By George Robbins
This year has been a long and arduous one and although it is getting closer to ending, the challenged that have come with it are going to continue into next year. Even though there is so much going on right now, people are still trying to put their best foot forward for the future to come and it can be seen in the projects being worked on at the moment. There are plenty of projects specifically that are being worked on by the movie industry at the moment to make up for the fact that they aren’t actually releasing anything out into the public. It is very unfortunate for the movie industry, but they can’t find the best way to release films at the moment leaving them with not much else to do but work on other projects. That being said, there are many projects people are waiting for a release for and among them in ‘No Time To Die.’
The upcoming Bond film is one that people have very much been looking forward to ever since the movie’s initial announcement was made. This has led to people excitedly preparing for the upcoming 25th entry into the Bond universe and the consequences that the film will bring with it. In an incredible fashion, the current actor playing Bond at the moment, Daniel Craig, will be retiring from the role after he plays his part in the upcoming film. This film is meant to be a movie unlike the others as it will be a testament to the mettle that makes the character what he is and how the events of the film will take a heavy toll on the character. While much of the plot is still relatively unknown to the public at large, we already know a few details revolving around the main villain of the upcoming film.
We know now that the villain of the upcoming film, played by Rami Malek, will be a threat to both Bond and the world at large and that he will bring with him untold consequences. These consequences, while largely unknown, will definitely spell out the end of the current James Bond as we know him. This isn’t really surprising since we already know that this will be Craig’s last time playing the agent in any film, but it was just a matter of how his exit from the films would take place. While it might not have been a very largely discussed topic, the topic of who will end up taking the mantle of agent 007 by the end of ‘No Time To Die’ was discussed. It has now been confirmed by actress Lashana Lynch that her character Nomi will be the one who will end up carrying on the legendary agent number. All-in-all, this seems pretty fitting given the way this series of Bond films has played out and when the movie eventually releases, it will certainly be an interesting one.
By George Robbins
These past months have proven to be quite a difficult time for just about everyone and the TV and Movie industry are in the same boat as everyone else. It has become a tremendous effort for studios to try and come up with ways to capture the attention of people when their minds are focused on so much more. Unlike the movie side of things though is the TV side which has actually managed to flourish more in this new environment than its counterpart. The movie industry is in a state of near suspended animation with a few notable exceptions being laid out here and there in such a way that they can make some kind of revenue. That part of the industry is the section which has become more devoted to the streaming side of movie releases.
The fact remains that movie releases are the toughest decisions being made within the industry at the moment because studios are trying to figure out just what the best move to make would actually end up being. For most studios, they believe the best choice at their disposal is to wait for the pandemic to either be over, or to wait until there is a much better handle on things. This has become a way of thinking that some within the industry are not happy with and even director Christopher Nolan has said that they should really be looking at alternative solutions for these issues. The alternative approach some studios are taking with some of their films is the aforementioned alternative, straight-to-digital releases. Whereas these are the problems being faced by the movie industry, the TV industry is facing its own issues.
While not as terrible as what is happening in the movie industry, the TV industry is trying to deal with the fact that they cannot as readily make content. This means that they are stuck trying to come up with better ways to try and get people’s attention and keep that attention since television relies almost entirely on viewership. With this in mind, TV studios are trying to play shows to the best of their ability in an effort to keep viewership even if it means just playing re-runs. Unfortunately, we all know that re-runs of TV shows can get very boring after enough time passes seeing the same old thing. Thus, a majority of TV viewership has been going to streaming services and while this may be working out for some companies, there are many who are now suffering.
Like television, streaming services are all under different contracts and they possess a lot of different programming depending on those contracts. Hence, the reason why you need to have something like 10 different streaming networks is so that you can watch the various shows and programs as much as you want. That is the main selling point for many streaming services since watching whatever you want, whenever you want is kind of a gift. Unfortunately though, some things we want to watch are under exclusivity contracts which force us to only be able to watch them on television. This just so happens to be the case with the ‘Harry Potter‘ movies which are under contract to appear on NBCUniversal cable networks instead of their streaming service Peacock.
NBCUniversal, like most other major networks at this point, owns Peacock which is meant to be their premiere streaming service that houses all of the movies and shows under contract with the network. The ‘Harry Potter’ films were all put onto the service as a way for fans to be able to go on and watch the films they have loved for so many years. Unfortunately this was not mean to last though as they inevitably took the movies off of the service and put them back onto their cable channels in an effort to follow contractual obligations. Those obligations made it so that the movies would be on television networks for the foreseeable future, so anyone who wants to stream the movies will have to wait awhile in order to do so once again. In the meantime, plenty of other content is available on the service and there are plenty of shows on the network to fill space between movie airings.
By George Robbins
Over the past few months, it has been a struggle for people in the movie industry to try and come up with ways to move forward with their plans due to the pandemic. This isn’t really all that much of a surprise because what else would people be doing other than figuring out how to both alleviate boredom and plan for the future. Without this pandemic, we would have just seen things continue on their merry way where new movies would have released and there would be new productions taking place. These new productions are now the only things we primarily hear about anymore as people have nothing better to work on within the film industry due to the new guidelines in place. After all, it is kind of hard for movies to release the way things currently stand, especially when it comes to movie theaters.
Movie theaters are in a spot of bother at the moment because they are lacking in both new content and potential customers as people don’t want to go to theaters. Not only are movie theaters a high risk environment, but they have a lack of overall seating now that capacity has been severely limited by new health guidelines. This has made people even less enthused by the whole situation and given people less of a reason to get a small group together to go out and see any kind of movies whatsoever. Even if the restrictions weren’t so bad, people still have no reason to go out to theaters because of the aforementioned lack in variety we have seen with new releases. After studios decided to push back their new movie releases in favor of a better release window, theaters no longer have any upcoming movie releases to play to the public.
Variety is something that is important in every single aspect of life and variety in movie theaters is just as important as variety in the culinary world. If there are more options available to the public, especially more diverse options, then people would much rather spring for that scenario as more choice can health people in the end. The problem with theaters nowadays during this pandemic is that they have almost no new options to give people who actually want to go out to the movies. Therefore, there is no incentive given to the people who want to go out to theaters because there may not be something there that they want to watch. This lack of variety stems directly from studios deciding not to put their films out so that they can instead try and beat out the pandemic for a better release window.
No matter how we look at the current situation for theaters, it all looks grim in the end and we don’t know what will happen with them. Some are closing down until further notice, while big theater chains like AMC are going to be bankrupt by the end of the year. We don’t know if theaters will really ever be the same again, but we do know for a fact that the industry is moving on whether we decide to recognize that fact or not. So if the industry is moving on, then how exactly are they deciding to move forward if they cannot release any of their films that they have been working on? They are just steadily building up a catalog of films that they can set future dates for when things start to calm down with the pandemic. A number of films have been getting back to work recently while there are now many more films currently awaiting their chance to start working.
The best way people in the film industry have been keeping busy despite all that is that they have been trying to come up with new movie ideas to pass the time. Among those ideas is one from writer Bobby Herbeck and producer Kim Dawson which sees the hopefully inevitable return of the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles‘ to the big screen. The titular turtles Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, and their mentor/ father-figure Splinter were originally part of a hit animated show from the late 80’s which showed them in all kinds of situations where they would show off their ninja skills. While the show itself was a hit success, especially among younger crowds, what really cemented its place in pop-culture was the 1990 movie of the same name which brought the turtles to life. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop animatronics brought them to life on screen and many fans still fondly remember the film.
Riding on the back of the TV show’s success, the 1990 live-action movie managed to be a success worthy of an entire live-action trilogy. That popularity never really died down as a new animated movie was made in 2007 and Michael Bay rebooted the films in 2014. However, the popularity of the original trilogy of films was never truly forgotten by the general public. With that fact in mind Bobby Herbeck and Kim Dawson want to bring the original trilogy back into the public eye and give it a proper sequel instead of a reboot like we got in 2014. This is an idea that plenty of fans of the Turtles would probably love to take to fruition but even if this idea gains traction, it will be a long time still before we get to see a new film come out involved with that trilogy. While it could potentially come out a long time from now, it would still be interesting to see happen and at least by then, things should be going back to how they were originally.
By George Robbins
These past months have been difficult for everyone who has been trying to lives their lives the way that they used to before the pandemic began and things aren’t bound to change any time in the near future. This pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that business and personal matters are conducted and it has led to many different changes being put into effect that we will see staying in effect for quite some time. Many different forms of industry have already cemented the fact that they plan on changing things as time goes on that we now know we will be seeing companies acting very differently in the future. One of the biggest industries that have revealed their plans on changing in the future is the film industry which has seen a massive upheaval since the pandemic started back in March. As a direct result, they have since started working on ways to push their business agenda forward while working on fixes for dealing with the situation with movie theaters.
When this pandemic first began back in March, movie theaters, like all other businesses, shut down in order to follow the rules in place to keep people safe during the pandemic. Movie theaters were certainly higher on the list in terms of risk assessment and this meant that even when businesses were eventually allowed to reopen to the public, theaters couldn’t. Governments made their risk assessment decisions based upon a couple of different factors that led to their shutting down of larger populated businesses. It makes sense in terms of the overall spread of the virus as the pandemic was spreading due to the large concentration of crowds in centralized locations, of which theaters were that type of location. With this being the case, movie theaters remained shut far longer than most other businesses for months on end.
When theaters were finally given the okay to reopen their doors again, they had an even more difficult problem laid out before them and that was how they were going to bring back business. It turns out that movie theaters kind of need new movies to be showing on their screens if they want to get anyone’s attention. With no new movies to show, even if theaters decided that they would try to open their doors, they lacked any kind of incentive for customers to come in and visit that location. Therefore, even if they could open, theaters made the decision to keep their doors shut until studios gave them new movies to show. This, in turn, ended up resulting in studios deciding not to give movies to any theaters as they felt there would be no point in doing so if those theaters were not open.
What it finally ended up taking for movie theaters to get proper release dates for films was the decision for AMC to open their doors regardless of what would happen back in the middle of August. When they finally made this decision, studios stopped constantly moving their release dates around and found steady dates that they could try and release their movies. The first major studio to take that incredible leap with a new blockbuster that everyone was looking forward to was Warner Bros. with Christopher Nolan’s new movie ‘Tenet.’ The fact is that the movie had a lot going for it such as the mysterious plot that people had been teased by in the movie’s trailers and the press given by the actors which only further excited the people who wanted to go and see the film. Thus, the release of ‘Tenet’ would end up becoming the perfect benchmark for other studios to decide if they wanted to keep their movie release dates the way they were.
Warner Bros’. plans for ‘Tenet’ involved them having an international release for the film before they had a domestic release due to the state of the pandemic and how well it was being handled in various locations. Therefore, the movie ended up having a release near the end of August where the movie would end up premiering in the international market and then one week later, the movie had its premiere for the domestic market. The first weeks in both markets were perfectly fine given the state the world is in right now dealing with the pandemic and the movie managed to rake in about $150 million in those two weeks. What ended up following this however was a length of time where the movie just did not measure up to what the studio was hoping for, at least domestically, and it made almost nothing compared to its first week. What followed was just a length of time where everything seemed to be heading in the wrong direction for the movie industry.
‘Tenet’ may not have held up well in the domestic market, but it continued to do well in the international market as a whole which is how the movie has now managed to reach approximately $350 million. While this may be impressive, there are a few things to note here such as the fact that the domestic market only raised $50 million in capital and the movie also needs to make $500 million just to break even before marketing costs. Needless to say, things are not looking great for the movie, but things are even worse for the industry as a whole as a result of this. The main problem to come from the whole ‘Tenet’ launch is the fact that the film industry realized that people really aren’t comfortable with going out to movie theaters at a time like this and they feel uncomfortable trying to get a seat in a limited capacity setting. With theaters having limited seating for everyone, people have been trying to figure out just how to go and enjoy movies with people and the lack of movie variety doesn’t help.
When people would go out to the movies, they would go to see films that they had interest in seeing and as a result they would see posters for other films that were playing in said theater. When they would see these posters they might become interested in that film and maybe they would come back to see it which would help both the theater itself and the various studios playing films there. With the start of the pandemic, new movies were pulled from theaters and all upcoming releases were also changed so when theaters reopened, there was nothing playing in theaters whatsoever. With such a lack of variety, it was really only the people who wanted to see ‘Tenet’ who went out to see it upon release and therefore, attendance ended up dropping significantly in following weeks. Internationally, things were similar, but the pandemic is generally being handled better abroad so of course more people would go out and see movies.
Christopher Nolan made a point to speak out about how studios are reacting to all of this lately and said that studios have taken the wrong issues away from the ‘Tenet’ release and that they should be reacting differently. After seeing that nobody was going to be going out to see movies for the most part, almost every single movie in this year’s line-up ended up being pushed back tremendously. Nolan believes this is the wrong way to do things as they could better help theaters by coming up with better solutions to draw people in rather than move around release dates just to try and outlast the pandemic. The truth of the matter is that while studios can wait out the pandemic, theaters will end up going bankrupt soon enough with AMC even reporting a 90% loss in revenue since last year. This will only end up harming the movie industry as a whole where a large part of their revenue comes from the theatrical release of their films. It would make more sense for them to try and work alongside theaters at this point to come up with ways to get people back in the limited number of seats theaters have.
This is not the only problem being dealt with by theaters at the moment either as they have had a new trend to deal with among the industry which may further end up harming them. Recently, it has been discussed amongst various studios as to whether thy have wanted to go with straight to digital releases rather than waiting for things to smooth out with theaters. This has been a topic of discussion for quite some time now as studios like Universal have apparently been thinking about this very thing for years now and the pandemic has given them the perfect opportunity to do so. Now that many major studios also have streaming platforms of their own, they have also been discussing putting their own content straight up on those platforms. While this may sound like they are completely abandoning theaters for digital releases, it isn’t in their plans to do this. Studios have already made it known that they don’t plan on making digital their main release platform and companies like Disney have said that they will now be making decisions based upon the film they actually want released.
Essentially, Disney plans on having a Board of some kind decide on whether a film should inevitably have a theatrical release or if it should be given the full theatrical release treatment that their usual films get. Of course Disney is now in control of some of the most iconic fictional characters in existence so it would only make sense that they would try to make those films release in theaters while they put the lesser known one off projects on their Disney+ platform. The way that Disney has phrased it thus far is that some movies are just better suited for an at-home experience as opposed to a theatrical one which is apparently how they will make the decision as to which movies go where. They have already made decisions which have put some of their newer films up on their streaming platform and those have been pretty successful thus far. The two films that Disney uploaded to their service over the summer were ‘Hamilton’ and the live-action version of ‘Mulan.’ While the latter may have been surrounded by controversy, it has been a successful venture so far and the former has even managed to become the most watched film on digital thus far.
Disney was not the first company to put some of their titles up straight-to-digital, but it is not surprise that their movies have been among the highest watched this year. It also kind of helps that Disney has built up its reputation over the years to the point where even if things aren’t going well for them, they could still be seen in a good light by their fan base. That aside, they have been nailing it with their Disney+ service ever since it launched around this time last year and it has caught way more attention than people gave it credit for initially. This made no sense to begin with as everyone knew that a service with every single Disney owned movie and show on it would be an instant hit, but apparently Disney didn’t have so much faith in it. After their releases over the summer though, they have since changed their minds.
While it was pretty much anticipated that Disney would be making big moves like this, even during the pandemic, there were some things people never would have expected out of this year. Chiefly among those things nobody would have expected to see was the fact that the world finally got to see ‘Borat 2’ being made. The thing was that the movie was expected to never be made because the star, Sacha Baron Cohen, has said that he wouldn’t play the character anymore because he was too recognizable in the eyes of the public. Not too long ago, we made the discovery that someone had seen Cohen in his costume for the character driving around and thus we all became excited for the idea that the character would be making a comeback. What we didn’t immediately know was that the movie was not only finished already but that it was already screened for executives so that they could decide when and where it would be screened. Even more surprising to people was the fact that they would get to see the film before October was out.
It turned out that Amazon had purchased the rights to the movie and they were already getting ready to premiere the movie on Amazon Prime Video before we even knew of its existence. Following the announcement of the upcoming film, people immediately started getting ready to watch it and upon release, the movie caused a massive spike in viewership on the Amazon Prime Video service. The movie has now reached the point where, in just two weeks, it is about to surpass ‘Hamilton’ in terms of the most watched straight-to-digital films. It is no surprise to anyone that the controversial film would bring in such an enormous crowd, but the rate at which it did so is even more interesting as it shows the potential straight-to-digital can have when it comes to anticipated films. It is most certainly an interesting situation to watch unfold as time goes on.
By George Robbins
For those who enjoy the Halloween season, and even for those who don’t, there are a number of films that people know they will end up seeing on television on a regular basis around that time. The same logic goes for just about any big upcoming holiday seasons regardless of what they are, but Halloween is one of those seasons where you already know what you will see. One of the most iconic films to see during the month of October nowadays is the movie ‘Hocus Pocus’ which follows some kids trying to escape a trio of witches. The movie is certainly one that people recognize now as soon as they hear the name since it is something that has managed to become entwined with the Halloween holiday itself. What many nowadays may not know is that the movie was not always so popular.
The first time that the movie ‘Hocus Pocus’ released into the public it was immediately referred to as a bad movie that no one wanted to really go out and see. Over time, people’s overall view of the movie improved tremendously to the point where people actually ended up liking the movie over time. In a very fitting fashion given the plot of the film and its overall theme, the movie started gaining a cult following and the movie only ended up gaining more and more popularity over the years. Now it has probably become the film that most people recognize as being a Halloween film and everyone expects to see it when the holiday season rolls around. What some people may not know is that the upcoming film actually has a sequel that is meant to come out in the future.
The upcoming sequel for ‘Hocus Pocus’ has managed to gain a lot more traction over the past few years as the fan base for the original movie has only ever grown even more devout. People have been creating entire communities just about the film and discussing the things about it that have turned it into the cult film that it now is. The plot of the original film was something that people eventually found interesting as time went on, but there were certainly aspects that were lacking. Despite this, the movie found cult status so what would happen if the plot of the movie was also very well written? We may very well find an answer to this question as Bette Midler, known for her role as witch leader Winifred in the movie, has already said that she thinks the plot is great. Taking that with a grain of salt, it will still be interesting to see the film when it releases.
By George Robbins
Movies are in a bit of a downward spiral at the moment due to the way that the industry is handling movie releases and how far down movie theaters are going. Movie theaters are not able to bring people in the same way that they have always been able to do so and there is nothing that can really be done at the moment to change that fact. The fact remains that people are still far too wary of theaters to want to go out to them and watch new films unfold before their eyes. Businesses that focus more on just amassing large crowds so that they can make their money are the ones currently suffering the most with what is going on at the moment. Movie theaters easily remain near the top of that list because that it the basis of their entire business model.
With movie theaters pretty much down for the count on bringing in customers, they have begun to suffer significantly when it comes to their revenue streams. If theaters are suffering, then it is easy to see why studios have been refocusing their efforts on moving around release dates and making sure they have better release windows. They have been focusing their efforts almost entirely on moving dates around and trying to ensure that current projects have been getting worked on. The former side of things has even caught some criticism from one Christopher Nolan who believes they should instead be trying to help theaters by coming up with new plans. Rather than delaying their films, he thinks they should come up with new release ideas to help out theaters.
Studios are not so much focused on their movie release plans anymore, so it is unknown just how they will react to Nolan’s statement. More than likely, they won’t say or do anything at all to try and help theaters by coming up with new strategies, even though they should. In the end it would only end up helping them in the long run to try and come up with new plans to help theaters as they have become essential to their business models over time. Even if they tried to explore alternatives for film releases, the current model of release still supports more overall revenue for the studios. One would think that studios just need to come up with a better way of dealing with this pandemic and their releases, but we should recognize that it also isn’t all that easy.
While releasing films is pretty much outside of the range of many studios at this moment, making them doesn’t seem to be an issue these days. When the pandemic first started, pretty much every aspect of the movie industry was shut down and most upcoming movie projects pretty much stopped being worked on in any kind of official capacity. As a result, many films had their releases pushed back solely due to production problems and many had to wait to start filming again. Eventually though, like most other things that were shut down due to the pandemic, movie productions started back up once again. Now, movie productions are back in full swing with a few hiccups occurring here and there but there is still plenty of time for people to work on those films.
There are films that are also being worked on behind the scenes as well because they have yet to be fully established as films that will be made. Even if they are going to be made, there is still just a lot of different work that needs to be done for them to even begin the production process properly. One such project that has once again managed to resurface in media as of late is the scheduled reboot film for the ‘Resident Evil‘ franchise. The resident evil franchise has managed to bring in a massive number of fans over the years due to the video games in the series and as such a movie was made for the games in 2002. What followed from there was a series of films crafted by Paul W.S. Anderson which told a story with some characters and places from the games involved, but with a new character as the focus.
Despite this being a way for the director to bridge the gap that many saw between both movies and video games, by crafting a new story he made something people wanted to criticize constantly. Needless to say, the ‘Resident Evil’ series of films has managed to be both a successful video game movie franchise while being negatively reviewed by critics everywhere. Fans of the games have been upset with the movies for years since they chose to more-so shy away from a lot of what people loved about the games. On top of that, it is hard to make a video game movie interesting since most of the fun of games comes from the interactivity. That being said, it is still within the realm of possibility for studios to make a good movie based upon a video game.
While the balance may end up being off a bit more than people hoped for, it is definitely possible for a video game movie to be made that is able to properly make the audience entertained. That is why they are now taking their chances with a reboot to Paul W.S. Anderson’s film series which was announced back in 2018. They apparently intend to focus much more upon the story that is told in the games with a lot of the focus going into the character people know from the games. Just recently, Gotham actor Donal Logue has signed on to play antagonist Chief Irons from the ‘Resident Evil’ games and it is sure to be an interesting performance if they continue making the film in a way befitting of the games they are based on. It is still a long ways away before the release of the film, but it is one we can all definitely be excited for, as long as they can pull it off.
Get Some Strange!
