlier this year, we saw the immediate closure of just about every single business out there with the exception of those deemed to be essential. What this meant was that all businesses out there which were deemed to be useful to the continued everyday lives of civilians were able to stay open with restrictions. Those restrictions would essentially be the same ones that we would continue to follow as time went on and this is how we ended up where we are now over 9 months later. Those restrictions were ones such as having to wear masks, keep to distances of around 6 feet from one another, and limit the overall capacities of stores and services. The first rule is one that has caused a lot of issues over the months with some people not wanting to listen to the rules and thus causing the virus to spread even more.
The biggest catch-22’s are what is being seen in the economy today as many businesses are trying to cope with the various issues being presented at the moment. Obviously, with the massive rise in cases over the past months, they have been trying to figure out how to move forward and follow the rules while bringing in new business. Most stores are not truly suffering from this same sense of stagnation or loss of customers because people will never stop going out to stores to buy things when they need them. Online stores and distribution sites have essentially been booming because people are far too afraid to take the risk and travel out to stores to get what they need. Stores that have their own online distribution have pretty much been booming and it has led to them being able to outlast this whole pandemic.
Distribution centers which have their homes online have always been set up to do well in these types of situations so of course they would be doing even better now that people have started ordering even more frequently off of the internet. That aside, there are some industries which are now suffering tremendously from all of this and among those industries is the film industry. From the very moment where the pandemic first began to now, the film industry has easily become one of the more interesting cases to follow because they really have no idea how to handle this pandemic. When everything first kicked off back in March, the pandemic immediately caused the shut down of every single business out there including both movie theaters and studios. From that moment on, studios have been trying to come up with some way of getting back to work why simultaneously coming up with ways to release their films.
Movie theaters, on the other hand, have essentially been shut down for the most part until some time in August when they decided they no longer wanted to wait in order to open their doors back up again. The result of which was something that should have been expected but simultaneously surprised most people in the theater industry because they immediately started losing out on business. Movie theaters started losing business the moment that they were forced to close their doors because that is their entire lay-out for how they get paid. Without being open to show people new movie releases, theaters immediately began the slow and painful process of exsanguinating money that they would never get back. Whether it be from the cost of maintenance even while their buildings were not in use, or the simple fact that while they were not open for business they were losing out on potential revenue, they were losing money in some way.
In August, when they reopened once again to the public, theaters found their opportunity to once again try and make money and that was where things once again took a turn for the worse and the industry took a tumble. Warner Bros. had a movie for them to show not long after the reopenings that theaters had taking place all over the world and that was their newest Christopher Nolan blockbuster ‘Tenet.’ Unlike other movies, ‘Tenet’ was not a sequel nor was it a movie with any big background to it which made it much more difficult for people to get excited for it. All the movie truly had going for it was the fact that the movie was a new Christopher Nolan original blockbuster, which, under normal circumstances, would have been enough to get people out and about to see the film. Unfortunately, this movie simply wasn’t bound for anything great in the middle of a pandemic and it failed to even come close to its marks that the studio wanted.
This whole event would go on to cause the current predicament that the movie industry as a whole is now facing as many studios then realized that that was not a good time for them to release their films. Thus, they immediately pushed back nearly all of their remaining 2020 films into some time in 2021 with some other plans of attack being drawn up in the meantime. While many small studios don’t really have much of a choice available to them other than waiting to see what will happen, the bigger studios have been taking steps to create new options for themselves over the years. Of course, no studio really thought that there was going to be a pandemic which would change the world and the way it functions, but they were merely adapting for the new age we are currently in. This is why so many companies are no focusing so much on the advent of the streaming age where people could view any content they wanted whenever they wanted.
Streaming services aren’t really anything new or revolutionary at this point, but they are the future for media across the world at this moment and the moments to come. People have always been bound to watching movies and shows they have liked on TV for years but with no real way of controlling what they get to see and when. These types of things have led to scheduling issues over the years that no one has been able to truly rectify but there have certainly been attempts to help fix these things including features like DVR. Other than DVR, there is nothing for TV networks to do that would allow them to help their customers because they can’t just make their content available whenever they want. They all have set schedules that they need to follow if they are going to make it out alive because that is how they fit in all of their content on their line-ups to fit every demographic.
With streaming services becoming more and more popular this has become less of an issue, but there are still a few problems which have arisen as a direct result of all of this. Those problems would be the fact that not every streaming service has the shows and content that people want to watch available on them and thus, various services are necessary for the full spread of content. This is how we ended up with so many services having different content which has driven people to have to get those services like television station packages. Unlike those packages however, those who get those services can watch all of that content whenever they actually feel like watching it meaning that thousands of hours of content is always readily available at peoples’ fingertips. Among those services which have made themselves available to the public at large are the Disney+ and HBO Max services which have been pushing hard to sell subs over these past months.
Primarily, the subscriptions they are trying to sell are almost entirely based on the exclusive content that they try to make available on their streaming sites. This is how we ended up with so much effort going into the creation and maintenance of these two sites over this past year since they vary so wildly. What really ends up selling subscription based services after all is the fact that they have exclusive content that really can’t be seen anywhere else in the world which draws in the traffic to their services. This is how the biggest services these days make the money on subscriptions that they do. Hence now, the ones that are trying their best to draw people in are the ones like Disney+ and HBO Max which have literally thousands of hours of content to give to the public.
HBO Max seems like they are losing the war for new subscriptions as of late however, because they have not been getting as many as they hoped they would since they launched back in May earlier this year. In fact, despite the countless hours of content they have made available to people who subscribe to their service, people don’t feel incentivized to really give their money to Warner. This has resulted in Warner Bros. now going through the trouble to do things that are making them hated among the industry including taking money away from the already failing theaters. These theaters have been trying their best to get business back after the pandemic began, but nothing they are doing is really considered enough at this point because people just don’t want to take the risk and go back out to theaters. Despite this fact, Warner now feels the need to make things difficult for theaters by putting their new content out on both HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously upon release.
Their most recent and first actual venture into this was to the release of their ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ which actually managed to have the best pandemic box office opening this year. With the movie actually doing well, some were wondering just how much of an effect the movie had on the HBO Max side of things since it was such a big deal to release through both mediums on the same day. In truth, it worked out like they intended, but there is no way that it worked out exactly as they intended it to because their numbers do not lie. As it turns out, they may have won the box office, but the points that really matter, the HBO Max subscriptions, did not end up being as high as they were hoping for them to be upon the film’s release. In fact, they ended up losing out on that win this past weekend to Disney+ which is just continuing a winning streak at this point.
Disney+ had their premiere release of the new Pixar movie ‘Soul’ this past weekend which managed to outclass the much looked forward to ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ which released the same day. Unfortunately for HBO Max and Warner as a whole, this also meant that Disney+ ended up getting more overall subscriptions to their service as opposed to HBO Max. So in conclusion, HBO Max did get something but it was nothing like what they truly wanted and some of their thunder was stolen by Disney and Pixar. Hopefully for Warner this will not be a foreshadowing of things to come, but who really knows at this point. They are going to have a long year ahead of them which hasn’t even really started yet so it will be interesting to see how things turn out in the not too distant future.
By George Robbins
The movie industry, and more specifically, the movie theater industry, has really been going though a lot as of late and things don’t really appear to be changing all that much as people are not sure of how to handle things. To put things simply, the movie theater industry is still in a rapid decline from which there simply appears to be no way out unless the pandemic ends as quickly as possible. Once the pandemic ends, then movie theaters can go back to business as usual without a care in the world that will cause them to lose out on more revenue than they already have. The unfortunate issue which they have been forced to deal with is the fact that they cannot possibly reopen in the same way they were before the pandemic began if we are still trapped in the middle of it. After all this would go against basically every single guideline out there at the moment causing nothing but discord which would cause havoc among the industry.
The movie industry is strange in the sense that there is a lot within the industry which has changed over the past months and how they are adapting to the changes. Film studios immediately started trying to think of ways that they could manipulate events in their favor to get their films out there as soon as they possibly could. This is how we ended up with so many movies having their dates moved around so much on a regular basis which eventually led to many moving their line-ups out of this year entirely. All of this actually ties back to movie theaters though but studios have been playing an equally important role in the months since the shut down of theaters. To begin the tale of woe, movie theaters ended up shutting down just like every single other business out there which was also deemed non-essential by the government.
Much more recently, a shimmer of hope shone through the dark clouds surrounding the movie theater industry with the release of the ‘Wonder Woman 1984‘ movie. The sequel to the beloved 2017 film, this movie was one that has plenty of controversy surrounding it just like every other movie being put out by Warner Bros. over the next year. Warner, who put the movie out, essentially decided that they would go ahead and replace all of their original plans and instead release all of their films on HBO Max and in movie theaters simultaneously. This revolutionary plan was, of course, an immediate point of massive contention among those in the industry and most especially the directors and actors under Warner who were not made aware of this move beforehand. This meant that they were going to be missing out on revenue because many of them were going to be missing out on ticket sales which is how many of them would normally make a fair bit of their income.
What truly makes the ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ move all the more controversial is that those involved with the film like Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins were made aware of the change sooner than everyone else and could therefore renegotiate. Thus, the two of them were compensated for the move by being given $10 million each in order to make up for the HBO Max move which has caused a lot of problems thus far in the industry. The release of the movie would go on to make more waves than one though as it has become the movie to have the strongest pandemic box office weekend with over $16 million being made from the release of the movie at the box office. Obviously this is not a lot compared to the regular release of a blockbuster, but as of right now, this is a pretty big deal that can not be undersold at all. This proves that if more movies were put out there into theaters, then people may just end up going out to the movies once again.
Luckily there are plenty of movies which are planned to release next year no matter what, though many studios are just hopeful that they will be able to release them after the pandemic is over, or just before it ends. What studios are really just hoping for now is confidence from customers to once again go back out to movie theaters in order watch their movies again. Unfortunately for the vast majority of studios, this would mean that the vaccine would have to be successful because they plan on releasing their movies within the first few months of the new year. This aside, many are still overall hopeful and if everything goes well, the film industry and movie theaters will be saved from losing countless amounts of money which is something they desperately need help getting through right now. All of this hasn’t stopped them from thinking ahead though because they are still thinking about just what movies they want to work on next.
This upcoming year, there are a ton of movies on the docket which are going to be worked on by studios with some starting pretty much as soon as the new year begins. There are a lot of different movies which are supposed to release over the course of the next couple of years, but one that no one really expected to hear about was ‘Creed 3’ which has been announced with the return of Michael B. Jordan as the titular Creed. More specifically, the movie’s production plan was announced and it is now meant to start filming by the end of this upcoming year. This means we could possibly see the movie drop some time in 2022 or some time in early 2023 which is something people have been looking forward to ever since the end of the second film. Yet again, even though it has been a long, rough year for people, there is a lot to look forward to going into this next year, even if things don’t go as intended. Hopefully we will be seeing things get better over the next few months and things like this production can eventually go off without a hitch.
By George Robbins
Box office numbers this year have pretty much been off the charts in the sense that they are so low that they are no longer on the charts and this has been a running theme almost all year. To be entirely honest, and to no surprise to the general public, no one really knew that this year would have turned out the way it did when it first started. After all, who would have really expected there to be a pandemic which would essentially shut down the world as a whole since there haven’t been any truly prevalent pandemics in human history. A pandemic is a time where a disease which has spread to numerous nations is out there in the world and this is truly one of the worst to be seen in any generation prior. There are many people out there saying that there are much bigger threats out there in the world right now and that this is being blown out of proportion, making the world’s economies falter for no reason.
In truth, this pandemic is far different from any other pandemic seen in history and will easily go down in history despite how non-lethal it is to the vast majority of the population. While the Covid-19 virus and its variant strands are easily dangerous in their own rights, there are many other things out there like alcoholism, car accidents, and suicides which can outclass that. However, the main thing that people are failing to incorporate into their conversations with theses examples is the fact that they cannot be compared in the same way which is where the Flu comes into play in the remainder of conversations. These two diseases kind of go hand in hand but their overall treatment is wildly different, the main reason for this is because one has been recognized by world governments as a threat to mankind while the other is the Flu. The Flu has claimed many lives each and every year as, the same with Covid, it is a disease which causes complications resulting in death.
Even though the Flu is still very dangerous, there has been a huge decline in cases as of late because people are taking it more seriously this year as opposed to previous years. This mainly stems from the fact that the Flu and Covid share similar symptoms so it is in most peoples’ best interest to get the Flu vaccine this year because it could help prevent the disease. If they prevent the Flu and still get symptoms, then they have a good idea that it could be Covid and they can immediately seek treatment. While the Flu is certainly deadly in its own rights, Covid has recently been noticed to have mutated a couple of different ways and this means that it could end up becoming even more dangerous than the Flu. While people are thinking about why things are stricter with the Covid rules and regulations, they need to remember that this is still a novel virus whose capacity to mutate is still relatively unknown to us whereas the Flu has been around for years and we have a better idea of what it is capable of.
The capabilities of the Covid virus is still relatively unknown to humans as a species which is another reason why the introduction of a vaccine is not to be seen as an instant cure for the virus. Even if the vaccine did end up working in trials and in the lab, there are so many external factors that cannot be accounted for or made up for while in the lab and this makes it dangerous to trust every result seen thus far. They are now slowly rolling out said vaccine across the world and this means that they are hoping to get it into as many people as possible to start the herd immunity affect where not everyone will need the vaccine, and it will provide a fair amount of immunity for those who cannot get the vaccine themselves. The various problems that are set to start with this are not going to be pretty and will inevitably result in countless criticisms against the companies who produced them. Needless to say, things will not be getting any easier from this point forward.
In fact, from now on, this is where things will be getting even more difficult going into the next year and we will be seeing just how long this pandemic will be going on for. When the vaccine rolls out worldwide, we will get the perfect opportunity to witness just what the side effects of said vaccine are and whether the vaccine will really work at all. Results during trials may have been promising, but everyone’s body is different and the effect the vaccine could have on them could vary wildly based on this very simple fact. Unfortunately, this is really the only way for them to find out for sure just how effective, if at all, this vaccine will be and if it will be enough to allow the world to go back to how it was before. At worst, the vaccine causes a lot more health problems than not having would cause in a fair number of people who got it whereas the best case sees it working as intended in every person who receives it. Considering this doesn’t even happen with the Flu vaccine, we should just be hopegful for something close to the best option where it works for the vast majority of people who get it with no side effects.
In reality, we will probably end up with something somewhere between those two extremes with it being somewhere in the middle or closer to the positive end of things. Regardless of what we end up with though, we will be getting something which will help in once again reshaping the way that the world works which will change the world yet again. This pandemic has already made a huge impact on the world and changed a vast majority of how the world works in general so it would make sense that the vaccine for said virus should have just as much of an affect. It will take a few months before we really start seeing the results of this whole experiment to fix the world, but that is better than waiting years. Even if things don’t work, they will quickly be able to adjust and start up once again instead of wasting years just to discover it is useless and this is the most incredible part about living in a time like this.
While we live in an age where science fiction isn’t exactly real to us in the way that we imagine on a regular basis, we live in a time where a novel virus can have a workable vaccine available to the public after less than a year. This on its own is a feat of innovation that we should most certainly not take for granted because it is something that will end up saving the lives of so many people. While this first iteration of the vaccine could end up causing a lot of damage upon its release, this is a process that was inevitably going to happen regardless and having it sooner rather than later will save more people than it will harm in the end. It just goes to show just how impressive all of this is and how important it is that we have things like this in the modern age as it goes to show just how much can be accomplished by the medical industry in the future. Unfortunately, not every industry out there can say the same and have actually taken something of a step back ever since this pandemic first began.
The vast world economy, as well as the vast number of industries which comprise the whole thing, has been in a unique and troublesome situation over this previous year to the surprise of no one at this point. When the pandemic first began, we saw the mass shutdowns of various businesses to the point where the only remaining ones to be open were the ones eventually deemed by governments everywhere to be “essential.” What this meant was that all businesses which were necessary to the continued survival of humanity such as grocery stores and stores which provided commonplace household items were able to remain open. These stores were the first and only stores to open up immediately after the pandemic began to both keep people supplied and to keep them somewhat placated. Though it did not end up taking a long time before people started going stir-crazy and the number of new cases, which was going down, started skyrocketing again.
The main reason for businesses being shut down in the beginning was because they, being the government (both local and country-wide), wanted to reduce the risk that the virus could be passed from one person to another. Obviously, as we have learned by now, the best ways of doing this are to both wear masks and keep a minimum of six feet between yourself and others. If you follow these two rules, then the likelihood of getting infected with the virus begins dropping to near zero numbers. Unfortunately, this started being a problem for people almost immediately after the pandemic began and these rules were put into place. They did not like being told what to do and the rules didn’t really seem like they were doing anything anyway so small groups of people stopped doing anything remotely close to safe. Thus allowing the pandemic to continue growing even though they were getting close to getting rid of it altogether.
This type of behavior wasn’t made any better by the fact that certain state governments started allowing places of business deemed non-essential to begin reopening to the public as a whole after just a couple of months. This meant that places which would end up resulting in more cases being brought to fruition would become more common as time went and they were able to once again open to the public. They didn’t just start opening every single business they could at once though and they actually reopened them slowly based upon which ones were considered to be higher risk locations. This meant that businesses which normally had larger capacities of people where they normally sat or did something near one another were not allowed to reopen first. Basically, they would not be able to reopen until the government felt that those businesses did not pose as much of a risk as they originally thought they did.
Among the rules to be put into place for these businesses to reopen were rules that had already been implemented in numerous businesses which have stayed open as time has gone on. This meant that customers must abide by the six-foot social distancing rules, they must follow the rules about wearing their masks in those places of business at all times, and the business themselves had to limit the overall number of people present in the store/shop/hall, etc. to 25% of actual building capacity. This meant that the overall amount of business they would get would still end up going down tremendously, but they would no longer be losing the money they would have been otherwise while they were not open. For businesses, being able to open up once again was something that they had been hoping for ever since their shut down back in March, even if things had to end up being a bit different now than they were before. This was when things started to really get complicated as time continued on from this point to even now.
We have seen nothing but blatant disregard for the safety standards put into place by the government and health officials ever since businesses started reopening their doors to the general public. Obviously it is not the businesses themselves causing the issue, but it is actually the civilians going out to those businesses causing issues because they don’t want to follow the rules in place for them. This of course creates just a few irreconcilable differences where people who don’t want to listen to the rules end up getting the virus and pass it on to those who are actually listening to the rules due to the tricky incubation period. Although someone can have the virus and give it to others, they won’t start showing symptoms immediately which makes it all the easier for some people to spread it to others. This obviously resulted in many businesses starting to suffer because many people did not want to go out to some places if it meant running into people who would end up doing something like this.
Most businesses that reopened that suffered were ones that often involved a number of people going out to the same location where they would be within the same area for a fair amount of time together. Obviously, the industry to be affected the hardest by all of this was the film industry which immediately began suffering like other companies the moment theaters shut their doors. Like many other types of business, studios and movie theaters were forced to shut down for health and safety reasons once the pandemic began and they had no way of dealing with it. Some studios, namely Universal, had the radical idea to actually start just releasing their movies straight to digital in a bid to try and continue making money after the pandemic began and they couldn’t show their movies in theaters. This ended up, unsurprisingly, not working out with many studios who instead wanted to wait to release their films once theaters could reopen their doors.
On top of not being popular with studios, movie theaters were even more against the idea because they would just straight-up be missing out on revenue, period. This meant that the theaters would not be able to bring in customers because they would have no new movies to show and this terrified them in the end. Then, Universal made the announcement that they planned on releasing movies in theaters and on digital at the same time on their scheduled release dates and all hell broke loose as a result. Theaters like AMC started flatly refusing to show any future titles from Universal because they were going to go along with a plan like this which would obviously take away a massive amount of revenue from the industry as a whole, though mostly from theaters. What would then follow would be a couple of months of radio silence where it is safely assumed that the studio and theater companies held a meaningful discussion about how they would handle things from that point forward.
Luckily for just about everyone involved, an agreement was reached that, on its own, would easily reshape the entire industry at its fundamental levels even after the pandemic finally comes to an end. This agreement which we saw unfold was one that would allow new movies to release on digital and DVD formats long before they would normally end up releasing. Under the previous contracts that we have seen from theaters, movies would only be able to release after a couple of months had passed and theaters were essentially done with said movie. Truth be told, movie theaters thrive entirely on the fact that they get movie exclusivity which is how they make their money to begin with because then people are forced to go spend money in theaters. With movie exclusivity, movie theaters are able to open to large crowds that want to go out and see new movies that they can’t go see somewhere else.
Under the new deal made between theaters and the remainder of the industry, studios would be able to release their new films after just seventeen days in the movie theater scene. After the initial 17 days is up, studios are allowed to release their films digitally which is a massive change from how things used to be done. Obviously this is a much shorter period of time than before and would completely change the landscape of the industry as a whole long before anything else would do so. The pandemic most certainly shook some things up, but this was perhaps the biggest change to end up being made by the industry as a whole. With this ability to play their films with much shorter theatrical runs, studios could make the bulk of their theatrical run money and then start banking in on those that have been wanting the film to release before they would watch it.
With the new plans in place, the only thing that theaters and studios had to wait for at that point was an opportunity for theaters to finally reopen to the public. Unfortunately for the movie industry, there wasn’t much that they could do before the time was right as it was entirely up to the government whether theaters would be able to once again resume their business as usual. What this meant was that theaters would have to wait for a little while before they would finally be able to reopen to the public as the general consensus was that theaters were too dangerous for places to reopen too early once again. Movie theaters were given new rules to follow in or to keep people from getting infected or spreading the virus but they were unfortunately backed into a corner. Although they had the same rules in place that every other business had, the layout of the business itself was what made things so difficult in the end.
Movie theaters fundamentally function differently from other forms of business for the most part because they have large groups of people seated in them for hours at a time where people don’t really move at all. This last fact ensures that their germs and the like spread and emanate from them simply as they are sitting in their seats which further emphasizes the danger they put people in by being open. Like other major businesses that have high capacities or similar functions, they were among the last to receive the green light to resume normal operation. They didn’t really get to resume normal operation though because they had all of the new rules that they had to follow in order to properly resume operations. This meant that people had to wear masks whenever they weren’t eating or drinking and the overall number of people that could be there was severely limited as well to prevent people from overcrowding. These new rules made it difficult to continue on regardless, but what happened over the summer made it almost impossible for theaters to continue onward.
Over the summer, namely late July and early August, movie theaters were given the ability to once again open up to the public but things did not go as they anticipated in the slightest. Movie theaters were finally given the opportunity to once again allow customers the opportunity to come in once again to have the movie theater experience they always had before. Unfortunately for movie theaters, this didn’t mean anything to anyone as the vast majority of people did not care about movie theaters opening up once again because they had no new films to show to the public at large. This was not the fault of movie theaters though as studios were pretty much refusing to release any of their films until they knew for a fact that there was a market for them. If movies were given to theaters then theaters would have opened as soon as possible and if theaters opened then studios would have sent their films out to be shown ASAP.
What ended up happening was a dance where nothing ended up being accomplished in the industry because neither side would give first due to the new wave of the virus which was hitting at the time. Therefore, nothing was happening and the delay of both theatrical reopenings and movie releases were happening which caused even more trouble in the long run. Without either side acting first, we were left with nothing happening whatsoever and the movie industry stayed at a standstill until AMC basically said they had enough and decided to open up to the public once again. Around the middle of August, AMC reopened their doors to the public to once again allow movies to start showing to the public to begin the process of hopefully making money once again. Unfortunately, things did not turn out in any way how they originally wanted them to and this drove everyone to doing things no one would have ever imagined for the industry.
First of all, what is it that every single movie theater needs in order to resume functioning and to make money? The very simple answer to this is in the name and that is that they need movies in order to be a movie theater and to get people through their doors to make revenue. Before most theaters reopened, there were some that reopened with the idea to get old movies playing to try and draw people in which was able to generate some kind of revenue from the people that genuinely enjoy the movie-going experience. However, the vast majority of people did not care about this and did not want to take a major risk going out to the movies over something like this in the end. This goes back to the fact that movie theaters need new movies in order to capture the interest of those involved because they only really function based on this fact. The movie-going experience is just an ideal made up by film-makers that think that movie theaters are the only premiere way to watch their movies.
So if movie theaters did not have any new movies, then wouldn’t they immediately start losing revenue as soon as they reopened to the public? The very quick answer to this is yes and they did, in fact, stop getting enough revenue to properly continue business once again because nobody really cared about the movie-going experience as a whole. Instead, people had grown far too accustomed to the fact that they could watch any new movies they wanted from home without the need, or fear, of going out to a theater just to see a new film. This resulted in no one wanting to go out to theaters unless they had an incentive to do so and this is where movie theaters had to race against the clock over the summer to try and get new movies to show to the general public to keep them entertained. Despite a couple of films releasing the moment theaters reopened, none of them were captivating enough to get audiences involved and this is where the movie ‘Tenet‘ came into play at the end of August.
For those who are completely unaware, and most people pretty much are unaware according to the numbers, ‘Tenet’ was the newest blockbuster film from acclaimed director Christopher Nolan. Nolan has become a household name over the years and therefore, any new movie that he comes up with is known for the incredible attention to detail that it usually has within and the fact that it will blow people’s minds in some way, shape or form. Nolan is known for coming up with various plots and visuals which have stimulated peoples’ minds for years and this movie was definitely shaping up to be one that would be in that same vein. The movie was originally meant to premiere back in the middle of July, but delays with theater reopenings and the resurgence of new Covid cases resulted in the movie’s release date being pushed back until further notice. To be honest, it was just pushed back a couple of weeks at a time until such a moment where Warner Bros., the studio responsible for producing the film, would finally release it in theaters. That time would eventually come by the moment the end of August hit and the movie released in the international and domestic markets.
Interestingly enough, ‘Tenet’ was going to release the way that it normally would in the domestic market first and then the international, but the spread of the virus was worse domestically which resulted in the movie being pushed. In response, they decided that regardless of what happened, ‘Tenet’ would hit international markets first and this led to the last Friday in August being the day that the movie hit the international theatrical marketplace. The following Friday, the first one in September, saw the release of the film in the domestic marketplace and regardless of which market it was released on, the movie ended up bringing in a lot of money overall. It was nowhere near what they needed to be able to break even before including marketing costs, but given everything that had happened this year, it was most definitely a start and one that would not be forgotten considering what happened next. While the amount of money being earned dropped a lot the following week internationally, this was to be expected, but no one expected the massive decline in revenue that was seen in the domestic market.
First of all, the international market which continued playing ‘Tenet’ was actually managing to bring some money in because things were going much better in the pandemic for other countries. The domestic market was a far cry from this however because it immediately started tanking and after just a few weeks the amount of revenue being brought in nationwide ended up being just a few million dollars. While this may not sound all that bad in the long run, the truth is that this is pretty bad because this is the amount that was brought in nation wide, not just in one state or one theater. Theaters and studios usually split the profit from ticket sales 50/50 in order to keep things fair and profitable for both institutions, but this time around was different, Warner changed that amount to 60/40 because they were desperate to make as much as they could off the movie, knowing full-well that it wasn’t going to do as well because of the pandemic. They just never would have predicted that things would end up as badly as they did and that they would end up losing so much money in the end because of pure lack of ticket sales.
This failure in cinema showed every other studio that this was not the right time to release their films and as a result, most studios pushed all of their films out of this year’s line-up and into some time next year. Thus, we were left with something that we never would have really imagine before which was that most new movies would be delayed for upwards of a year or maybe even more given the precise studio. Christopher Nolan had a lot to say about this move from studios as he felt that this decision was the wrong way to go about dealing with the situation both ‘Tenet’ release. Nolan felt that studios should instead try to help fix the market in some way instead of simply trying to outlast the pandemic because it might be the only way to keep theaters from going under. Truth be told, many theaters once again closed up shop or they are going to be bankrupt by the end of the year because they have nothing that can help them make back their revenue that has been lost.
If they have no new revenue, then theaters have no true methods of staying open, so Nolan wanted studios to try and find alternatives which could help drive traffic back to theaters to fix the situation rather than trying to wait it out. One issue with theaters reopening with so few blockbusters is the fact that there is no variety and therefore no reason for some people to be incentivized to go out to movie theaters. This isn’t helped along by the fact that studios have all but removed new blockbusters from this year’s line-up and therefore there is nothing to help theaters as this year comes to an end. This is all pretty terrible for theaters in the long run, but this is far from the only thing that is currently harming them as there is even more that could threaten to ruin them as time goes on. Going back a bit though, there are some studios heeding the call who wish to help theaters in some way as long as it is also convenient to them as well.
There are some movies that have since released since ‘Tenet’ came out back in late August and while they may not have really brought any revenue into theaters, they did bring something in. Considering the fact that some kind of revenue is better than none, this is a step in the right direction, but these movies really aren’t enough to draw people in. This is why we have now reached the point where movie theaters are pretty much just desperate at this point and they are all following the same release deal that AMC initially proposed which allows movies to release after just 17 days in theaters. Therefore, it is a win-win for studios because they can make some extra cash from people wanting to see their films in theaters and they don’t have to wait too long afterward to release the films to the public on digital where they are bound to make most of their money. On top of this, studios that do this can get some good faith from theaters because, while they may not be getting their money the way they used to be, theaters are actually getting something rather than nothing.
Not everyone is trying to stay on the same playing field these days however, because as we reach the end of this year, it would appear that some, namely one, studio(s) is trying to cheat the system in some way to make their money. That studio would be Warner Bros. who are now taking the initiative to try and mess with as many people as they possibly can before the year is over it would seem. As mentioned previously, Warner Bros. were the studio responsible for putting out Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ to theaters and therefore they took the hit for the movie’s theatrical failure. Considering the fact that this hit was one straight to the wallet, they did not take it well and thus we ended up in the situation we are currently in where they are doing something no one would have thought doable before. They are going to go with Universal’s original attack plan for releasing movies both during and after the pandemic.
Basically, this means that they plan on releasing their films on both a digital platform as well as in theaters on the same day for the remainder of this year and for all of next year. Warner themselves have had a pretty rough year this far and they don’t seem like they will be lying down any longer, but the way they are going about it just seems more like scorched earth tactics at this point. Other than the failure of the ‘Tenet’ launch in theaters, they have had a rough year in general because of the launch of their premiere streaming service HBO Max. Unlike everything that came before it, HBO Max is a service which takes pretty much all of Warner’s library and essentially puts it all into one place where people can watch whatever is in the HBO library any time they want. On top of this, they have been boasting that they are adding new movies and shows on a regular basis from all forms of content which is their way of trying to convince people to subscribe to the service as soon as possible. Unfortunately, none of these tactics worked so they went with one that always does, that would be exclusive content.
Streaming services are nothing new nowadays and new ones releasing for big companies is not really all that surprising because it is more of a rebranding tactic these days for companies to do so. This means that it is actually pretty common these days for companies to do this sort of thing because it allows them to keep up with other companies. Other studios need to stream nowadays because it is the only way possible for them to keep up with the current market where being able to release new content and people be able to watch it any time they want is considered the new norm. This is the only way for the market as a whole to keep up anymore because people have grown very much accustomed to being able to watch whatever content they want whenever they want it anymore. Warner Bros. recognized this fact after enough time had passed and they made the decision to consolidate their content across all mediums by putting all of it out on their HBO Max service where people could watch whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.
Jut because they now had a premiere streaming service though, did not mean that they would have the immediate fan base that they were hoping for and they were left twiddling their thumbs after everything was said and done. They were not able to get a lot of people interested and/or subscribed to their website in the end and thus they immediately ran into trouble which they are still trying to deal with now more than ever. Streaming sites of all kinds usually run into this issue with only one recent example actually working out from the get-go and this was the Disney+ streaming service. The only reason that things ended up working out for this service was because they had a lot of good faith built up in their brand for many years prior to their launch and this helped in launch tremendously. They were actually under the impression that they would not do as well as they did when they first launched Disney+ which just goes to show how volatile that whole market really is right now.
Thus, Warner Bros. just like every other company with a streaming service, is just trying to expand their subscriber base and this is very necessary at the moment because of their overall lack of revenue they suffer from at the moment. It is due to this lack in subscribers that they are now taking measures that other people would now consider ridiculously unfair to the industry as a whole and this is because of their new plans for exclusive content. Streaming services tend to have the hardest time attracting new subs because they need to incentivize people to come to their platform and exclusive content is what allows for that incentivization to happen in the first place. So exclusive content easily becomes the best way for streaming services to draw people in which is what Warner is now hoping for going into next year. They plan on bringing in as many people as they can with their new content even if it means ruining the plans of so many others in the industry.
This wasn’t originally going to be their plan of attack though as they were just going to continue releasing their content as it was available with some unique content being spread in there in some way. One of the biggest releases they have coming up is actually the Zack Snyder Cut for ‘Justice League’ which was an announcement that many fans were waiting a long time for and when news of this broke, people immediately became excited. This, plus the fact that the movie is meant to premiere in four parts exclusively on HBO Max made it an event that people everywhere were going to have to sub for. Unfortunately, the release is in some time early-2021 and people would only really have to sub for about a month or so and then they could stop anytime they wanted which would ruin their plan to try and keep recurring subs on their site. So what could they do to continually keep people subbed to their site all-year round and maybe longer than that?
The apparent answer to that question is to release all of their new films pretty much straight to HBO Max while simultaneously releasing their new content in theaters. This means that they will be splitting their revenue streams over the course of the next year between both release methods in a bid to more so drive people to their streaming service instead of the theaters. Of course, there are many people and institutions out there that are not taking too kindly to all of this though and want Warner to back down and change their minds about everything that they plan on doing over the following year. Of course, they don’t actually plan on doing this and it is now leading to a point of no return where people are just straight up deciding not to be involved with Warner anymore. This is all dangerous to the industry as a whole and it can easily result in everything going downhill from this point forward even as things seem to be coming to a close.
What is happening with the pandemic right now is that their is a vaccine which apparently has a very real shot of working on the vast majority of the public that can stop this pandemic in its tracks. This is not a guarantee in the slightest though because they have to see what side effects are as well as whether the vaccine will actually end up working once people have actually been injected with it. So then, how will things be handled once the pandemic reaches its end? Well, we can pretty much expect most everything to start going back to how it was before the pandemic began in March and even if the pandemic doesn’t end in the next couple of months, it is likely to end within the year to some degree. So if this is the case and it is now knowledge to just about everyone, then why is Warner still going along with their new release plan? This is because of the amount of money they could potentially end up making from the whole ordeal.
I’m not trying to say that it is wrong for a company to try and make money, but the way they are currently going about it may not be viewed as the best way possible given how it affects their own paid actors, directors, and production crews. More specific to the actors and directors is the fact that they mainly make their money based upon how much money gets brought in by the box office. When a movie is released, we have already discussed that studios get a portion of the money from tickets sales which is how their deals with theaters work to begin with. Beyond that deal is the one that studios have with their directors and actors as well, where they make a percentage on every single ticket that gets sold as well. Even now, those types of deals are in place, even if theaters wouldn’t bring in as much as they would have pre-pandemic which is something no one is really all that surprised about.
Warner Bros. new plan would take money immediately away from directors and actors who would otherwise make most of their money from the contracts where they have to get paid based on percentage of ticket sales. In response, they immediately started complaining to the studio that they should be compensated for the sudden change in release structure, which is further cemented by the fact that the studio already made the decision to do this with their upcoming ‘Wonder-Woman 1984.’ They made a new contract deal with Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins that said that they would receive $10 million each in compensation for the move to HBO Max. It turns out that no one else from the 17 other releases Warner has coming out next year have been given a similar type of compensation thus far and this is leading to some major future changes for the studio. It turns out that chief among those new changes for the studio is the fact that many directors are discussing boycotting Warner for any future films.
Not only does Warner have this on their hands, but if they go through with this for every film in the upcoming year, then they are going to have a very hard time if the pandemic ends. Movies release in theaters before they release digitally primarily because it means that they will end up making more money in the end off of the movie. If they release movies at the same time when things go back to normal, then people will have no reason to go out to theaters which will result in a huge loss in overall revenue at the box office. It has already been projected that the total loss in funds at the box office with this move could be somewhere around $1.2 billion because Warner mainly only puts out blockbuster films. It remains to be seen how much of that can be compensated though with many people then subscribing to HBO Max to watch new films.
Beyond this though is another issue which prevented Universal from trying something similar to this earlier in the year and that is the hatred from theaters. Movie theaters rely very heavily upon the exclusivity period granted by studios for them to have movies granted to them before their official releases on digital or other formats. If movies are immediately given releases that take away from their releases on other formats then they will end up losing money for someone along the line and maybe everyone for that matter that is involved. This is the current state of the film industry at the moment and things don’t seem to be getting better any time soon, though there are some things that can take our attention away from the incredible crapshoot that is movie releases right now and that is new movies that are coming out even as we speak about everything else. While many movies had their release dates pushed back some time into next year, some of them have release dates set for this year.
This past weekend saw the release of ‘Wonder-Woman 1984’ which is now a huge source of controversy within the industry because of the aforementioned deal and the fact that this same deal was not made for anyone else. Despite what is happening in house and what this is doing to the industry as a whole, we have actually seen something remarkable this past weekend with the box office. That would be the fact that ‘Wonder-Woman 1984’ managed to bring in the best numbers seen all year, during this pandemic, to the box office this past weekend. The odds were pretty much already stacked against them from before they even set to release the film as it was actually meant to have released much sooner than it actually did. Fortunately, they were able to actually release the movie before the year ended and things turned out better than possibly anticipated, though there is still a long way to go before things are back to normal.
The sequel to the beloved film seen by audiences back in 2017 brought in a lot of attention and people wanted to take advantage of this fact by drawing in as many crowds as possible for the last major film release of 2020. This fact alone is enough to reinforce the hatred towards the studio from theaters as it can easily be said that those numbers this past weekend could have been higher if not for their plan which split revenue between HBO Max and theaters as a whole. The movie is said to have made the most money this year at the pandemic box office, so just how much more would it have made if not for the plan that Warner put into place and how would this continue as the weeks go on into the new year. Obviously the opening weekend is the largest, but how will the following weeks end up being affected by everything at the moment. This is something which remains to be seen over the coming weeks.
A couple of different things can actually be inferred from this whole situation and a fair number of questions can be raised by it in the end as we are now not sure how the theater industry can step up after this. Obviously the release of this movie and the surge in ticket sales which followed shows that there are a few different factors which now need to be taken into account from this point forward in order to keep the industry from collapsing. Fist of all, we have the fact that there is most definitely an industry out there for new movies and there are crowds of people willing to go out and watch new movies if given the proper incentive. If there is a new movie out there that people want to watch, then they will take the risk and go out to see said movie especially if it is one they know they will want to watch. This isn’t the only thing the movie theater industry needs to look out for as they also need to take into account the fact that people are getting more confident as of late for a couple of reasons.
People are getting their confidence back to go back out to theaters as of late because they are getting more and more used to the way that industries and businesses are functioning these days. There are a lot of people out there that don’t want theaters to go under, but weren’t feeling safe with the idea of going out to the movies especially when the number of new virus cases is skyrocketing. While the same thing is still true now with the number of cases continually rising, people are much less wary due to the confidence many have in the upcoming vaccine. While this may not be a healthy mentality for them in any way, shape, or form, it works out for theaters which need nothing other than business at the moment. Even if it was only $16.7 million, this is way more than some were expecting them to even come close to and therefore, they have a tricky time ahead for them.
Movie theaters have quite the ordeal ahead of them now that they know they actually have a chance with new movie releases coming out within the next few months. Unfortunately, they also have a lot going against them and it is really going to be an uphill battle for them all moving forward with many of them needing to draw in as much business as possible. While the money brought in is nowhere near enough to keep them going, it is a start and it shows that if they can get through the next couple of months, they could survive the pandemic. Regardless of what happens, these next months are truly going to make a difference for the movie theater industry as a whole. Hopefully it works out for them, or else the movie industry as a whole is going to end up being reshaped in a way that it has never been seen in before now.
By George Robbins
This pandemic began back in March when the world at large was made aware of the greater danger we were all facing with this pandemic as a whole which could easily spread and kill people. Thus, the rules were made known to the general public and they were put into place in order to allow the general public to help prevent more people from getting infected than absolutely necessary. Though to be honest, no one should have really had to be infected at all if people actually listened properly to the rules which were explained to us from the start. This pandemic was pretty much weighted against us from the start and there was nothing that really could have been done to fix this. Therefore, we were given a chance to see things play out that we had no real way of dealing with once all of this initially began.
This pandemic is one that has easily made it difficult for just about everyone at this point in time and there is no fixing this as people are still trying to figure out how to handle what is happening. It is extremely difficult for some people to process just how much has changed for the world just over this past year and things aren’t going to get a whole lot better moving into the new year. For instance, even though the pandemic could possibly be coming to an end in the coming months, some things are now in place which will permanently change the way people interact in the world. This is why we are all now very wary about how things will end up turning out within the next couple of months because this pandemic has fundamentally changed the way some people handle their day to day lives. Therefore we can’t be too far removed in order to figure out what to do from now on.
Not everyone is trying to stay on the same playing field these days however, because as we reach the end of this year, it would appear that some, namely one, studio(s) is trying to cheat the system in some way to make their money. That studio would be Warner Bros. who are now taking the initiative to try and mess with as many people as they possibly can before the year is over it would seem. As mentioned previously, Warner Bros. were the studio responsible for putting out Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet‘ to theaters and therefore they took the hit for the movie’s theatrical failure. Considering the fact that this hit was one straight to the wallet, they did not take it well and thus we ended up in the situation we are currently in where they are doing something no one would have thought doable before. They are going to go with Universal’s original attack plan for releasing movies both during and after the pandemic.
Warner Bros. new plan would take money immediately away from directors and actors who would otherwise make most of their money from the contracts where they have to get paid based on percentage of ticket sales. In response, they immediately started complaining to the studio that they should be compensated for the sudden change in release structure, which is further cemented by the fact that the studio already made the decision to do this with their upcoming ‘Wonder-Woman 1984.’ They made a new contract deal with Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins that said that they would receive $10 million each in compensation for the move to HBO Max. It turns out that no one else from the 17 other releases Warner has coming out next year have been given a similar type of compensation thus far and this is leading to some major future changes for the studio. It turns out that chief among those new changes for the studio is the fact that many directors are discussing boycotting Warner for any future films.
Not only does Warner have this on their hands, but if they go through with this for every film in the upcoming year, then they are going to have a very hard time if the pandemic ends. Movies release in theaters before they release digitally primarily because it means that they will end up making more money in the end off of the movie. If they release movies at the same time when things go back to normal, then people will have no reason to go out to theaters which will result in a huge loss in overall revenue at the box office. It has already been projected that the total loss in funds at the box office with this move could be somewhere around $1.2 billion because Warner mainly only puts out blockbuster films. It remains to be seen how much of that can be compensated though with many people then subscribing to HBO Max to watch new films.
Warner Bros. just like every other company with a streaming service, is just trying to expand their subscriber base and this is very necessary at the moment because of their overall lack of revenue they suffer from at the moment. It is due to this lack in subscribers that they are now taking measures that other people would now consider ridiculously unfair to the industry as a whole and this is because of their new plans for exclusive content. Streaming services tend to have the hardest time attracting new subs because they need to incentivize people to come to their platform and exclusive content is what allows for that incentivization to happen in the first place. So exclusive content easily becomes the best way for streaming services to draw people in which is what Warner is now hoping for going into next year. They plan on bringing in as many people as they can with their new content even if it means ruining the plans of so many others in the industry.
This wasn’t originally going to be their plan of attack though as they were just going to continue releasing their content as it was available with some unique content being spread in there in some way. One of the biggest releases they have coming up is actually the Zack Snyder Cut for ‘Justice League’ which was an announcement that many fans were waiting a long time for and when news of this broke, people immediately became excited. This, plus the fact that the movie is meant to premiere in four parts exclusively on HBO Max made it an event that people everywhere were going to have to sub for. Unfortunately, the release is in some time early-2021 and people would only really have to sub for about a month or so and then they could stop anytime they wanted which would ruin their plan to try and keep recurring subs on their site. So what could they do to continually keep people subbed to their site all-year round and maybe longer than that?
The apparent answer to that question is to release all of their new films pretty much straight to HBO Max while simultaneously releasing their new content in theaters. This means that they will be splitting their revenue streams over the course of the next year between both release methods in a bid to more so drive people to their streaming service instead of the theaters. Of course, there are many people and institutions out there that are not taking too kindly to all of this though and want Warner to back down and change their minds about everything that they plan on doing over the following year. Of course, they don’t actually plan on doing this and it is now leading to a point of no return where people are just straight up deciding not to be involved with Warner anymore. This is all dangerous to the industry as a whole and it can easily result in everything going downhill from this point forward even as things seem to be coming to a close.
With Warner’s insistence on releasing their new movies on both platforms simultaneously, the anger arising from every other company involved with them is becoming more apparent. This is becoming more apparent through the actions of the Legendary production company which is responsible for some of Warner’s biggest upcoming movie releases for the next year. They are now intent on actually bringing Warner Bros. to court over the release of their upcoming remake of the movie ‘Dune’ which has been long-awaited since its announcement. The original Dune movie was widely considered to be a disappointment by the general populace, but things seem to be turning around after the trailer came out for the new reboot which is supposed to release some time next year. Fortunately, it seems that many people truly are looking forward to seeing the movie come out next year.
Due to Warner’s plans to release the movie on HBO Max, as mentioned earlier, they will be losing out on a lot of potential revenue that they would get if they went along with the original release plans. This of course has Legendary upset as they are the company that is actually responsible for the film and thus they are losing out on possible revenue as well. It is now because of this that Legendary has put forth a plan of action to sue Warner for doing this and going against the original plans they had in place for the movie’s release. This plan of legality is one that could not only have a strong affect on this one movie going forward but could also have huge repercussions within the whole company for the rest of the movie releases moving forward. Regardless of the outcome, we will be seeing a huge change come over the industry over the coming months.
Whether the industry begins to suffer in the coming months, or nothing actually ends up happening, we will be seeing changes the likes of which many never thought they would see. The movie theater industry as a whole is very likely going to change as the months roll on and this lawsuit could wildly affect how movie releases are handled as this new year comes into being. If they do not succeed in their attempts in court then they will be seeing the failure of not only their movie in movie theaters but also the possible failure of movie theaters as a whole moving forward. Legendary’s lawsuit is one that we will be watching out for and this will most certainly be a momentous battle in cinema history.
Get Some Strange!
