By George Robbins
Warner Bros. has been making waves as of late with the way they are handling things going into next year when it comes to their new movie releases. They have released a statement not too long ago saying that they will be making a move that has them releasing their new movies for the next year on their HBO Max streaming service as well as in theaters. Obviously this news is not what anyone expected to hear with the way that things have been going in the film industry as of late so there has been quite a range of reactions. Chief among those reactions have been the way that people have been reacting to it all within the industry and how they are now completely taken aback by it all. Needless to say, Warner Bros. really managed to kick the hornets nest this time as many people within the industry are now upset by the move they are making.
First of all, the movie industry isn’t exactly in a great position at the moment due to the pandemic and the affect it has had on every type of business out there. The pandemic has resulted in numerous businesses having to be shut down for awhile before being able to once again reopen because new rules needed to be put in place. New health and safety rules became a requirement before businesses were ever really going to be allowed to open back up again which has created a bit of an issue. After a couple of months had passed and the overall number of new cases dropped dramatically, governments decided to start reopening the businesses which closed down in the months prior. They had the standard health and safety rules in place, so they felt that they no longer had anything to worry about going forward.
There has been no doubt in anybody’s mind that the reopening of businesses in the middle of an active pandemic was a bad idea, but it was one many deemed as being a necessary action. The reason why so many people felt it was necessary to reopen businesses once again was because many economies were beginning to fail and this was what was needed to get them back on track. Unfortunately, this ended up being a detriment in some ways while actually being a good idea in other ways and this revolves around the types of businesses which were open. There is not a single type of business out there that doesn’t have some kind of inherent risk associated with it in regards to the pandemic. After all, the virus does not discriminate on where exactly it ends up infecting people so of course there is a risk anywhere we decide to go.
Businesses as a whole did actually have to reopen for the economy to keep itself from crashing and for small businesses to actually survive and make their way out of the pandemic. Unfortunately, small businesses are in a lot of trouble at the moment and there isn’t really all that much that can be done to help them as they are simply lacking overall business. One of the biggest issues at the moment is actually how risk assessment has been working out and what exactly that means to the remainder of businesses and people in general. The way that governments decide whether they should close things down or open them again is by assessing exactly what the rate is for new cases and how often new cases are bound to appear. Based on an overall population they check the density of just how many people are infected which gives them an idea as to what the numbers look like for new infected density.
It depends upon the local government, but the idea is that if a certain threshold is met for the density of an infected population, then stricter rules are put into place. For instance they check a population of one million and 10 people tested positive, they may consider this to be a good thing and allow businesses to open with the same restrictions as usual. However, there are some places where this is not the case and they are actually considering numbers like that to be hints of danger, thus keeping a lot of places shut down. California is a prime example of something like this because they have kept a lot of businesses closed based on an extremely low number of new cases based on population. This has, on its own, led to a lot of backlash among both the populace and many businesses that function out of California.
A perfect example of a place that has been affected by this in some way is Disneyland in Anaheim, California which has not been able to open up to the public at all since this whole pandemic began. They originally had plans to reopen to the public back in July, but a surge in virus cases led to those plans being crushed by the state government. Ever since then California has not laid off on their strict policies which has prevented the theme park from opening at all and this has led to some major issues cropping up. Chief among these issues is the fact that Disney has had to let go of over 28,000 employees with an additional 4,000 being let go early next year for a total of 32,000. This is just one example of how this has caused issues, but there are plenty more examples out there including what is happening with the film industry.
For the most part, the film industry has managed to survive what has been happening but this hasn’t changed the fact that the way movies are being handled now has been changed dramatically. For instance, movie productions have not really changed all that much and many of them are getting back to work the way they have always been done. There are new rules and safety regulations that need to be followed while on set, but this has not been such a huge difference that would end up affecting the industry as a whole. It is what has been happening with the releases of movies that has started to wildly change the industry and its affects are starting to be seen more clearly as time goes on. Starting next year, if things go as planned, we will be seeing an entirely different landscape for movie releases.
When movie theaters were finally able to start opening up once again during the summer, we immediately recognized that there were going to be issues. Among those issues was the fact that theaters were forced to open without any new movie releases or else they wouldn’t be able to show any films at all because studios would not give them films unless they were open. Finally, they were able to open and things immediately took a downward spiral as no one was actually going out to see movies the way they were originally hoping for. This immediately caused studios to panic and most of them pushed many of their remaining releases out of this year and into next year some time. This was a reaction that director Christopher Nolan considered to be a step in the wrong direction and that studios should be trying to help theaters out more rather than move all of their release dates.
One such studio to make moves like this was Warner Bros. which decided to push back their release dates after the failure of ‘Tenet‘ at the box office due to the lack of movie-goers. No one was surprised when Warner made this move as every other studio was doing essentially the same thing which resulted in most movies being moved out of this year’s line-up. What studios were doing with the films that they were releasing this year was that they were releasing them to theaters and waiting 17 days to put them up online as per a new deal with theaters or they were just putting them straight out on digital. Earlier in the year, Universal proposed that they would release films both online and in theaters simultaneously which caused a lot of backlash with theaters which eventually led to the new 17 day deal. They let it be known early on just what they wanted to do and a discussion was opened up in regards to that, but Warner has taken a completely different route now.
Warner, all of a sudden, made the decision to make not only their ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ movie available on their streaming platform HBO Max, but also in theaters simultaneously. Beyond the fact that they were doing exactly what Universal said they would not end up doing in favor of helping theaters, Warner made a completely different choice. They didn’t stop with just ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ as they announced that all 17 of their films next year will be doing the same thing which has angered a lot of people that work in the industry. When a movie is released in theaters, a portion of that revenue goes to theaters and the remainder is sent back to the studio where it is divided between the studio, cast, and crew. Needless to say, if a movie is going to be available digitally and it is more likely to be watched on that platform, theaters won’t be earning as much and everyone but the studio loses money.
This, of course, has a lot of people, primarily directors and lead actors, upset because this change was made suddenly before any contractual issues could be discussed. The only people to have been compensated for this change is ‘Wonder Woman 1984’s’ director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot who were each payed $10 million to make up the difference in some way. No one else has received compensation so far and the change was so sudden that contracts could not even be properly discussed. This has now resulted in some Hollywood directors possibly boycotting the studio in the near future and it could result in a fair number of movies not getting made on time. This issue is one that needs to be resolved internally or else it could have repercussions that could end up spilling out into the rest of the industry and no one wants the industry to suffer even more than it already is.
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, has easily become one of the most popular series of films out there at the moment with the assortment of films now considered a part of the franchise. As a franchise, the MCU has been able to consistently manage to bring in large numbers of viewers and keep them engaged for the length of their entire films. In fact, the franchise has become so popular at this point that it is widely considered to be a mainstream franchise by avid movie-goers. This doesn’t mean that the movies are bad by any stretch of the imagination, it just means that the general populace has taken to the franchise very well over the years. Just about anybody can go and watch MCU films now and be excited for when the next one is going to release and this is a trend which continues now.
The MCU began simply when the first live-action ‘Iron Man‘ film released back in 2008 and no one knew exactly how things would end up turning out. We learned much later that there was actually a lot that went wrong during the production and a lot of what was seen in the movie was thought up while in the middle of production. People may not really think about it all that much now, but the fact remains that the MCU only really managed to get its start at the bottom of the totem pole. However, after the film was a smash success, the MCU was able to begin in full force as there was now much more backing to get more films done. This was all so that they could do what has never truly been done in the past which is to create a universe shared by various characters.
Not only would those characters share the same universe, but the actions of some of them played a major role in the universe and shaped how it played out. Eventually, we were given the 2012 ‘Avengers‘ film which brought a variety of characters together on screen for the first time to fight a common enemy that threatened the world. The idea of bringing together such a cast of characters was seen as all the more impressive due to the fact that many of the films had different directors working on them. Not only that, but the scripts must be able to intertwine with one another in some way while also allowing more individual stories to happen on the side. This gave those working on writing and directing the films a challenge that no one else has really had to face before that period in time.
Of course, all of this wasn’t really made any easier by the fact that they were adapting something from comic books while also trying to create unique storylines. When they released the first ‘Avengers’ film they even introduced an over-arching storyline that would span almost a decade which actually started in movies before then. With the introduction of the infinity stones in early films without actually saying what they were, they set up a storyline that started getting revealed in full in later films. Needless to say being able to weave together a franchise is difficult and doing it perfectly is impossible but they managed to do extremely well with the productions they were tasked with making. Comic book movies were already receiving a sort of bad wrap from most people because they were difficult to pull of in a unique way.
Obviously, the movies had a lot of source content to work with and if not for that, there is no telling exactly where the franchise would have gone, or if it would have even existed. Over the years, comic books have always been the attraction for a lot of people but they were not for everyone and this was a recognized fact. Due to this fact, they decided to make something that would attract everyone to go and see it and the thing is, comic book stories are perfect for movies as a whole. They more times than not contain instances of action, suspense, deep thought, comedy, and tragedy and this makes them compelling to show on the big screen. There are not many films which are actually capable of pulling off a feat like this to begin with, so of course a lot of time and effort was devoted to these films.
The connectiveness of the films has been a major selling point for a lot of people and the continuation of not just the overarching stories but also the individual stories has sold people on the newer films as they’ve released. We knew as a society that the MCU was becoming a huge deal when Disney went and purchased Marvel Studios, the ones producing the films. After this massive purchase, which cost them billions of dollars, they just let Marvel Studios continue to do their work so that they could make more films as they knew just what they were doing. All Disney did was make sure that they would be able to make a profit on anything that has a Marvel label on it ranging from movies to books to action figures and other toys. While some were not happy about the films becoming mainstream, the general public, and therefore Disney, were happy with the results of what they got to see play out on the big screen as it was made just for people to enjoy.
Comic book fans have always been excited when they got to see their favorite characters take to the big screen in some way and that hasn’t really stopped all that much anymore. What ends up upsetting some people is that they think that people like it just because it is popular and they don’t like it for the characters. As a result a lot of character translations from comics to movies had been adjusted in some way to try and get more people to be on board with the characters and their stories. Tony Stark starts off as an arrogant playboy and very quickly turns that around to try and help people while still maintaining a somewhat arrogant persona. In the comics he was always that way and was more times than not, actually worse than his movie counterpart. Obviously this wouldn’t resonate with the general public, so they adjusted him as time went on to make him much more likeable in an annoying sort of way.
These sorts of changes are seen all the time when it comes to adaptations and this isn’t really all that surprising for a studio to do to get more people to start watching the series. Some characters, however, do manage to translate fairly well from their comic counterparts to the big screen though not without some minor changes to fit the story’s purpose. Other than that, their personalities and character designs get to stay relatively the same which makes it much easier for them to get people on board with the characters. One such character who they have managed to adapt in a pretty well done manner was Spider-Man and this was a character that people were afraid may never have entered the MCU at any point. Considering how important Spider-Man is to the Marvel universe as a whole, it is no surprise that this was a fear that people had for quite some time.
In the Marvel Universe, and more specifically the comics, Spider-Man is a beacon of morality among the denizens of that universe and he serves as a hero that doesn’t always try to save the world. Spider-Man is a much more localized hero who does whatever he can to help those in his community rather than constantly trying to save the world. While he has been seen helping stop worldwide catastrophe, a majority of the time he is in New York City trying to keep people safe from everyday hazards. Not only is Spider-Man known more for his everyman day-to-day deeds, but he is known for the fact that he manages to make even dire situations at least a little more light-hearted. The character is sarcastic and helpful towards as many people as he can be while doing his best to not hurt people too badly. He is one of those characters that doesn’t really want to abuse the power that he found himself having and this shines through very well on screen.
This is why Spider-Man was one of the first Marvel characters to get his own live-action film, although he was most definitely not the first. Sam Raimi took the Spider-Man character and gave him a place on the big screen in live-action for the first time ever which was a feat all on its own. While he did take creative liberties to make sure that the character made the proper transition, the 2002 ‘Spider-Man‘ was a success due to the efforts of everyone who was involved. The sequel which followed was even better than the original film and it introduced a villain that is central to the character of Spider-Man. In the first film, we saw iconic villain The Green Goblin appear on the screen and although he was a cheesy character he was one of the best parts of the original film. The sequel introduced yet another important villain which was Doctor Otto Octavius, known by most people as Doc Ock.
In this rendition of the character, Doc Ock, played by actor Alfred Molina, was just a scientist who was trying to help people by developing a clean source of power for the world. In order to do this he created four mechanical arms which he controlled with his mind via a computer chip on the back of his neck. For the arms to work properly, he had to give them artificial intelligence, but the chip prevented them from acting outside of his control. Peter Parker worked for Dr. Octavius because he believed in his mission to try and create a better future for other people, but of course it didn’t go as planned. The lab in which Octavius was conducting his experiment ended up falling to pieces and his wife was killed when the experiment went out of control and caused the building to collapse on itself.
The result of that destruction was that the chip that regulated the arms and kept them from losing control ended up being completely destroyed, but the arms were still fused to him. During an attempt to cut the arms off of him, every doctor involved ended up being killed and Octavius awakened in horror to see that he was now under the control of the arms he created to help save people. The goal that he and his arms now had was to recreate the experiment in an effort to succeed where he had previously failed while also fighting Spider-Man who had ended up in his way. He blamed Spider-Man for his not being able to succeed in his experiment which he thought was the reason his wife ended up dying, as a result he blamed him for her death. By the film’s conclusion, seeing Peter/Spider-Man trying to prevent all of New York from being destroyed reminded him of why he wanted to succeed in the first place, he wanted to help people.
At the end of the film, we saw Spider-Man being saved by Doctor Octavius who managed to overpower the arms with his own will once again and Octavius sabotaged the experiment to save everyone, proving he was really a good man. Dr. Octavius has been viewed through the eyes of people outside of the comic sphere of influence as an anti-hero of sorts instead of just a straight-up villain as originally intended. This is owed to the fact that Raimi made it understandable in his films that his villains were haunted and had their own reasons for wanting to do things. While they may not have been good through-and-through, they had redeeming qualities, but the writing and directing were not the only thing to make those two films what they were, it was the fact that the actors did an incredible job portraying the characters. This is why so many people wanted the original actor to return at some point in the future for the ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘ series as they felt he would really be the best choice for the character.
Once a character has been portrayed in an incredible fashion on screen, people tend to only really ever see that character being played by that one person from that moment on. Regardless of continuity or the fact that they have appeared in previous iterations of the character, some people are just deemed to be well-made fits for those characters. This is why, staying with Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson has been portrayed by J.K. Simmons on a number of occasions at this point and even in different iterations. He appeared as the character in Raimi’s films and he fit the role so well that people can’t see the character being played by anybody else from that point forward. They are not just stopping here though as they are also casting Jaime Foxx to once again play Electro from Sony’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2.’ Even if the movie itself wasn’t all that great, Foxx played the character pretty well; he just wasn’t given the best opportunity to show off his acting for the character.
Needless to say the next film in the ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ series in the MCU is going to have faces from many different films over the years and it is shaping up to be a film fans will never forget. There are plenty of characters that are returning to appear in this film and Sony is hopeful that this, plus their own string of Spider-Man universe side-films, will help them do a crossover at some point with the films they are making. While it is still a little ways off before the movie has its release some time in late 2021, or even possibly later than that, it is easy to see why so many people are excited for the next entry in the series. The fact that they are actually filming it now has people more excited since they know that these things are all happening as we speak. The future for the Spider-Man series of live-action films is looking very interesting and it is sure to get more people’s attention as time goes on.
By George Robbins
This past week has been an interesting one for the Warner Bros. studio as they have made announcements that no one would have ever really expected them to make. Over the weekend, they made the announcement that they would be releasing their new movies through the next year on both HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously. This announcement has been met with mixed reactions from both fans and those on the production team alike. When they made the announcement that they would be making this release plan a reality, they ruffled feathers with people who were insistent that they should be trying to help movie theaters recover. Instead of helping theaters it would appear to most that they are only really helping themselves in this scenario as opposed to trying to help theaters get back on track.
To be a little fair, Warner took a hit over this past summer and they have been trying to figure out the proper way of going about things these past few months. Obviously they knew that something needed to change or else they would not be able to keep up with the industry which has been on a steady decline since the pandemic began. Since the start of the pandemic, Warner has not been the only studio to have actually released a film as Universal has also put some work into getting a couple of films released. They have since tried figuring out how they too would continue going about their upcoming releases and it seems like they have chosen a release format that would suit both them, and the theaters. This would lead to what is now happening with Warner as it helped give them a push in the direction they are now headed in.
Universal was actually the first studio to announce that they wanted to release their films on both a digital platform as well as in theaters at the same time. The issue was that they made this announcement at the start of the pandemic when theaters thought they actually had a choice as to what would happen with movie releases. After a threat was issued that AMC would no longer show any more Universal films and Universal responded they went radio silent on the matter for months. When enough time had passed, AMC announced the deal that they made with Universal which would allow them to release films digitally just 17 days after release. This was something that was completely unheard of and under normal circumstances, it would never happen, but at this point theaters would only end up being hurt more if they didn’t take the deal.
This announcement was met with the announcement not much later that they would also be offering this deal to every other studio as well and needless to say it was a good deal for studios. A shorter theatrical run could end up generating more revenue for them and a digital release would ensure that they would end up getting more profits overall. Theaters take a portion of what is earned on each ticket, so studios really need to make a lot in order for them to make up what is lost when theaters take their cut. In being able to release their films early on digital, they can mitigate some of their losses and cash in on the money to be made by people not wanting to go out to theaters. All people would have to do is wait a couple of extra weeks and they will be able to go and purchase the film digitally without ever having to go see it in theaters.
Warner Bros. took this a step further by announcing that they were going to be essentially going with Universal’s original plan for their movie releases for the end of this year and all of next year. Of course, this has people like Christopher Nolan annoyed because it detracts importance from theaters and makes it harder for them to get income. It is making everyone else unhappy because they usually make their money off of a portion of the ticket sales as well so they would effectively lose out on a lot of money when people do not go to theaters to see the films. There are 17 films releasing this upcoming year and most of the people involved with them have said that they had not been compensated for the switch-up and new release format. Gal Gadot has said that she got over $10 million due to ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ going to HBO Max while a majority of other actors and directors have not received anything yet as they were blindsided by the decision and had no time to negotiate. It is still up for debate how this will be handled with all other directors and cast, but if it doesn’t go their way, Warner may have a major legal battle on their hands.
By George Robbins
There has been a lot going on in the movie industry as of late and it is no surprise that things are getting more complicated as time seems to keep ticking on. The movie industry has been abuzz quite a bit lately, especially with more news coming out constantly these past few weeks which confirms some 2021 plans for certain movies. As far as this year goes, we are rounding it out and things aren’t necessarily going to get better before the year ends. Meaning that we will still have very few movies actually releasing to the public before the year is rounded out and this is solely because of the movie theater situation. While it may have been going on for quite a while at this point the situation with movie theaters is finally starting to come to a head before the new year begins.
Movie theaters were easily shut down by governments everywhere the moment the pandemic began and new movies were not going to be released any time soon after that. Movies that were in theaters had to end up being released digitally to the public regardless of how long those movies ended up being shown on the big screen. What we saw was a lengthy period of time which followed where no one knew exactly what was going to happen within the industry, or the world for that matter. In the end there was just a long period of nothingness happening where people were just sitting around waiting for any kind of news as to what may be happening in the near future. Needless to say, there was a long wait of at least a couple of months before public places were able to start opening once again.
When the pandemic first got its start in March of earlier this year, no one was sure of what was going to end up happening with the businesses that they would often frequent as many were shut down. To be a bit more specific, no one knew what was going to end up happening with businesses that were deemed to be non-essential at the start of the pandemic. Grocery stores and other stores which sold household necessities were among the stores that were deemed essential and therefore they were able to remain open to the public. Most other types of businesses were not deemed as such, and therefore, they could not open up once again until the government deemed it an appropriate time to reopen. Even before businesses were able to once again start reopening, there were a lot of rules which made it harder for stores to open.
When the pandemic began, emergency protocols were put into place as a means of allowing essential businesses to stay open because people still needed everyday supplies. As a result, the constantly seen social distancing, face masks, and hand washing became a huge part of stores being able to once again open to the public. At the time, this meant essential businesses would be able to reopen without any real kind of issues getting in their way but they would have to deal with limited capacity. Obviously this wasn’t much of an issue because people were staying home and not taking any chances by going out anywhere. Eventually though, people started getting tired of sitting around in the house and they wanted to go out again.
The issue with people wanting to once again go out to different places was based solely upon the fact that there was nowhere to go and stores had to make sure they were still adhering to the lowered capacity rule. This rule is a direct impact from the social distancing rule because a minimum amount of space needs to be given between people otherwise the rule would be violated. This rule has easily become one of the most important rules that people have had to follow over the past almost 9 months and there are plenty of times where it has been violated. However, most businesses have been pretty good about listening to the rules and they have still managed to keep going despite all of the new rules in place they have had to follow.
It is because of people not following the rules that we have now reached the point that a second wave of the virus has started to reek havoc on the world. Fortunately, there is a vaccine that is going to be distributed to various nations within the next few weeks and this may be the answer that many people have been hoping for. Unfortunately however, there are still far too many unknown variables with the distribution of the vaccine which include a number of issues we could see playing out in the near future. This is uncharted territory with a novel virus and so it is unknown just how effective the vaccine will be or if it will even end up working at all for most people. The best that the world can possibly hope for right now is that this is the answer and that the vaccine works the same way for everyone, but this is highly unlikely to happen.
People are naturally very different from one another which is how we end up with so many arguments, and this means that the vaccine could have a different effect in some people as opposed to others. Since this is obviously a bad thing, because it can cause even more issues down the line, we will still be waiting a while before things can properly start to function again. In the meantime, we have the limitations that are in place which allow many businesses to even be open at all and people should continue to follow these rules as we move forward even if there is a vaccine. At least, they should keep following the rules until we are confirmed to no longer be in a pandemic. Considering that this is the first pandemic of the modern age, it is no surprise that things would continue to be hectic as time goes on and it will no doubt affect everyone differently moving forward.
The effects of the pandemic could be seen almost as quickly as the pandemic began in the way that non-essential businesses were handled and how they could reopen. Over the course of the first couple of months after the pandemic began, people started to get anxious for a number of reasons and the main reason for this stemmed from being stuck inside all of the time with little to do. Since this became a huge point of contention for some people, and governments realized that their economies were taking a massive cliff dive, they started planning the reopening of some businesses. The way that these reopenings would go on to work was that they would slowly start reopening certain businesses that had been deemed non-essential early on. After they opened these businesses where people would have little contact with others, they would begin working on opening bigger businesses.
The plans to reopen the various businesses over time was not just limited to businesses but all public places as a whole and this helped assuage peoples’ anxiety. Knowing that they had at least some kind of opportunity to get out of the house, people started going out more while still listening to the rules they had been given. In order for businesses to open and stay open, they had to follow the same rules that were given out at the start of the pandemic. To no one’s surprise this would be the case permanently for all businesses as more and more of them began opening to the public once again. Then, the complaints started rolling in and people stopped listening to the rules properly, which led to a large surge in new virus cases which once again threatened to shut down various businesses.
Although many businesses did not end up shutting down, they still ended up being affected by this surge in cases in some way, shape, or form. Many businesses that were deemed higher risk were not seeing the same number of customers they had seen after reopening and they had to do their best to get people to come back in. High risk locations ended up being the focal point for a lot of scrutiny from the public as most people believed that they should not have opened to begin with. As previously noted, businesses were reopened by order of which ones were the lowest risk to those with the highest risk. Obviously the ones that were higher risk for causing the infection to spread were the ones that ended up opening the latest, if at all. In some places like California there were businesses that were not able to reopen at all due to the risk they posed.
The biggest example of a business that was trying to open in July but wasn’t able to was Disneyland in Anaheim, California because of the heavy restrictions in place. This was pretty warranted though as California was one of the states with some of the worst numbers in terms of how many new cases they ended up getting on a regular basis. The far reaching effects of not being able to open are now being seen by the public because Disney has revealed that they have had to lay off over 28,000 employees from their Parks, Experiences, and Products divisions. Just a couple of months later they announced that they are going to be laying off 4,000 more for a total of 32,000 people within the first few months of next year. This was just one industry that had been affected in one place which has managed to create such a huge effect in the end.
The film industry has easily been among one of the more interesting ones to follow as of late because of everything that is currently going on right now. First of all, movies theaters were listed as being one of the types of business that is high risk for causing the rate of infection to start going through the roof. As such, they were easily among the last businesses to even be allowed to open their doors up once again and this definitely took some time before it was possible. Even if certain places allowed theaters to reopen , movie theater chains did not want to open if they could not do so everywhere simultaneously. Since they did not want to open their locations, studios did not want to send out their films to be shown and kept shuffling around their release dates.
When the pandemic first began, studios immediately shifted all of their release dates for the following few months into either late this year, or some time next year. After that move was made, many studios eagerly awaited the moment where things would calm down enough for movie theaters to once again open in as many locations as possible. Eventually, pretty much every location was eventually allowed to reopen and knowing that people really wanted to go out and do things made them hopeful that they would be able to draw people in. Unfortunately, they did not want to open without movies and studios did not want to send movies out unless theaters were open, so this dance became an issue that needed to be overcome somehow. AMC theaters actually stepped up and announced their official reopening in as many locations as possible for the middle of August and other theaters followed suit.
After theaters were finally able to open their doors up once again they ran into yet another problem which was the fact that they could not actually get anyone to come out to see any movies. There were a couple of films which launched just after theaters reopened with very little success, but theaters knew that a blockbuster would be just the thing they needed to try and draw people back. Luckily for them, they had just the movie with the upcoming movie ‘Tenet‘ which was set to release just a couple of weeks after they reopened by Warner Bros.. The movie was an absolute enigma of a film which was directed by acclaimed director Christopher Nolan who wanted his film to get out there as soon as possible. So Warner decided to humor him and also test the market by releasing the film at the end of August internationally and the beginning of September domestically.
What would follow this is nothing short of a tragedy for the film industry as, although the movie did fairly well on its opening weekends, it started tanking after just a few weeks. It wasn’t really the movie’s fault because it was just the fact that the number of people who really wanted to see the film died down after the initial weeks. Normally people would go to the movies to hang out and waste some time seeing new films, but over the months theaters were closed, streaming and digital releases became extremely convenient for people. This convenience led many to the path of least resistance which involved no risk and they would rather wait for films to release digitally rather than put their health at risk. Needless to say, studios saw this and, realizing that the market for theaters is in a terrible state at the moment, they pushed back most of their upcoming releases into some time next year.
The decision to push back films into next year isn’t exactly the best choice, but it is likely to be the one that ends up helping both studios and theaters, if theaters can last that long. This push to make most of their biggest films available some time next year rather than trying to make them work in theaters now caused Christopher Nolan to say that studios are making the wrong decisions based on what happened to ‘Tenet.’ He recognized the fact that ‘Tenet’ did not do well do to the way the world is right now and that it would not be easy to get theaters back up on their feet. Nolan is known for advocating hard that movies should be shown in theaters as it is the best possible way for someone to watch a new movie and he is passionate about the movie-going experience in general. He believes that studios should be looking for solutions rather than trying to wait out the pandemic so they can make the most money possible.
It would appear, as of late, that Warner Bros. is not really willing to take many chances anymore though as they have already dealt with a loss caused by the fact that ‘Tenet’ needed to make a fortune just to break even before tallying marketing costs. In an effort to try and combat the loss of money since they released ‘Tenet,’ they have been trying to come up with a proper way of actually releasing their movies going into the next year. Obviously the pandemic will affect theaters both during and after it is over and this is a fact that has been taken into account by many studios at this point. They are hoping that theaters will start being successful again in the not too distant future with the vaccine rolling out, but there are no guarantees and they aren’t willing to take the risk. Warner recently announced that they will be releasing all of their 2021 films simultaneously on both their streaming service HBO Max and in theaters.
Needless to say, people were shocked once they found out about this plan and many were left wondering exactly how that will end up playing out. It isn’t a surprise to any one anymore that movies can release straight to digital as it has been a means for companies to get revenue during the pandemic while possibly losing out on potential future revenue from theaters. In an effort to help theaters, a couple of movies lately have been releasing to theaters to try and drive some kind of traffic their way and they aren’t really losing out on anything this way either. They have been given the opportunity to make some extra money in and for theaters and then they can just release their films digitally 17 days later. This comes from a landmark deal offered by AMC since they were kind of in a bad situation anyway so that they could at least try to make some money. The way it goes is that theaters would get new movies for 17 days exclusively and then after the 17 days anyone would be able to purchase the film from a digital platform.
Warner, having their own streaming service, works a bit differently as they already have a platform set up for them to be able to launch new releases. They have been trying to drive traffic to their streaming service for quite some time since its launch in late May earlier this year and so new blockbusters being available on their service seemed like the best way to get more subscribers. This did not sit well with some people, namely Christopher Nolan who works regularly for the studio because he thinks that this method of releasing movies is going to completely degrade the industry as a whole. We have already heard of his passion for the theatrical experience so it is no surprise that he would want theaters to have the best chance of staying open in the future the way they always have been. This seems to be a sentiment that is shared by others as well, and that has apparently been the case with James Gunn.
Gunn is known for a number of his works over the years with his most notable ones of late being the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movies for the MCU. When he was temporarily fired as the director of the film, he was scooped up by Warner to direct a sort of sequel for ‘Suicide Squad’ which is now known as ‘The Suicide Squad.’ Although it is a sequel, it is actually meant to be more of a spiritual reboot of the original film and Gunn has made it clear that this version of the film is his wholeheartedly and the studio did not interfere. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, the studio has been accused of interfering with a lot of the previous film, as well as a few other films that have released over the past few years. To no one’s surprise based on seeing his previously mentioned works, people immediately became excited after the first trailer for ‘The Suicide Squad’ dropped a little while back. Ever since then, it has become a big deal for people that the movie has a release date set for summer next year.
Gunn has confirmed recently that the final cut of the movie that is ready to be shown theatrically has officially been finished and it is ready over 8 months before release. Of course this has been very exciting news for people, but it is now being overshadowed by the fact that some people are not taking too kindly to WB releasing movies the way they are going to next year. After all, many directors and crew put a lot of time into making movies be the best that they can possibly be and they know that the only real way to have the movie launch is in theaters. With Warner Bros. plan in place, ‘The Suicide Squad’ will actually release in both theaters and on HBO Max as it is a Warner property. Reportedly, Gunn is non-too happy about the fact that Warner is doing this with his film that he put so much time into and it isn’t any better that they have apparently not fairly compensated him for the move.
For the studio it is easy to see where the positives lie in releasing the movies the way that they are since they will be drawing more people in for their streaming service. On top of this, they would actually end up saving some money as a portion of what is earned from the theatrical release goes towards the theaters themselves as well as some of it going straight to the director, cast and crew if they have contracts like that. The more money they can make from the HBO Max releases means that they don’t really need to give a portion to them and they can just keep everything they get to themselves. By allowing people to do things this way, they are openly saying that they would prefer this over people going to the movie theaters to see their films since it could end up benefiting them more in the end. Needless to say, Gunn is dissatisfied by this turn of events and wants them to fairly compensate him for the loss of income that will occur with this move of theirs.
By George Robbins
Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable characters in all of comic book history and this has been helped along by the fact that he easily has among the most amount of movies about him. The story of Spider-Man was given life on the live-screen for the first time with Sam Raimi’s 2002 rendition of ‘Spider-Man.’ Since this movie was the first one to be made about the character and it was executed very well, the movie grew vastly popular and brought the hero into the general public’s eyes. It’s sequel was just as well received as they not only made it a good movie but also included one of the most famous of Spidey’s arch-enemies, Doc Ock, in the film. Needless to say the Spider-Man movies were doing pretty well at the time and the popularity of the character had risen tremendously, but the character himself has been popular for a long time.
The fact that Spider-Man is just a person that gained enhanced senses while trying his best to help people and not trying to gain glory made him resonate with a lot of people. This made it possible for the character to become even more popular as time went on and the Sam Raimi films from the early 2000’s definitely helped. Unfortunately, the third movie in that trilogy came into being and the popularity of the character ended up taking a nosedive for a while. While the character certainly remained popular, the hype around him started dying down, but that started taking an upturn when they announced the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ movie which would make him a closer representation to his comic book counterpart. Some liberties had to be taken in Raimi’s films to make the story interesting and to make it have stand out in some way so it was nice to see that the character was going to be represented properly on screen.
Unfortunately for Sony, who has owned the Spider-Man property for a number of years, the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ movies were not what they thought they would be. They thought that they would be able to revitalize the popularity of the character, but people didn’t like the movies the same way they did with Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films. So for a few years afterward, people were worried about what would end up happening in the future until they saw that Sony made a deal with Disney. Everyone knew that this meant that Spider-Man would eventually find his place in the MCU and he finally appeared in ‘Civil War.’ He eventually got his own films in the MCU and people once again fell in love with the character as he was given his original youthful vigor and enthusiasm from his comic book counterpart. In the mean time, Sony continued working the Spider-Man IP even if it wasn’t with the newest iteration of the character.
Sony has continued making the best use out of their Spider-Man characters that they can work with and this has led to them making one of the best Spider-Man animated films of all time. They have also started the process of creating other films based on characters from the universe that they have the rights to which no include the anti-heroes ‘Venom’ and soon, ‘Morbius.’ These characters are easily recognizable characters from the Spider-Man universe which all have importance to the character at the end of the day. They have been making these movies in the hopes that they will eventually be able to weave their movies into the MCU through Spider-Man and Jared Leto, who is starring in ‘Morbius,’ has confirmed that this is exactly what they are trying to do. There is no telling whether this plan will actually end up being successful, but many people are hopeful that this will be the case some day as they have been wanting to see those characters portrayed properly in a Spider-Man film for years.
By George Robbins
Movie releases over this past year have been something that a lot of people in the movie industry have been obsessing over because they aren’t really possible now. More specifically, they cannot be done in the same way that they would normally be able to be done because the pandemic has essentially shut down the regular release routes. The film industry has seen some of the largest changes possible over this previous year that will no doubt have some kind of lasting effect on the industry for some time. The effect that this has on the industry is actually one that may just end up changing the industry as a whole moving forward and some people aren’t exactly happy about this. After all, many people were content with the way that things were before the pandemic began and they don’t want to have to deal with something new.
When this whole pandemic began, we knew that things were not going to be the same way that they always used to be but there was no way of really knowing for sure what the effect would be. For most businesses, they knew that they would not be able to reopen in the same way once they were given the go-ahead by the government. They knew that they would have new health and safety regulations which would also limit their overall capacity to a degree where it is much harder to make any kind of revenue now. Obviously this is something that not many people were happy about, but they knew that this was necessary if they wanted to open up at all. At the very least, they could reopen and know that people were going to end up coming back to them after a short amount of time had passed.
Movie theaters and the movie industry as a whole are in an entirely different boat from most other forms of entertainment because of the rules they must follow. The rules between the two mediums aren’t all that different or really different from any of the other ones for that matter since they all involved the same ways for keeping the number of new cases down. However, most other places of business can still continue on their own without necessarily relying on the number of customers they have. Obviously they would rather get as many people as they can to enter their businesses but what can they really do given the current situation. They are making the best of the situation they have, upselling whatever they can to make up for the lost revenue and their customers are definitely willing to pay just so they don’t have to go home.
On the other hand, movie theaters have an entirely different issue to deal with and that is that they are not really getting any business at all which is what is affecting them. At least other forms of entertainment and dining have some kind of business flowing in and out of their doors which have made them capable of continuing business. Movie theaters have been trying their best just to try and keep up with many theaters now shut down for the foreseeable future and others edging closer to bankruptcy as the year reaches the end. Movie theaters were able to reopen some time in August with some even opening up before then, but this was just the start of a whole new problem unfortunately. After theaters reopened to the public, it became impossible for them to get business because they had no new movies to show to the public.
Before the big theaters started opening on a national scale, the smaller privately owned or franchised theaters started reopening; showing older movies since they had no new movies. This led to theaters on the national scale deciding that they were going to open regardless of having any new releases or not in August. This was a catalyst that was used in an attempt to get studios to hand over some new movies to theaters so that they could start showing them to make money again. Despite opening to the public, movie theaters were still a dangerous choice for studios to try and work around because no one knew how the general public would take to them being open. The studio which ended up biting the bullet, so to speak, was Warner Bros. who had a blockbuster up their sleeves that they had been trying to get out all summer. The movie that they had been hyping up for awhile already, ‘Tenet,’ was the movie that they would end up releasing at the end of August.
Warner was very close to just pushing back the release date again, but in an effort to both gauge the market, and appease Christopher Nolan who directed the movie, they released the movie. Originally the movie was meant to release in the middle of July and they pushed it back by a couple of weeks a few times until theaters announced that they would be opening in August. This was the opportunity they were asking for to release their newest blockbuster film and they were not going to go and throw the chance away to be the ones that could have saved the movie theater market. Unfortunately, they did not gauge theater-goers properly and after just a few weeks ‘Tenet’ was not making anywhere near the money they needed just to try and break even. This was the signal for other studios to give up on big releases this year and instead just wait until next year to release.
It was discussed for a long time by both the studio and those awaiting the movie’s release that the movie could possibly release on a digital format or, at the very least, it could release much later on. However, Nolan was advocating very hard for the studio to keep their summer release schedule and was even willing to put up with the delayed summer release. In order to appease Nolan who is easily one of the biggest director under their belt they decided to just release the movie in theaters and kill multiple birds with one stone. Needless to say, they pretty much discovered that this was probably a mistake and now they have gone a completely different direction for the next year. They will actually be releasing movies on both their streaming service, HBO Max, and in theaters simultaneously on the days of their releases and it isn’t a decision that Nolan is taking lightly.
Nolan is known for advocating for the premiere movie-going experience when it comes to how movies should be premiered to the public rather than any other method of release. He believes that movies can only really be experience properly in movie theaters and that should be the way that all movie releases are handled. Unfortunately the studio is a business, and to them the best way for them to make money would be to go with their current plan rather than trying to fix the theater situation which is what Nolan is trying to get studios to do. As a direct result, Nolan started bashing Warner Bros. for their plan to release their 17-picture 2021 slate on HBO Max by saying that their actions are helping to effectively dismantle the industry as a whole. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but it is most certainly true that this will have some kind of affect on the industry as a whole moving forward.
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