HBO is reportedly working on ANOTHER prequel to their hit series ‘Game of Thrones‘. The TV network is moving forward from the original series with their new prequel ‘House of the Dragon’ currently in production and set to be on TVs in 2022. ‘House of the Dragon’ is set 300 years before the original ‘GoT’ series following the downfall of House Targaryen. So when it was reported by Variety, that Tales of Dunk & Egg, another prequel show of GoT, was in early development Thrones fans were ecstatic to know that potentially more stories from Westeros will be coming in the following years.
“The Tales of Dunk and Egg” is planned to be a buddy dramedy following the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall (Dunk) and a young Aegon V Targaryen (Egg) set 100 years before the original GoT. The events in the Dunk and Egg tales are based off of George R.R Martin’s books “The Hedge Knight” (1998), “The Sworn Sword” (2009) and “The Mystery Knight” (2010). These 3 books were later published together as “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” in 2015. It is noted that just because the show is in early development, it does not guarantee a show will be produced.
By Kurt Balingit
Dearon Thompson, better known as Deezer D, passed away on January 7th, 2021. The actor and songwriter was found unresponsive at his Los Angeles home Thursday morning. There is no official cause of death, but family and those close to him believe he suffered a heart attack as he previously underwent heart surgery in 2009.
Deezer D was best known for his comic relief role of Nurse Malik McGrath on the long-running drama television series “ER” where he appeared on almost 200 episodes. Earlier in his career the actor appeared in rap based movies “Fear of Black Hat” and “CB4” in 1993. Thompson also had a role in the 2003 comedy “Bringing Down The House“.
Off the camera, Thompson was active in the Los Angeles underground rap and christian communities even hosting a christian radio show. He will surely be missed.
By Kurt Balingit
This month, we lost an icon in the live entertainment industry. It was announced by his publicist Dave Kirvin, that Siegfried Fischbacher had passed away on January 13th, 2021 at the age of 81 from pancreatic cancer. Fischbacher was best known as half of the electrifying duo “Siegfried & Roy”. The duo became a staple in the Las Vegas entertainment industry with their live performances involving exotic big cats, most notably white tigers & lions. Siegfried & Roy ran shows in Las Vegas 6 days a week, 44 weeks a year. The two ran these shows for decades, until their untimely retirement in 2003 after an on stage nearly fatal accident left Roy Horn partially paralyzed.
The duo also made a cameo in Las Vegas centered movies Ocean’s 11 & Vegas Vacation. Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak described Siegfried Fischbacher “a ‘Master of the Impossible’ and an exemplary Nevadan whose contributions, alongside the late great Roy Horn, helped shine a bright spotlight on Las Vegas’s entertainment industry to the world.”
By George Robbins
From March of last year, we had to start dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic which has been plaguing the world even longer than the pandemic has been on for thus far. Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, things have become extremely difficult for businesses to continue functioning the way that they always have before. This has led to various businesses changing their way of functioning to try and make revenue at a time where this has become much more difficult. Primarily, what many businesses have had to deal with is the fact that they needed to bring people back in if they could, and if not, how could they get their services or goods to people at home. For many businesses, this was something that could be dealt with in some capacity, but other types of businesses were not so lucky, like movie theaters.
Movie theaters started suffering from the moment the pandemic first began because they thrive entirely on getting people to come into their establishments. They aren’t the only business which functions this way, but they are among the few businesses that don’t have alternatives for them to function properly. Places like restaurants don’t really have to be open to the public in order to function thanks to the advent and rapid expansion of delivery services which the restaurant may not even have to pay for. Thus, it remains that only entertainment businesses really have to worry about not having a revenue stream of some kind and among those businesses are movie theaters as mentioned earlier. Movie theaters spent a long time without getting any kind of revenue whatsoever, and even though they are starting to get some now, it isn’t what they once used to get.
Despite the fact that many movie theaters are once again open to the public for business, the fact remains that they are not functional in the same way that they were pre-pandemic. This means that they have a long way to go before they can get back to the same level of functionality that they were at from before, and that is assuming that the pandemic ends sooner rather than later. Not everything is as terrible as people think though because, as previously mentioned, theaters are starting to at least get some kind of business again. The downside is that a large majority of said business is the severely reduced crowds which are going out to theaters which only earns theaters that little bit of money they’ve been hoping for. For the best example of how badly things are seeming to be in the movie theater industry, we can take a close look at the industry over in China.
Movie theater companies and production studios often make the vast majority of their money from the fact that there is such a large population over in China. This is why many companies often try their absolute best just to appeal to Chinese audiences, because they know that this is where a vast majority of their international ticket sales are coming from. China reopened theaters a little while back at this point just like the theaters around the world and it hasn’t really been paying off for anyone because people haven’t been going out. Now that the vaccine is beginning to be distributed, people are starting to become much more confident in going back out in public so movie theaters are starting to get some business back once again. Unfortunately, the amount of business they are trying to get back is not really enough to keep the economy for theaters alive and well, but it is better than nothing at all.
Usually, when a new year begins, there is a lot of buzz going around movie theaters and they often end up bringing in a lot of money since the holidays just passed. This year is very much different from the usual though because the pandemic is still going and therefore, even though theaters should have brought in possibly hundreds of millions this past weekend, they only brought in about $42 million this past weekend. This is the gross amount brought in by the entire Chinese box office and thus, it just goes to show that things are nowhere near great as people were hoping for. Needless to say, the entire movie industry is still hoping that we will soon see the end of this pandemic and they can all once again start making back their money to some degree. Though even then, it may still be awhile before things start to swing back to the way they once were before all of this began.
By George Robbins
This past year has been something truly interesting, especially within the realm of the film industry because of the pandemic which is unprecedented in modern times. There have been plenty of moments in the past where there have been plagues which have similarly affected the world in the same way it is now. This time is no different, except that the level of connectiveness nowadays is through the roof compared to how things used to be, therefore things are different from how they most certainly would be normally. Therefore, it isn’t too much of a surprise that the film industry which is equally connected across the world would be affected in a similar way. In fact, there are a few different ways in which the film industry has been affected thus far and chief among those changes is the fact that movie theaters have been mostly phased out right now.
After the pandemic began, we saw changes take place almost immediately which reshaped the business model for the film industry. Movie theaters were eventually able to reopen their doors to the public once again, but it took some time before they were really able to do so. Despite how long it took for movie theaters to reopen, they were able to do so, but with extreme difficulty as theaters could not seem to drum up very much business upon their official reopenings. The prime example for how little business they were able to bring in was the release of the movie ‘Tenet’ within the domestic market and the subsequent reaction the public at large had to the release. Long story short, things did not end up going too well because the movie ended up failing in the domestic market within the first few weeks and therefore, there was not much else going for theaters.
Therefore, throughout most of the year, there wasn’t anything going for movie theaters, especially since they had no new movies to show anyone because studios didn’t want to take the risk. Luckily for the theaters though, they eventually managed to get their hands on some new movies before 2020 actually ended with the biggest downside still being that people did not want to risk going out to the movies. This meant that, while there were movies by the end of the year which managed to bring in some kind of box office revenue, they weren’t exactly bringing in a lot of money and thus it didn’t take much for the top spot to be taken. Therefore, when ‘Wonder Woman 1984‘ released, it immediately took the top box office spot where it is now managing to stay. Even though it sounds incredible that the movie is managing to maintain its place at the top of the leaderboards after three weeks, it really isn’t.
When a movie is the only blockbuster film that is out and the movie is a much wanted sequel that people have been waiting for, then it is most definitely going to be a popular movie. It is due to these prime facts that the movie has managed to maintain its popularity over the weeks, especially when there are no new releases for theaters to play. Yet again, just because it is at the top doesn’t mean that it is actually capable of making a ton of money at the moment because, in-comparison with how things usually are, they are making a tremendously smaller amount of money now as opposed to the usual amount made. On its third weekend since release, the movie only made a few million dollars domestically this past weekend and thus, it shows just how bad things still are within the industry. As of now, the movie has even managed to make a grand total of $131 million since its release, making it one of the top pandemic releases thus far.
Unfortunately, this is still way off of the mark for the movie’s budget of $200 million that the studio needs to make back to break even on production budget. Warner has already had it pretty rough thus far with both this release and the ‘Tenet’ release which has caused them to lose a lot of money since the pandemic began last March. Luckily for the studio, they did something that was unheard of which greatly angered the industry as a whole such as turning their new releases into simultaneous streaming and theatrical releases. This may be ending for ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ in a couple of weeks, but Warner has apparently gained record viewership with this films release on their HBO Max premiere streaming service. Regardless of what else may happen, the movie will be a theater only exclusive for awhile in a couple of weeks which may further jack up the film’s box office value and it will maintain its top box office spot for quite awhile still afterward.
By George Robbins
The ‘Star Wars‘ franchise is one unlike almost any other out there in the world in terms of overall popularity and incredible ability to draw in new crowds. The franchise is easily one of the most well known draws for getting people invested in purchasing toys and games and has become a cash cow the likes of which very few other franchises ever reach the heights of. There have been countless pieces of media made about the ‘Star Wars’ franchise over the years and very little has changed since the moment the first ‘Star Wars‘ was introduced. What has become just as entertaining over the years since the creation of the franchise is the fact that the creator George Lucas never thought it would become as big as it was. So yes, the ‘Star Wars’ franchise was actually an accidental success and it has remained an incredible success over the years since its inception.
As the years went on and more films were made based around the original concept, the popularity of the franchise just continued to grow and the amount of money surrounding the franchise as a whole was staggering. Outside of the films were the incredible stories being told not just by those connected to the franchise, but also the people who just enjoyed the idea of the franchise so much that they wrote their own stories to help compensate in some way. People just wanted to have some part in the story of the universe that they loved by that point and things only got crazier after the Prequel movies released in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Eventually, after a longer period of time than people would have thought, Lucasfilm ended up being bought out by Disney. Considering the amount of money to be made in both marketing and toy lines, of course they would want to pick up the franchise, even if it did cost billions to do so.
Of course, it probably took Disney a long time before they finally made the decision to purchase the rights to the ‘Star Wars’ franchise because they wanted to see if the popularity remained even after so many years. Clearly the popularity of the franchise remained and they decided it was going to be a very good investment to go through with the acquisition and it has made them a lot more in revenue than it cost them to purchase the franchise. Unfortunately, any fan made stories that came into being after the acquisition were essentially thrown out and made non-canon with official side-story lore coming out over the years since. With this, they were able to establish exactly what would be canon within their own universe and make use of it during their marketing to all audiences. What really solidified the fact that they were going to take the franchise as far as they could was the fact that they immediately started making movies after acquisition.
Not only did they start making movies again, but they already had some plans in place as to where they wanted the franchise to go after they started work on it. This plan was generally that they were going to produce a bunch of shows and continue their plans to produce their movies in a way they felt benefitted both them and the franchise best. What this meant was that they were going to release mainline movies every couple of years for the Sequel trilogy and they were going to produced side-story films which would release every “off” year where a mainline film didn’t release. After the release of their second side story film, they realized that there just wasn’t as much of a market for that sort of thing as there was the mainline films, despite the vocal outcry from the minority of people who felt otherwise. Thus the plans went down the drain on their side story movie plans.
Fortunately, the creation of their Disney+ premium streaming service has created an alternative, and ultimately more profitable, avenue for them to make money out of the franchise which functions as a good place for side stories. They were able to start producing other Star Wars projects that they could show as television shows on their platform on a weekly basis once they were produced as a means of driving traffic to their site. Once these projects started to once again see success, they made their plans once again and those plans now include new movies. It is entirely unknown just what these movies will end up being about, but they are being worked on by some pretty big people under Disney’s belt at the moment to make them the best they can be. Among the directors tapped to be a part of their new projects was one Kevin Feige who is well known at this point for his work on the MCU as one of the main heads responsible for Marvel Studios productions.
While there is still very much which is unknown about the new Star Wars films, one thing we now know for sure is that they are bound to be fascinating films. The one that Feige is working on has even less known about it though as even the story hasn’t been written yet. In order to rectify that fact, Feige has tapped Michael Waldron, the executive producer for ‘Loki’ to be the writer for the film. Waldron is both the EP and the writer for the new Disney+ show focused on the MCU villain/anti-hero Loki and it would appear that Feige believes he fits the bill to be a part of the new, yet-to-be titled ‘Star Wars’ films. Given the track records of the people involved with the MCU, we should strive to expect a lot of great things from these upcoming films. This news is something that will definitely have fans all the more excited for the release of the film in the years to come and hopefully we will all be hearing more about this in the months to follow.
Get Some Strange!
