By George Robbins
Around this time of year, we are always treated to a number of different cultural events that get us through to the end of the year. While this year is relatively the same in some aspects, in most things are most definitely different. The Covid-19 pandemic has completely changed the way that these events are held this year and we will most definitely be seeing an entirely different series of events as the year rounds out. Every live convention that was meant to be held in person this year was cancelled and some of them were made up for. They were mainly made up by the fact that online versions of them ended up being held.
Not every convention was actually so lucky because some of them were cancelled in their entirety for this year and some through next year as well. One huge example of a convention with good intentions that just wasn’t executed properly was Comic Con @ Home. It was a way for organizers to try and make up for the fact that San Diego Comic Con was cancelled. Unfortunately it was not very well put together and many of the panels people were hoping for were not going to be there because they had nothing to show. On the other side of things was DC FanDome, which was DC’s first convention held entirely online and it was a pretty big success.
Now, we are fast approaching New York Comic-Con which was cancelled awhile back but is now set for an online showing. In fact, it is going to start tomorrow Thursday October 8th and it will run through October 11th. Organizer ReedPop made the announcement that it would be held online back in August and it seems like they will really be trying to do as well as DC FanDome did. Really all they are trying to do is outdo their West-coast counterpart which shouldn’t be all too difficult, but we’ll have to wait and see. For those interested, all panels will be streamed for free via YouTube.com/NYCC and it will start at 8am PST, so have fun.
By George Robbins
Currently, the film industry is kind of in a state of suspended animation because nothing can be done with new releases. If movies cannot be released, then there is no way for studios to make their money to then make even more movies. Luckily this process can be boiled down a couple of different ways but not everything will end up working out the way they hoped. Nowadays, movies need to have a proper release window, but in order to do so, studios must know exactly what it is they will be doing with those new films. The main method of release for many new films still remains to be through theatrical means instead of straight to digital.
Due to studios’ reluctance to actually release films to digital since they will lose money in the long run, they are now trying to play the waiting game. As such they have all pushed back their movie release dates with many actually ending up in some time next year. Even further beyond that, many have been pushed to 2022 instead of retaining their 2021 release dates. The biggest problem of all is that even these dates may not hold as the situation remains fluid during the pandemic and it can change at almost any time. Therefore, it should be expected that the movie industry will actually start suffering from a bit of a decline in the meantime.
So while movies are being pushed back, what exactly can studios do to keep bringing in revenue and keep themselves busy. To be honest, it is really only the larger studios who can do this and they are doing it by keeping up with their new services. Beyond just that though, they are actually working on new films that they plan on releasing even years down the line at this point. This is why we now know that we will be getting ‘Scream 5’ after almost a decade and ‘Mallrats 2’ is a project that is getting worked on pretty heavily. Studios are finding plenty of ways to now keep themselves busy while they wait to release their films.
Among the new movies being worked on is a comedy that will feature Andy Samberg, Craig Robinson, and Common as the leads. It is an upcoming superhero comedy by the name of ‘Super High’ where smoking weed gives people superpowers. Needless to say the movie is already starting off as sounding like a joke film, but some films that start off like that end up being alright in the end. This film could end up being one that can take people’s minds off of everything that is currently going on and give them something to laugh at even if it comes out after the pandemic ends. Hopefully, it will be an entertaining film and it won’t be as bad as people think it will be.
By George Robbins
As we have all become aware of by now, movie theaters are in kind of a rough patch due to the pandemic and it appears it will not be dissipating any time soon. This is something that theaters have had no choice but to deal with ever since the pandemic first began and it has greatly affected their revenue stream. In fact, they have not really had a revenue stream since this all began and it has resulted in a lot of issues for the movie industry as a whole. Movie theaters were looking for the longest time for a proper re-opening window to reopen their doors and show films and they eventually found that window.
Unfortunately for theaters, that window was still too close to the start of the pandemic, despite being months after it all began. No matter how much time passes, without a vaccine people will not want to go out to the movies. For the public at large, there is just too much of a risk involved with going out too the movies as theaters are easily one of the most potentially devastating areas for the spread of disease. People have been saying that while theaters have been opened, there have been no cases linked back to them. The easy counter-point to that is the fact that of course there wouldn’t be any cases because no one is going to them.
Theaters have restrictions in place to help in the effort of preventing people from contracting the virus such as limited capacity and a mask requirement. These two things can help tremendously, but there is still the issue that many people just don’t care and aren’t following those mandates out of petty spite. So although these rules will work if followed properly, there are sure to be cases because of people who don’t follow those rules. If people are not generally going out to movie theaters, then there is nothing to worry about as of course their would be no cases. Theater chains were hoping that they would at least be able to drum up some kind of business though recently.
Most theater chains decided that the middle of August was going to be a good time for them to reopen their doors to the public. When they had to shut their doors to the public back in the middle of March, no one had any idea how long businesses were going to be shut down for. What followed was an extended period of time where certain types of businesses were slowly given the greenlight to open their doors back up again. Theater chains were among the types of businesses that were given the go-ahead the latest of all and so they were finally able to come up with reopening dates. Those dates, of course, were centered around the release dates of movies put out by studios and vice versa.
The movie that we saw take the spotlight was one ‘Tenet‘ which is Christopher Nolan’s newest original blockbuster film. The idea was that the movie would actually end up serving as a method of getting people back into theaters. Since Christopher Nolan films are known by audiences to be experiences that they should not miss out on, theater owners were pushing the movie’s release pretty hard along with Warner Bros. Plenty of mystery surrounded the film as people were curious about what the plot would be about as the general public saw trailers filled with espionage and time manipulation. The movie released first internationally and then one week later it released domestically and while it did not make a killing, it certainly did well considering the current social climate.
For the first week, the movie did fairly well, but for the next few weeks it didn’t do so hot domestically. ‘Tenet’ has only been making a few million per week on the domestic market which is problematic for both theaters and the studio. Although the title is still doing fairly well in the international market, the domestic market has pretty much been a dud for the movie. This has presented a number of problems because it made everyone realize that people are not willing to take the risk to go out and see movies right now. Studios heavily rely upon the domestic market and Warner Bros. knew that, so when they realized what was happening they decided to delay most of their films.
Many may not know that Warner Bros. actually needs to make somewhere around $500 million to break even before marketing costs on ‘Tenet.’ They only just recently hit around $300 million because of the international market and this has shown just how volatile the industry is at the moment. As such, Warner Bros. took the opportunity to learn from this failure and pushed back many of their upcoming releases which essentially changed their entire line-up. Many of their DC films actually ended up being severely pushed back as a result of this. The main reason for these massive delays is because they decided to push back their upcoming reboot of the movie ‘Dune’ by almost an entire year.
Now that Warner Bros. has confirmed the changed release dates of many of their upcoming titles, theaters have had a lot to think about. They have already been broaching the topic of possibly shutting down again because after the failed domestic ‘Tenet’ release, many studios started doing the same thing as Warner did. Now that there are essentially no movies coming out, Regal Cinemas has made the announcement that they will be shutting their doors again for the foreseeable future. There is no telling how long they will be shut down again, but we now know that this Thursday, October 8th, they will be shutting down all of their theaters. If this is any kind of indication of things to come, we should expect similar closings for other theaters soon.
By George Robbins
There has recently been a lot of news in regards to the release schedules of many films over the course of the coming months. Among the news that we have received about the changes to these releases were a lot of information about the changing of entire line-ups of films due to the fact that timetables for releases are all kinds of messed up now. This has a lot to do with the fact that studios are really just trying to wait out the pandemic while simultaneously trying to beat out other studios on release windows. This is how we have ended up with movies being pushed back all the way up to a year while others have only been shifted a couple of months. Things are getting tougher for studios and it is becoming much more noticeable.
The studio that it has become perhaps the most noticeable for has been Warner Bros. who took the brunt of it all by releasing their movie ‘Tenet’ as the first blockbuster on the market. After the overall failure that followed on the domestic front, Warner Bros. took some time to figure out what their next steps were actually going to be. This is when they decided that they were going to push back their next big budget release, ‘Dune,’ to October of next year instead of keeping it in December of this year. Unfortunately, this pushed back their entire line-up and it even ended up affecting four of their upcoming DCEU films. Not all of the news to come out of the studio has been bad news though.
While Warner Bros. might now be dealing with the fact that they have to push back the release line-up for many of their films, they have managed to make a startling announcement. Their next upcoming entry in the Matrix franchise, aptly named ‘Matrix 4,’ is actually supposed to now come out sooner than anticipated. Instead of having a release date some time in early 2022, the movie is actually now set for a release date some time in December of 2021, which is four months sooner than expected. Needless to say, the movie is an anticipated one that many fans have been looking forward to ever since they heard that it was in development and that we would see it within just a couple of years time. Now it seems we will all have the chance to see it much sooner than we ever imagined despite so many other films being pushed back.
By George Robbins
Warner Bros. is easily one of the biggest names in the entertainment industry since they hold so many different intellectual properties under their wing. They have plenty of content and licenses to make said content on top of the fact that they are multi-faceted as a company. This means that they have their hands in a number of different aspects of the entertainment and even the tech industry. They own HBO and by extension, HBO Max, they own many different aforementioned TV and movie titles, and they have their hands dipped heavily into the TV and internet connection industry. So it can be said that they are not very hard-pressed to find a way to make some kind of revenue during these times.
For the Warner Bros. studio, they are having nothing but trouble when it comes to film releases at the moment due to the pandemic. While everything else they are doing may not be suffering all that much, it is clear that film releases are on the list of things that are. This is because, at least domestically, they have had nothing but a commercial failure with their movie ‘Tenet.’ While on the worldwide market the movie may actually be doing pretty well, the fact remains that the domestic market doesn’t look like it will generate a good amount of income for them. This stems heavily from the fact that people in the U.S. are very wary of movie theaters nowadays.
The wariness being expressed by people in the United States towards movie theaters is due, heavily in part, to people being worried after a strong wave of the virus hit. Without any kind of vaccine in sight, there is no way that most people would be willing to risk their own health and safety to go and see a movie. Instead, people would rather just wait now to see movies available on digital because it would simply work out better for them in the long run. With that in mind, it is not much of a surprise to anyone that people don’t want to go out to theaters and that theaters are now suffering as a result. ‘Tenet’ is been the film to suffer the worst after it had its full release in theaters worldwide.
For those unaware, ‘Tenet’ is director Christopher Nolan’s newest film which focuses on the main character maneuvering some time-bending concept to try and prevent World War 3 from happening. Overall, the concept of the film and the mystery of it all sold the film to people and built up hype for it whenever it would release. It ended up releasing near the end of August; first to international markets and then to the domestic market. Within those first two weekends, the movie actually did fairly well and it brought in close to $150 million for the worldwide box office. Unfortunately this did not last all too long as the next few weekends in the domestic market did not turn out well for the movie and it has only been making a few million per weekend.
A few million dollars here and there doesn’t sound too terrible to any ordinary person, but it is definitely not what the studio was hoping for. ‘Tenet’ has to bring in somewhere around $500 million to break even before marketing costs and, although the international market is still doing well, they are still a long ways off from reaching that point. This has shown the entire film industry that it just isn’t the time for any of them to release their movies to the public and they pushed back their movie’s release dates. As such, there are now plenty of movies and movie line-ups which have had their entire release schedules shifted around. This is what studios like Warner, who experienced it all first-hand, are now dealing with.
Warner Bros. has taken a lot of information from this recent series of events and decided to follow in the footsteps of other similar companies by pushing release dates. Among the movies that they are pushing back the release dates on are a total of four of their DC titles and it has something to do with a delay for their other film ‘Dune.’ ‘The Batman,’ ‘The Flash,’ ‘Black Adam,’ and ‘Shazam 2’ have all been pushed back after Dune was moved to ‘The Batman’s’ original release date of October 1st, 2021. This, along with the fact many other studios are majorly shifting their line-ups similarly, has resulted in all of the upcoming movie line-ups being affected in some way shape or form. On the somewhat bright side of things though, ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ is still set for a December 2020 release.
By George Robbins
The movie industry is currently sitting in perhaps one of the worst declines that they have ever seen due to the current state of affairs. The Covid-19 pandemic has done nothing but make everyday life more difficult for everyone, including businesses. This stems from the fact that people are still not capable of coming too close together without risk of contracting the virus which severely limits the capabilities of some businesses. Theaters, being buildings that serve the purpose of bringing together groups of people in order to make money, have been affected especially hard. This is mostly due to the fact that, although there are restrictions in place to protect people, there are tons of people who don’t want to take the risk.
Restrictions are in place so that only so many people will actually be able to go into a theater at one time to increase the physical distance between patrons. This is still the best way for people to avoid coming into contact with others who may actually end up having the virus. Therefore, it is of no real surprise that they would end up losing overall business as a result of this and they are left with less overall income. Unfortunately, this trend is not going to change anytime soon especially with no sign of a vaccine coming out any time soon. As such, theaters are one of the last places that people want to go out to in the near future.
Some people have been saying that people shouldn’t worry about going out to theaters because there have yet to really be any incidents of infection tied to theaters. However, it is highly likely that this is the case only due to the fact that people aren’t going to theaters at all. After all, if people aren’t going out to theaters at all due to fear of contracting the virus, then there are less people in theaters. If there are less people in theaters, then it means that there are a lot less people around who are capable of transmitting the disease. This is something people shouldn’t be surprised about, and they should instead focus on whether or not this fear should be warranted because, as of now, it still is.
If movie theaters were to have full crowds of people coming in and sitting down for hours at a time near one another, the likelihood of infection skyrockets. Even if people are not near one another and must wear masks, there are people who won’t follow those rules. This ends up leading to people inadvertently becoming infected even if they weren’t doing anything wrong. hence the reason why people are ultimately wary of going out to theaters at all. There are plenty of other examples made with other public businesses that this could end up happening in theaters and it has made people question them. This is why, at least in the United States, theaters are not doing so well and movies are being pushed back further.
In the past month or so, the decline of movie theaters in the United States has been noticed pretty well by the public at large. This has mostly been to the failure of the ‘Tenet’ box office over the course of the past month or so. ‘Tenet‘ is Christopher Nolan’s newest blockbuster film which he was hoping would have revitalized the movie theater market. The film follows a spy as he does his best to prevent World War 3 while simultaneously having to deal with some kind of weird time manipulation element. Needless to say, things did not end up working out once the movie hit the U.S. marketplace, and the film has barely been making any returns since its release.
‘Tenet’ was Warner Bros. biggest release that they had planned around this time and they needed it to succeed to make back the $500 million they needed to break even before marketing costs. Unfortunately they have yet to reach that goal but the international movie theater market has made it within the realm of possibility that this could happen. This is because other nations have a better handle on the virus and, therefore, people are more willing to go to the movies in other countries as they feel safer. Domestically, with fears surrounding theaters, people don’t want to see the film and put themselves at risk, so it isn’t doing so well here. Since studios still want to have their domestic releases first to properly kick off their films, they have been pushing releases.
Plenty of releases have been pushed back over the course of the past month and the trend doesn’t seem to be stopping. According to a report from ‘Collider‘, Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune‘ has recently joined the list of films with delayed release dates. Originally, the movie was set to release in December of this year, but so many other films have now ended up in that release window that they have decided not to go with that release window. Now it would appear that to try and better accommodate for the fact that there is no vaccine and people just don’t seem like going to theaters, they have really pushed their release date back. The movie now has a release window centered around some time in October of 2021 and like most films, this is still tentative.
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