By George Robbins
As we all know by now, movie theaters are in just a bit of a tight spot due to the state of the film industry as a whole right now. While films are still being worked on in the background, there are many films trying their best to release into the open market. Unfortunately, that market is just a bit volatile right now and releasing movies is just something that cannot be done properly due to constraints on the industry. Those constraints have a lot to do with the fact that people are now extremely wary of actually going out to public places like the movies during this period in time. There is nothing people want more than to be able to leave their homes but not when there is such a huge risk involved with doing it.
Movie theaters have been coming up with different ways to try and draw people in which include them coming up with new rules and regulations. These were all made so that they could try and get people to feel more comfortable about going to the movies. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t really work and people did not go out to the movies like they hoped they would eventually do. Even with the bigger releases, there was almost no business coming into the theaters and therefore, they have been in a steady decline for the past couple of months. Despite that, they can still manage to make some money hear and there when it comes to some new releases.
Among the new movie releases that have managed to still make their way into theaters was Liam Neeson’s newest movie, ‘Honest Thief.’ The premise of the film follows a thief trying to do the right thing by fighting back against corrupt authority figures. The movie itself is one that not many people have heard of, but for what it is worth, it took the top of the box office for this past weekend. Unfortunately, this means it only ended up bringing in $3.7 million for the entirety of the United States, but it is literally better than nothing right now. There is pretty much nothing going on now that many theaters have closed up again and we are just waiting for them to reopen their doors at a better time.
By George Robbins
There is currently a lot going on in the movie theater industry at the moment and that is not bound to change anytime soon because of this pandemic that we have all found ourselves stuck with. More broadly, the movie industry as a whole is what has a lot going on and this list of issues they are dealing with is constantly expanding. One of the most common issues with the movie industry as a whole right now is the fact that movies cannot really have the proper releases that studios want them to have because theaters are in such a bad state. Theaters are not getting much foot traffic and it is causing both them, and movie studios to suffer as a result and it is all due to the pandemic with nothing much else they can do. As such, the list of movies that have been delayed so that theatrical releases may still end up being possible is pretty long at this point.
On the list of films that have been delayed are some movies that people have been really looking forward to due to them being such big awaited blockbuster films. Chief among those films is the much-anticipated ‘No Time to Die’ which is the new James Bond film which will supposedly be rounding out Daniel Craig’s stint as 007 himself. The movie has been pushed back a number of times now and even though it was supposed to be out soon, it has yet again been pushed back to accommodate for what is going on with theaters. That being said, it is apparently shaping up to be a very good Bond film and the producers are really trying to acknowledge that fact. They even want the director for the new film to return for a future film as well.
The director for ‘No Time to Die’ was one Cary Fukunaga and, apparently, he did such a great job with the film that the producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli want him back to direct another one. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that this is far from the end of all James Bond films and that there is most certainly going to be more films coming after this one. What is really on people’s minds right now is who will end up becoming the next Bond and who will be responsible for bringing that person to the big screen in a way that will hopefully cement them as the next Bond for awhile. The producers have stated that Fukunaga exceeded everyone’s expectations with the film and would most certainly like to see him return to work on the next entry, whenever that is actually worked on. Considering how long these producers have been invested with the franchise, this is something that we should definitely take as a good word on his part.
By George Robbins
This pandemic has been a huge drain on everyone all over the world, but despite that, there is still plenty of things to keep us busy. Although much of the world is in a state of being shut down, there are still many businesses that are now open that are providing people with something to do. Unfortunately, not all of those businesses are fairing well at the moment because they aren’t getting the number of customers they need to continue staying open. Specifically among these businesses are theaters which are suffering especially hard from not getting any people coming in for business. They have even had to start shutting down to make up for the fact that they currently have no revenue and they will be shut down for the foreseeable future.
Theaters have been trying to draw people in since they started the reopening process and with a couple of new movie releases they thought they could start making money again. Unfortunately this did not work out for them even with the new health and safety regulations they put into place. People just don’t feel as though theaters are a safe place for them to go right now because the risk involved with it is still very high. This resulted in many studios pushing back the release dates of their films, and therefore leaving almost no films for the rest of the year. Thus, in order to make money, studios have been trying to adapt and one of the ways they have been doing that is releasing movies on streaming services. Not all movies get that treatment, but it seems a large number of them are now ending up this way.
One such film that is now going to receive that same treatment is the movie ‘Coming 2 America‘ which is the sequel to the original comedy movie ‘Coming to America.’ The original film was made in the late 80’s and still holds up as a pretty good comedy even now. The sequel is one that many people didn’t even recognize was being made until not too long ago and it will be released soon as well. Like many films, it was planned to have a theatrical release this year, but this is being forgone in favor of a release on Amazon Prime Video who obtained the distribution rights to the movie from Paramount Pictures. So, we won’t have to wait too much longer for the movie to release, but it won’t be in a theater setting due to the pandemic.
By George Robbins
Kevin Smith is an acclaimed indie director who found his place by making a bunch of indie films in the 90’s people fell in love with. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that his movies from that era will go down as anything other than classics for their time. What makes them so interesting is the fact that, at least for some of them, the movies take everyday situations and give them these big and crazy plots. What is just supposed to be a day at the mall following being broken up with turns into this crescendo of things like taking place on a dating game show after knocking out the other contestants. This is the plot of ‘Mallrats‘ and it is easily one of the most memorable of Smith’s earlier films.
In the ‘Mallrats’ movie, two slackers who were dumped by their girlfriends head to the mall as a way to cope with what just happened to them. They find out once they get there that one of their exes is going to be going on a dating-game style show which will be televised from that mall while the other’s is already dating someone else. That someone else just so happens to be the character of Shannon, a store manager played by Ben Affleck. Interestingly enough, Affleck was not really going to end up being the film because producer Jim Jacks did not want him in it originally. If not for Smith insisting on his being in the film, he would not have been a part of it.
Jacks’ reason for not wanting him in the movie is a pretty silly one in hindsight because the reason was that he saw him in ‘Dazed and Confused‘ and didn’t like his “potty mouth.” Considering how much bad language is thrown around in Smith’s films, it is easy to see why Smith didn’t really care and still felt he served a purpose in the film. His appearances in Smith’s films definitely feel like they made the rest of his career possible and his role in ‘Mallrats’ may have been small, but it was important. Perhaps this time, his role will be expanded a little bit in the upcoming sequel, but that is still a ways off before we actually get the chance to see that happen. Still, it is crazy to think that he may not have been in the film due to acting from another hit film.
By George Robbins
There are many films out in the world that remain classics to this day no matter how long it has been since they originally released. Classics are something that, no matter the age, people who watch the movie end up falling in love with it and it stays that way. Those films just happen to be the ones that many people can relate to in some way or another and very few movies are actually capable of making people appreciate them in that way. One of the most well known fantasy classics is the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz‘ which is one of the oldest classics out there right now, having been made in 1939. No matter who actually ends up watching it, it remains a film that people will always love to watch, defining it as a classic.
‘The Wizard of Oz’ was a film with a famously rough production that nearly resulted in it dying out before it was released a number of times. Luckily, there was eventually a release for the landmark film which firmly cemented it as an instant classic due to how the film plays out. The film is a fantasy film unlike any other because it sees a young girl going to a land that seems familiar in some ways and makes people think it could be a dream. Over the years, various forms of media have tried to dissect the movie and created various other movies and shows based around it. Now it seems that we will once again be getting another treatment like this, but set around a smaller, but important character.
There is now talk of a new ‘Wizard of Oz’ animated movie in the works which follows the character of Toto the dog. Apparently the animated movie is going to follow the original tale but through the eyes of the well-known, yet tiny companion Toto. Not only will the movie be animated, but it will also be a musical which is no real surprise considering the fact we have seen musicals surrounding this film for ages now. Needless to say this will be a movie that fans of the time-honored classic will be watching out for, but there is no telling how the quality will be. There have been plenty of animated versions of the film over the years, but they really aren’t close to what the classic movie was.
By George Robbins
This pandemic that we have all unfortunately found ourselves trapped in is one that is causing a lot of things to happen in the world. Without the pandemic, things were already not getting along very well but the restrictions we have found placed on us by the outbreak have expedited some things. For instance, many of the ways businesses are now interacting with the public at large have been affected by the pandemic and it is very easy to notice this change. According to a few companies now, they have been changing the way that they conduct their business moving forward and they have said they wanted to enact this change for awhile now. The pandemic has been cited as the biggest reason these things have been moving forward.
One of the biggest industries being affected by the pandemic at the moment has been the movie industry as a whole. We have been hearing about the movie industry extensively over the past couple of months and it is now becoming an even bigger issue as time goes on. Movie theaters are perhaps the biggest part of the industry being affected by the pandemic and it is resulting in some pretty drastic changes as time goes on. At first, like most public businesses, theaters were temporarily shut down to prevent more people from getting infected with the virus. This was meant to only be a short period of time until countermeasures could be put into place which would protect customers and theaters alike. Unfortunately, this plan did not go over so well as the months rolled on.
The idea for the reopening of public businesses was going to be that they would get to open their doors back up again when individual locations felt it was safe. This became an issue very quickly when many states simply would not allow them to reopen their doors to the public because they were too high risk to reopen. Thus, the months continued to fly by as theaters remained one of the last institutions to reopen their doors to the public. They couldn’t just reopen their doors though as they had to have rules in place in order to follow new health and safety standards to prevent the pandemic from getting worse. This wasn’t even the worst thing that theaters had to deal with in order to open their doors back up again.
Theaters that actually could reopen their doors didn’t really want to for the longest time because they had no new movies to show to draw people in. Movies were delayed for a long time and a second smaller wave of infections caused studios to push back some of their releases. What was created from this was a cycle where movies needed theaters and theaters needed movies so that they could open. Eventually, AMC felt that they had waited long enough and even if they had no movies to show, they would be opening in the middle of August. This is what made studios decide that they would try and release a couple of their films and see if the market was really back on track to what it was before.
Unfortunately for both studios and movie theaters alike, even when movies ended up coming out, it didn’t really matter. The vast majority of people are still not willing to put their and their family’s health at risk just to go to the movies. Although theaters state that there has yet to be a case that traces back to theaters, this is because there are so few people going to them in the first place. Ever since movie theaters have reopened they have been going downhill because there is almost no one going out to see movies and beyond that, there are no new movies to show. Yet again, the cycle of theaters and movie releases continues and this time, theaters are really going to be in trouble. In fact, there are almost no movies set to release through the remainder of the year and even early next year.
After ‘Tenet’ released and it was pretty much deemed a failure considering how much they are still in the negative, studios pulled their movies from release rosters. This has led to a now tremendous problem being faced by movie theaters where they are now losing money hand over fist for maintenance to theaters that are getting no use. This has even resulted in theater chains like Regal Cinemas shutting their doors once again for the foreseeable future to make up for the fact that they aren’t getting any revenue. Going even further beyond just closing down for awhile is the issue that the AMC theater chain is currently dealing with which is the fact that they will apparently have no money left by the end of the year. This has just shown how bad it has become for the movie theater industry thus far.
AMC being the biggest theater chain in the world doesn’t help its own cause, but seeing this shows just what the future holds for other theaters as well. Movie delays have essentially destroyed the market for movie theaters, but you can’t blame studios for doing it. They have every right to believe that they will lose almost all of the money they invested in their delayed films if they release them now instead of waiting. Plenty of films have now been delayed by their studios and there are very few which remain in this year’s line-up. A fair number of those films are still set for December releases, but news regarding them comes in every single day. For instance, the movie ‘Soul‘ was set to release in December, and while it may still be doing so, it is releasing straight to Disney+.
This trend is starting to become more and more common nowadays with the way movies are being delayed because studios don’t want to keep themselves from earning revenue. Disney is chief among these studios at the moment and they are among the group that actually has a couple of films left in this year’s roster. They have been trying to adapt to the scenario unfolding around them and, as such, they have most of their bigger films moved into some time next year. This is all so that they can try and hold out for some breakthrough with the pandemic because they want to have their films release theatrically. Even though this seems to be the case, they have made it clear they want to focus much of their efforts on the streaming side of things for now.
Although the Disney+ release for ‘Mulan’ has become a controversial disaster in a way, it gave Disney some clarity. The release of the film itself was not really disastrous, it was everything else surrounding the movie that was, and so it isn’t too surprising that the film actually created a revenue stream through their streaming service upon release. With that, they knew that they would actually be able to make money with releases because even with a somewhat bad release they brought in some money. According to Disney, their focus has been shifting to their streaming service for some time now, but now they plan on making it their main focus from this point on. Even though they said this, they are apparently not foregoing all theatrical releases.
Disney is still planning on continuing their original release methods for films, with them actually having theatrical releases still. Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that the new regulation will allow company officials to decide whether a film is made for the cinema or for streaming. This will make it so that their biggest releases that they plan on making the most from will actually remain theatrical releases. Whereas films that they believe are better suited for families and small groups that are best off being watched at home will be put on their streaming services. This means that they have found a way to release the films they want to release even when they normally can’t and bring in revenue of some kind.
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