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.
By George Robbins
The internet is becoming the home for a lot of movies nowadays both new and old through the means of digital release which has become more and more popular as time goes on. Digital release is the method by which companies will put their new content, usually which has already had a theatrical run, onto some online service where it can be purchased. The alternative for this now is that studios are making their own services in the form of streaming services as a means to make as much money from their content as possible. Obviously this is something that can only be done with the bigger companies but it is the means by which many companies plan on getting the most out of their films. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had a strong effect on the movie industry and those effects are going to echo forward from now on.
Of course, when the pandemic began every type of business save for the essential ones were shut down to the public to make sure less people would end up having the opportunity to be exposed to the virus. For the first couple of months this seemed to have worked and, along with other rules involving masks and social distancing, it was pretty successful at shutting down the rate in new cases. This downturn in cases eventually led to governments all over trying to open up as many businesses as possible in order to get their economies back on track. Obviously the shut down had a positive effect for getting the number of new cases to drop dramatically, but it also left many nations in a state of financial ruin as their economies stagnated. This is why after only a few months, they decided to start slowly reopening businesses with new restrictions in place so the cases wouldn’t spike again.
Businesses such as restaurants and the like were among the first to reopen with restrictions on total occupancy and seating rules which saw a lot of outdoor dining. While annoying for some, it was for a good reason for them to do these things and while the number of cases did start rising a bit, it was controllable. Upon the reopening of various other businesses though, everything started taking a downward spiral and the number of cases started rising even more steadily. This would go on to cause a rapid spike in cases in a short amount of time and many businesses were once again forced to be wary and enforce the health and safety rules. Not only were there just a lot more people going out at that point but also, people were just starting to get tired of the rules and regulations.
People not wanting to listen to rules really isn’t anything new, but this is a period of time where people need to actually listen to what people tell them to keep other safe. The lack of people listening to experts has led a small but not so unavoidable group of people who have managed to make things more difficult for everyone. These are the people that don’t like listening to what people tell them to do and they are the ones which end up gathering for parties where new cases then start to run rampant in the area. It is because of things like this that businesses are now rightfully worried that they could end up being shut down again due to what is now a second wave of the virus hitting everywhere. Fortunately there is a vaccine out there that is currently being tested which may end up working but there are no guarantees.
The number of people out there that need to be injected with the vaccine is not an insignificant number of people and on top of this, it is not even guaranteed to work. Of course, they need as large of a sample size as they can get to truly discover whether the vaccine will end up being effective in everyone or only a small group of people. It could even end up working on most of the population while a small number of people would not be helped by it, but it is hoped that herd immunity among a population can actually make up for this in some way. If a large majority of the population has the vaccine work for them, then the smaller number who didn’t have it work for them will be safe because the virus cannot spread so easily to them. Even if things do end up turning out for the best, there is also the issue that we don’t even know how long it could be effective for which makes it even harder to gauge how things will turn out.
With the vaccine in its distribution phase, many are hopeful that this could be the end of the pandemic which only started earlier this year. The aforementioned issues are definitely present but most people are not really looking at those and are more focused on public businesses and venues possibly being opened some time in the near future at full capacity. This kind of thinking can actually end up causing even more harm than good as people will then be more eager to try and go out once again after so long. There are plenty of people out there now that think that they can get away with not having to worry about getting sick if they were to go out and do things. This way of thinking is now the reason why there is actually talk going around that businesses could be forced to close again in order to slow the rate of new cases.
They are probably not going to shut down businesses once again, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be regulating them more harshly which is what they should have done after the summer surge. That was a point during the summer where a fair number of people ended up getting infected and it caused talks just like this where they thought about closing up again. While they may not have shut anything down, it was clear that this news had some kind of effect on businesses and many of them ended up losing a lot of money during what would be a peak season. Among the businesses which have suffered the most after reopening is the movie theater industry which has been in a state of rapid decline ever since most of them reopened in August. Now, they have been trying desperately to get more people to come through their doors before they eventually end up going bankrupt.
When theaters first reopened in August, they had already gotten off to a bad start as many people were not exactly keen on going out to places that were more likely to cause infection, like theaters, without some kind of incentive. Movie theaters thrive off of the fact that they have been the place for movies to start their release runs because of exclusivity which allows people to experience the film in a way they really wouldn’t be able to at home. This exclusivity allowed movie theaters to show new films for months before they could finally be released to the public for purchase by the production studio. Of course, once the pandemic hit, movie theaters shut down and any movies that were going to come out were delayed so that studios could release them in the future theatrically. Any movies that were already in theaters at the time had to be released by their production studio for purchase which just ended up being unfortunate for both studios and theaters.
When theaters were finally given the green light by local governments, they immediately opened their doors, but the problem was that they really had nothing to show to the public. Once the summer surge hit, many studios delayed their summer releases, making it difficult for theaters to actually have anything to show to the general public. It is due to this that they even waited until August because it played out like a dance to see who would do something first. Theaters did not want to open if they had no guaranteed movie releases and studios did not want to release any new content if the vast majority of theaters were open. This made it incredibly difficult for any progress to be made and it wasn’t until theaters reopened that we finally started seeing definitive release dates.
Unfortunately for movie goers and the movie industry as a whole, the release dates given would end up being much later than originally anticipated. After theaters were able to reopen no studio was really willing to take the leap and release their films to the public because they were worried that people would not want to go out and see them. Warner Bros. decided to take the leap by releasing the blockbuster movie ‘Tenet.’ This didn’t work out so well for them though and they ended up losing a lot of money because people didn’t go out and see the movie. This drove almost every movie in the following month through the end of the year to be moved into some time next year. Obviously people are annoyed that movies that they were looking forward to were delayed again and that they wouldn’t be able to see them until some time next year.
It really isn’t all that surprising that they made this move though because much of their initial income from movies comes from their showing in theaters and they want the best possible chance to show their films. This would obviously be some time next year, assuming that the vaccine works and the pandemic ends soon, and it would allow them to once again get people back out to theaters. This would most definitely benefit them in the long run because it would mean that they can show their new movies to large crowds without worrying if people are going to go see them. This isn’t so beneficial to theaters though as they are losing a lot of money everyday that they aren’t showing new movies even if it would be just a small influx of customers. A few customers are better than none and that is what is just barely sustaining them now that they don’t have any new movies coming out any time soon.
To say that no new movies are coming out isn’t really correct though as there have most definitely been movie releases ever since theaters have reopened their doors. The problem has lied in fact that they can’t get enough people to come in and see new movies because of the obvious worry associated with the release of new movies to theaters. People are generally smart about the pandemic and want to avoid public spaces that have been or are shared by numerous people even if they have been separated and even if they must wear masks. This fear is one that has resulted in new movies that should have gotten a decent amount of revenue essentially being given the shaft and not really making anything from their theatrical runs. Luckily for studios, they don’t have to wait long to release their movies as a deal has resulted in them being able to release digitally after just 17 days in theaters.
Now some studios, namely Warner Bros., are going the step further and going with a plan that was originally discussed by Universal Pictures earlier in the year. Universal said that their plan for future releases would be that they would release their movies on both digital and in theaters simultaneously which led to a lot of backlash from theaters. Now that theaters are not exactly in a situation to complain about things like this, Warner is taking advantage of the situation to use this original plan for themselves. They are even going to use their next blockbuster ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ as a guinea pig for this on Christmas Day, December 25th by releasing it on both HBO Max and in theaters on the same day. Not all movies are bound to take on the same format, but it is highly likely because it works out much better in the studios’ favor, at least for the near future.
One movie that this necessarily hasn’t been decided for yet is the upcoming entry to the James Bond cinematic universe which is ‘No Time to Die.’ The James Bond films have been a staple of the action-spy genre for generations at this point and the final entry in Daniel Craig’s iteration of Bond was meant to appear already, but this was delayed. Just like most movies this year, the movie was delayed because of the pandemic and although it was meant to release earlier this year it was unfortunately not able to. The second release date that this entry of Bond was going to release on was some time in November but after what happened over the summer, this plan was swapped out for the new one which sees it releasing some time next year. It is unknown exactly how we will end up seeing it, whether that be at home by streaming it or in movie theaters, and it just might end up being both.
The James Bond films are going on to their 25th entry which is most certainly a huge milestone as the character has seen a lot of revamping over the years since its original inception. The recently-departed Sean Connery gave birth to the suave, sophisticated gentleman spy with a license to kill many years ago in the 1960’s. George Lazenby took over the role for one film before Connery returned to star in his final Bond film, ‘Diamonds Are Forever.’ Roger Moore then took the title from 1973-1985 and had one of the most memorable runs with the character as he made the character seem like a more cartoonish version of himself. After Moore was Timothy Dalton who took over for the character for two films before passing the baton to one Pierce Brosnan who would take the cartoonish version of the character even further. In 2006, we saw the franchise hit the reboot switch where it would go on to be more serious while simultaneously remaining incredibly interesting for people to watch.
When Daniel Craig took over the role in 2006 with the film ‘Casino Royale,’ no one knew what to think other than the fact that the character seemed to have returned to his roots. Over the years, we saw a version of Bond that went from inexperienced and all too serious to calm and collected spy with a license to kill. Now, we are about to see the end of an era for Bond films and it is a very big deal because Bond will continue onwards from here, but it will be different yet again. It has been a long road since the first film in this era and we would not have reached this point if not for the original films. So as of now, YouTube is allowing people to watch the first 19 films which made the character into what he is today for free with advertisements. Even if people are annoyed by the ads, YouTube really didn’t have to do this and it would be difficult to watch the films otherwise if you didn’t already own them.
By George Robbins
While there may not be many space epic films which exist in the world, there are some and among those is a movie that has had a niche audience over the years and that is the movie ‘Dune.’ There are not really all that many films which can take home the title of being an epic, but this movie was one in pretty much every sense of the word. From start to finish, the movie ranged from just over two hours to just over three hours based upon which version of the film was being screened. ‘Dune’ is a science fiction film based upon the novel by writer Frank Herbert which was originally written in 1965 while the movie ended up releasing in 1984. The movie, written and directed by one David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive), and it was poised to be an interesting movie until it actually released to the public.
The problem with adapting movies from novels is that the latter is a medium that sees a lot of time and effort being put into a readable detail that people can understand and imagine for themselves by reading it. Unfortunately, movies must take that detail and turn it into visual detail that people will be able to recognize and that is a very unfortunate job to have. Being able to take something that people can imagine in their minds being completely different from each interpretation and turning that into one definitive version of that thing is a difficult task. Ultimately it falls to the director and set designers to come up with whatever it is that they need for this stuff to work. When it comes to adapting novels to film, it is even more difficult for science fiction films to be done properly because everyone imagines things being far different.
The original ‘Dune’ movie was one that not a lot of people could identify with and it didn’t help that David Lynch is known for having a strange way of directing. The movie was an epic the likes of which no one would have imagined but it ended up being a box office bomb in the end after only grossing about $31 million on a budget of $40 million. Not only did the movie do bad while it was in theaters but it was plagued by constant development trouble before it was even released. They had talked about making a film based upon the novel not long after the novel’s release but it would be almost 20 years before they got a working film out of the novel. Unfortunately, the issues they were having were a glimpse into the future because they prefaced the lack of box office response that the movie had upon release.
Ever since then, it has been a question as to whether the failure of the movie was because of the director and his directing style or if it was the novel the movie was based upon. Some novels simply do not translate as well as people think they do into the movie medium and as such, the movie itself does not feel like it is paced properly and people end up disliking it. The new and upcoming Denis Villeneuve-directed ‘Dune‘ will be a good opportunity to gauge which one of those two statements is true and it is likely it was the former issue. Brian Herbert, the son of the original author Frank Herbert, has continued writing stories in the series and developing comics based upon the series and he has said that the upcoming version of the film will be the definitive version of his father’s original work. The movie was originally supposed to release by the end of this year, but it was pushed back to October 1st of 2021 where it will release on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously. Hopefully the movie will end up being the thing that everyone wanted from the original film.
By George Robbins
There have been a lot of movies that have been in development over the course of this past year and many more which are bound to begin the production process starting as early as January. The pandemic made it very difficult for movies to get done in the right ways because of a number of issues that had to be worked through before they could get them done. When the pandemic had first begun, productions, like most other businesses, were forced to shut down until further notice which delayed the completion of many a film. This was to be expected because movie productions aren’t exactly considered to be essential businesses and they were terrible places for preventing the spread of the virus. When movies were forced to stop production, the entire industry basically ended up grinding to a halt until further notice.
Movie productions are sets that involve a countless number of people working in close proximity to one another in order to complete a massive undertaking. Obviously when a large number of people are forced to work closely to one another, it would be considered a pretty high risk and people would most definitely spread disease. Although they had to shut all productions down, this did not mean that they were going to keep said productions shut down. What studios were really waiting for was the moment when the health and safety regulations released and they could send people back out to work on sets. There was no way they would be allowed to continue filming unless those new regulations were in place because of the working conditions they would be under.
More times than not, movies are shot and produced abroad when they are made on location which a decent number of them just so happen to be. When a production crew is sent out to a location, they are sent out with equipment and they are set up within a certain space but otherwise they can freely roam around while they are there. Now, due to the pandemic, the number of people that can be sent out is limited, people need to quarantine before they can even enter another country, and rules on set are completely different. Obviously while on set, cast and crew need to wear masks at all times, except when filming a scene, and they aren’t allowed to leave the set for any reasons unless there is an emergency. These new rules have made it kind of difficult for any movies to really get done, but that hasn’t stopped many crews in the slightest.
Movies that have been in production this year were forced to shut down in March and most were able to start back up again by June or July with the new rules in place. As soon as they were able to open up once again, they immediately took advantage of that fact and got back to work even more revitalized after time off. Some productions- at least one– were able to actually get some work done while people were stuck at home and this helped them out even more in the long run as it made it easier to work through the next section of production. This meant that some productions would be able to finish sooner than initially planned and they would have plenty of time for post-production before the film was released. Many films were not this lucky though and as soon as productions began again, they had a long road ahead of them.
Some movies had actually started the process of production before the pandemic even began and they managed to at least get some of the movie done in a fair bit of time. Unfortunately, they were forced to stop their flow and those movies had to stop long before they were actually done filming which led to crews having to work even harder. There were a lot of movies that had to start up again after the green lights were given, but they also had a lot of setting up to do before they could resume. Eventually though, with people back on set and the new rules properly in place, they were finally able to resume filming and a lot of work was done very quickly. For instance, even though the ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ movie production was not resumed until later in the summer, they still managed to get their work done efficiently and they finished not much later.
Another movie that people have been looking out for has been the new ‘The Suicide Squad‘ which was being directed by James Gunn that was also able to once again resume proper production. While being touted as a sequel, it is actually more factual, apparently, to call it a spiritual sequel in the sense that it doesn’t go based off of the first movie’s story. The movie has a cast of villains from the DC universe that many people probably have no idea even existed and based on what Gunn showed people over the summer, it looks like a good movie to look out for. It has been revealed by James Gunn himself that the movie has actually wrapped production, and not only that, but also it has been finished with a final cut ready for release. The movie is set for release on both HBO Max and in theaters next summer and it is certainly one of those films that people will be watching out for upon release.
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