By George Robbins
This year has been an interesting one thus far, but mainly for all of the wrong reasons due to the pandemic we have all found ourselves trapped in. The pandemic is responsible for the shut down of countless businesses and has made it extremely difficult for those businesses to once again open their doors to the public. This has become something of a recurring issue throughout the past 8 months now and it will continue to be challenging as time rolls on. The truth of the matter is that, until the pandemic ends, businesses will not be able to return to their original functioning selves. There is no industry where this has become more clear than in the movie industry.
Whether it be movie theaters or just movie studios themselves coming up with ways of making money during this time, things are rough for everyone. In fact, movie theaters are the center point for a lot of the problems we are currently seeing in the movie industry because they can’t seem to draw in audiences right now. In order to deal with this fact, almost all movies that were meant to release this year were pushed out of this year’s line-up by the movie studios producing them. Those that haven’t been are either hopeful that people will change their minds suddenly and decide to go to the movies during a pandemic, or they are giving them digital releases. Whether it be their own streaming service or a service they have a contract with, studios are definitely thinking about digital releases.
One of the studios that has really been thinking about how to release their films as of late has been Warner Bros. who are still kind of dealing with the failure of ‘Tenet’s’ release. While the movie was reviewed pretty well, people just haven’t been willing to put their own health at risk to go and see the movie. As such, they are very willing to put a lot of their focus in HBO Max, their premiere streaming service. To further elaborate on this new focus they released pretty much all of their available content onto the service just like Disney did with Disney+. In order to draw even more attention to the service, they even made the announcement that the Snyder Cut for Justice League would be hitting the service some time in early 2021.
The Snyder Cut for ‘Justice League‘ is the director’s cut that fans have been waiting for since the release of the theatrical version of the film back in 2017. We knew immediately that this version would be more than the original version of the film ever was, especially after we found out that this special re-release was given a $70 million budget to work with. This made fans all the more excited for this upcoming release, but there is plenty more to be excited for, especially since the movie is actually going to be a four-part series shown in one hour increments on the service. On top of this, Snyder recently revealed that he is doing reshoots with a lot of the character in the film in order to fit more perfectly into the story he wants to tell. Certainly, this may just end up being the movie that we originally wanted back in 2017, and now we just need to wait a few more months for it.
By George Robbins
There are a ton of movies that are currently awaiting to have their releases finalized nowadays due to the pandemic we are all suffering through. The pandemic has caused countless issues to arise after it started back in March of this year and it is only going to continue as time goes on. The biggest issues that are arising for just about everyone are being centered around the fact that businesses are trying their best to reopen in a way that goes along with the new health and safety guidelines that are in place. With those new rules in place, many businesses began the arduous process of making themselves follow in accordance with the new guidelines so that people could once again visit their places. This is all people have wanted since the pandemic first began and it is now becoming more and more of a reality.
Of course, now that people are mostly free to go back to the places they used to frequent before the pandemic, it doesn’t mean it is something that is easy to do. The new guidelines create strict rules for both owners and occupants and also limit the number of occupants that can go into a business. This has become a huge issue for businesses that rely very heavily on just bringing in more and more people to generate their revenue. Unfortunately this is not something that can be rectified with new rules and regulations being put in place and some businesses are having a hard time adapting to all of this. This is the primary issue which is currently being faced by the movie theater industry, and by extension, the movie industry as a whole.
Movie theaters have been trying to assess their damage properly ever since the pandemic began by trying to see just how long they would end up being shut down for. Unfortunately for them, this ended up being far longer than they thought it would be because individual states had different rules in place in regards to public businesses reopening. Theaters often found their places near the bottom of the list for businesses which were allowed to open up their doors yet again. On top of this, there were the many issues involving studios where the studios themselves were not sure of when they should release their films. On top of this, the new guidelines they had to follow were anything but easy to get on top of and put into place.
Like every other business that wanted to once again open their doors to the public, movie theaters had no choice but to follow the instructions given to them by the government. These guidelines did the aforementioned things like limiting occupancy and making sure that people were following the new social distancing guidelines. On top of this, health and safety guidelines that made sure that public places remained clean also had a hand in making things difficult as surfaces were meant to be cleaned on a much more regular basis. With all of this in mind, is it really any surprise that it took so long for theaters to finally reopen their doors to the public?
The ultimate decision to reopen their doors to the public came out near the end of July as theater companies decided they didn’t care if they didn’t have any films to immediately show to the public. With that announcement, movie studios decided to also go along with this initiative and we finally started getting true release dates for theaters. The biggest movie that was going to be released that ended up on everyone’s mind ended up being the movie ‘Tenet.’ Despite its relatively strong opening weekends in both the international and domestic markets, it started failing at the box office after the third week. This didn’t exactly inspire confidence in movie studios and it heavily affected how the movie industry will be moving forward.
After ‘Tenet’ failed to do what people were hoping for by bringing business back to theaters, studios became very wary of when they wanted to release their films. This resulted in the mass exodus of films from this year’s line-up into some time next year, with many ending up being pushed into late next year. The problem is that the general public are rightfully wary of returning to public places like theaters where they may end up getting sick. This has led to many people deciding against going out to theaters which led to the horrific decline that theaters are now stuck in. Regal cinemas even went and took the next step by shutting down until further notice while the pandemic is going on in order to try and save money wherever possible.
Despite everything that is going on with movie theaters in general at the moment, studios are still doing their best to work on future films. Even if there are a lot of movies that are waiting to be released, there are a lot of movies that are ready to be worked on so that when the pandemic ends, studios don’t fall behind. Also, just because theaters shut down doesn’t mean that studios have no way of movie forward with their films. In fact, they just need to focus more on how they want to release them by deciding which movies they want to release on what platform. This is what Disney is actually doing now as they have decided to take a much stronger stance on their streaming service. As streaming has exploded since people have been stuck at home for so long, it is no surprise that they would end up doing this.
Despite the fact that Disney has made the decision to focus more on streaming, they will not at all be abandoning their movie theater releases. In fact, they have made it pretty apparent at this point that they instead just decided that movies that they believe won’t do as well in theaters will instead go over to their streaming service. This is pretty much what everyone expected to happen though and they are still saving their bigger releases for whenever they can possibly put them into theaters. Thus, just like every other studio, they have a lot to do moving forward as they are also continuing to create new content. While they have been the most vocal about their plans, there are certainly other companies which will try to do the same thing moving forward.
One of the biggest movie studios out there is the Warner Bros. studio and they have had a lot on their minds recently with this pandemic. In fact, they are the ones suffering from the fact that ‘Tenet’ is not doing so well since it was produced through their studio. They need to make a fortune on the movie just to try and break even and it hasn’t been easy with no one wanting to go out to theaters to put their health at risk. That being said, like Disney, they have their own streaming service which they can act through while simultaneously working on new projects. After all, while Disney has had more success with the MCU, Warner has the DCEU that they are still working on. While the DCEU may not be as popular, it has made plenty of money for the studio thus far and it will continue to do so with their upcoming films.
The DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, may not have the complexity or the same level of fame that the MCU has, but it is easily one of Warner’s strongest set of properties. It has easily become a polarizing topic over the years as each film belonging in the franchise has released and with those releases, we saw many films hit the wall. Despite hitting the proverbial wall, many movies in the DCEU have brought Warner a lot of money and therefore, many more films are to follow in the future. Hence the reason so many DCEU films are either being worked on, or there are plans in the works to have them be worked on in the near future. The one that is now on everyone’s minds is the upcoming standalone film ‘The Batman.’
‘The Batman’ sees Robert Pattinson taking on the role of a young, yet fierce iteration of the caped crusader while he is in his early years of wearing the cowl. The movie was among many others that were forced to postpone their productions due to the start of the pandemic and they recently resumed filming back in September after months of waiting. No one know what to expect out of the film, but after DC FanDome, we now know that this movie will be one that we should all look forward to seeing. The trailer for the film had fans going from skeptical to completely on board after it dropped and people were incredibly excited to find out we would get to see this film next year. Unfortunately, soon after, the movie had its release date pushed back to early 2022.
Between the trailer and the high praise that people working on the film have had for it, it is no surprise that people are clamoring to want to go and see the movie. When it resumed filming, information was given that the movie was a portion of the way done with filming before the production began again. However, it is more than likely that the movie will have reshoots done in order to make sure that everything is perfect by the time of release. That being said, the movie is apparently already shaping up to be something quite interesting since they are going to be working on it for some time still. Word has come out that the movie will be seeing a finished production date some time in early 2021 which makes it very much possible for more to happen with the film’s post-production.
Warner Bros. are not strangers to working heavily on films during post-production, but unlike other films, this might be warranted. From what fans have seen already, they will be expecting nothing but the best from this movie. So it is not going to far to say that the best way of making sure that this film ends up being the best version of itself is to have as much time as possible to prepare it. It is for this reason that the movie is apparently going to wrap filming some time in February, wherein they will have approximately 13 months to work on post-production before the film releases. While this pandemic has most certainly changed the time-frames in a disadvantageous way, there is no doubt that they will make use of that time to try and make the movie great.
By George Robbins
For years, there have been countless franchises that have populated the market when it comes to movies and other forms of media. Without these franchises, there would not be quite as many merchandising opportunities for companies as there are now. Franchises give companies the ability to do something more with an intellectual property than just putting that one form of media out there and hoping it does well. Of course companies can merchandize for films that stand on their own, but it is better if they were to build up some kind of base for that thing first. This is the primary point where franchises really start to come in handy because they build this base.
The base structure for merchandising primarily comes from the fact that whatever it is being ripped from has some sort of huge fan base. Of course, individual movies can have massive fan bases, but most of the time, franchises get the largest and most devoted fan bases. A franchise is not just limited to media, but that is where it is primarily found and recognized as one since that is where the term really comes into play. A movie franchise can go and turn an entire studio on its head if it is done correctly and everything they do goes well with the audience. This is how we have ended up with so many well known franchises over the years and we will no doubt be getting even more in the future.
Some of the most well-known franchises out there are related to the science-fiction medium which is how we ended up with Star Wars and the MCU standing at the top. Star Wars was obviously the first well-established franchise, but it was the start of something no one knew there was even a market for. It is easily one of the longest running franchises in the movie medium and it has grown large enough to be a part of everything from movies, to books, to toys, and even video games over the years. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this franchise will continue to encapsulate so many peoples’ lives for countless years to come. Stemming from this franchise, and already mentioned, are the toys and games which are a part of the merchandising process. These are an excellent tell of how far the franchise as a whole has managed to make it thus far.
Even though it is definitely not as old as the Star Wars franchise, the MCU is still over 10 years old and now holds a firm place as perhaps the biggest franchise there is. It was a bit easier for them to establish this franchise due to the amount of source material already on hand from the over 80 years before the first MCU film released. However, Marvel studios breathed an incredible breath of fresh air into their films, easily making them fan builder films. This eventually culminated in them being able to broaden their horizons due to being owned by Disney and countless other things came out of the franchise. Just like Star Wars, this included the movies, books, TV shows, toys, and video games and it is still so far from being over.
Not every singe franchise has the same opportunities as these franchises do and instead have to rely almost entirely on the films. Like I said, there are plenty of stand-alone films that have merchandise to help hold them up, but some films mostly just end up relying on themselves. There is almost no better example of this than in the ‘Fast and Furious‘ franchise and there are not many movies that reach the same heights other than the aforementioned franchises. This action franchise almost always tries to outdo every previous film in its line-up, with the action sequences getting more and more wild as each film comes up. Thus we are now heading towards the release of ‘Fast and Furious 9’ which was supposed to have released already, but was unfortunately delayed.
Due to the pandemic, ‘Fast and Furious 9’ was unfortunately pushed back into 2021 despite having a release date originally set in May of this year. This doesn’t have much of an affect on this action movie juggernaut of a franchise though as plans were immediately made to put time to good use as they are planning the last of their mainline films. The ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise will come to an end with a two-part movie which will be told over the course of both the 10th and 11th movies. Both installments will be directed by Justin Lin and we are sure to see them play out over the next couple of years depending on how things go with this pandemic. That aside, this is a popular franchise, so they have no reason to stop making money. So there is no doubt that they will try to keep this franchise alive by making spin-offs.
By George Robbins
The coronavirus pandemic is bar far one of the most difficult situations the world has found it self in within recent times. That is not to say that there are not plenty of other issues in the world, but there are plenty of issues that have recently arisen. Most importantly, many of the issues that we have been seeing crop up as of late have to do with the reopening of various businesses and education institutions. With that in mind, it is kind of difficult to think about the next steps in place for us moving forward as we have no idea how things are going to go with the pandemic. It is still the pandemic which has a lot to do with how things are happening these days and how we are all moving forward.
Among the bigger businesses, they are a lot more talks than there would usually be in regards to how they are handling their reopenings. The main discussion for all of this is the fact that companies are not quite sure how to react to a lot of what is currently going on. For instance, movie theaters are trying their best to get people to come in and pay to watch movies. Unfortunately for them, these plans are kind of just going by the wayside because they have no idea what it is that they need to do to get people to come in. Many people are now being extremely wary of everything that is going on in the world and are not so keen on spending time in such public places.
Movie theater companies like Regal have even taken to shutting down all of their locations because they are not sure about what they should do. They have been losing money hand-over-fist since they reopened their doors and no matter what films release, they are not seeing any kind of money come in. So to prevent themselves from having to shell out even more money unnecessarily, they have shut their doors for the unknown foreseeable future. They are not the only big name company to suffer from something like this as there are numerous theater companies suffering in a similar fashion. These other companies are still trying their best to remain open but with no new movies on the way they are kind of in trouble.
The biggest reason for the fact that theaters now have no new movies to show to the public is because of the failure of a big release recently. The movie ‘Tenet’ seemed like it had a strong start in theaters and then it had nothing going for it after just a few weeks. Considering the fact that this was a new Christopher Nolan blockbuster, people were expecting the film to go on to make a fortune in the box office. If things were actually going the way that they normally were, then there would have been no issue and the film most certainly would have made a killing. The pandemic was in theater owners’ minds when they reopened and prepared for that film’s launch, so they made plans ahead of time. It just turns out that these plans were not enough to draw people in.
In fact, theaters made up their plans to try and draw back customers months ago, the problem became the fact that people are just far too wary of returning to theaters at a time like this. Public places in general are still a major topic of discussion for people who don’t want to take any risks because it would jeopardize their health. Therefore, after the failure of a release that was had, many other studios immediately recognized that they will not be able to release their films any time soon if they want them to be successful. In the meantime, many companies have been trying to figure out what it is they want to do to try and bring in revenue. Many different practices have been taken to heart, but some companies just don’t have the luxury to pick what they want to focus on.
One such company that does have the luxury to change up their focus whenever they want is Disney since they have their hands pretty much dipped into everything. Disney is a multi-media empire now and they have control over the numerous ways in which they can move forward with trying to bring in revenue. One of their biggest strategies currently is to focus on their movie releases which they have, like many other companies, pushed back into some time next year. Unlike other companies though, they have a format in which they can actually get some of their films out there with, Disney+. Their premiere streaming service has become a massive hit since its release almost one year ago and it has managed to make them a decent amount of revenue.
Disney has even recently announced that their streaming end of things is going to end up becoming their main focus for the future. They have also said that they will not be shying away from theatrical releases though and that they will have a board decide on which of their future releases should end up going from one medium to the other. In other words, they will have people deciding on whether or not future releases are worth waiting to put into theaters or not, otherwise those films will be going straight onto their streaming service. This has been their way of bringing in the most revenue since this whole thing began, but there are many aspects to the Disney company to account for.
One division of the Disney company that has always been a huge part of their success has been the Disney Parks division. All Disney Parks across the world are under the control of this division of the company and while many parks have actually managed to reopen to the public, not every single one has. Even the parks that have opened up have only been met by ridicule by people who felt they reopened to the public at the wrong time. Although they were losing a lot of money by not being open, there were a lot of people who agreed that they should stay closed for the time being. In order to try and compensate for what was happening, they even came up with new safety guidelines in accordance with government mandates. Just like all other public businesses, they had rules they had to enforce if they wanted to reopen.
The Disney World Parks in Florida opened up their gates once again with these rules in mind back in July and this spawned a huge amount of criticism ever since. During that time it was put forth that they were doing things that were much more focused on making as much revenue as they could as opposed to protecting the public’s health and safety. Among those things was the fact that they were apparently allowing employees to work even if they tested positive for the virus. This only made the government even more strict with them in the long run and it affected them heavily as they still haven’t been able to reopen their main Disneyland park in California yet. Disney has even been trying to put the blame on the state of California itself for their not being able to reopen.
Disney Parks has already stated that due to delays caused by the state of California and the new safety guidelines, they have had to lay off over 28,000 employees. California is a high risk state for the virus so it should be no surprise that they have been trying to keep ways of spreading infection down. As such, they have decided to keep places like Disneyland shut down until they reach the lowest tier of risk, which would apparently be yellow tier risk. Disney Parks are saying that this is extremely unfair as it would mean that a county must have a seven day adjusted average of less than one case of Covid among 100,000 people. With this in place, there is no telling when the famed park will once again be able to be another source of revenue for the company again.
By George Robbins
As we have all heard of by now, there are a number of different films which are now currently going through the development process despite the pandemic. This pandemic is far from the first one in all of human history, but it is a very unique one as we find ourselves not cut off from other people. We are in the age of information and, therefore, we can get any new information we want pretty much whenever we want to. It is due to this that we know that there are countermeasures in place so that people can go back to work. This is what has allowed the possibility for people to go and continue to work in the film industry despite the fact that so much is going wrong with that same industry.
One of the biggest issues for that industry right now is the fact that they can no longer have theatrical releases for their films or they risk losing a lot of capital. Studios have invested a lot of money into the creation of their films, but no one is willing to actually go out to theaters because they are still considered to be high risk public venues. With this in mind, people do not want to chance their own safety or the safety of their families if it means going to see a movie. They would much rather just watch new movies from the comfort of their own homes. This release method is not one that many studios wish to follow, so they have pushed their films down the line. Fortunately, they are preparing some new films for us even now.
‘Mallrats 2’ just so happens to be one of these films and while we have no release date in sight, we know that it is ready to be filmed. They have been working on getting the casting all set up in the meantime as well as getting a production crew together to work on the film. While the biggest topic of debate was whether Ben Affleck would return for the sequel, it has not been discussed as to whether the rest of the original cast would return to play their parts in the film. Kevin Smith made the announcement recently that they would all actually be returning to play their parts in the upcoming film. So we now have a lot to look forward to with this film’s release, whenever that may end up being.
By George Robbins
There are plenty of reasons this year alone as to why things just haven’t managed to go well for the film industry. In all honesty, things have been pretty bleak for just about every business venture out there since the pandemic began. There have been nothing but cautious people leaving their homes every day since the pandemic began and it has greatly affected businesses everywhere. What we have established by now is the fact that people are most definitely wary of public places and most definitely they are wary of places like movie theaters. There has been no way for theaters to make money since the pandemic began and some are now closing again for the foreseeable future.
Movie theaters spent a lot of their time and money trying to get people to come back to them, but unfortunately this plan just didn’t end up working out for them. In fact, when the movie ‘Tenet’ ended up releasing back at the end of August/beginning of September, the movie started off pretty well all things considered. Very quickly though, this all started going downhill and the movie was bringing in less and less money to the box office every single week. By the third weekend alone, the movie only brought in a total of $4.7 million for the domestic box office and this trend only continued to the point that theaters made their decision to shut down. Before this decision came something else entirely which was the fact that most movies were pushed out of this year’s line-up.
Unfortunately, with things the way that they are with movie theaters in general at the moment, many studios have pulled their upcoming films from the rest of this year’s line-up. This is why there are almost no films left for us to really see released this year which doesn’t really matter all that much anyway. Nobody is actually taking the initiative to go out and go to the movies during this time-frame and that is why things are the way they are. With theaters essentially closed, or closing, there is no telling what will happen with movie releases. There may still be a massive window of time that has to pass before theaters decide to once again open their doors. One company that has been doing their best to adjust to all of this has been Disney.
Disney is now very much recognized as one of the biggest all-encompassing companies that exists in the media world. While much of this comes from their own merits as an entertainment company, the remainder of it all comes from the fact that they now own both Marvel and the Star Wars franchise. The Marvel franchise has easily grown to become this massive worldwide phenomenon where just about every title they put out takes the box office for the year or, at the very least, gets very close to doing so. Unfortunately, they have had to push their Marvel releases for this year and it has been a huge impact; so much so that none of their films will hold a place near the top of the box office. At least this is not the case when it comes to superhero films.
When it comes to the top superhero box office film for the year, no one would have ever expected the movie ‘Sonic the Hedgehog‘ to take that spot. While the movie was overall not too bad, the general consensus was that it still wasn’t that great of a movie. That being said the movie managed to gross a couple hundred million dollars, so it definitely had something going for it. Unfortunately, with Marvel having all of its hero films moved out of this year, Sonic will be the first superhero film to dominate a yearly box office. This is obviously not a trend we would be seeing without the help of the pandemic, but it is interesting nonetheless. This will probably be the one and only time that the people responsible for the Sonic movie will be able to say that they beat Marvel Studios.
Get Some Strange!
