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.
By George Robbins
Ryan Reynolds’ upcoming movie ‘Free Guy,’ directed by Shawn Levy, is meant to give us a closer look into a video game world to see what life is like there. The movie is meant to be a film which gives us a glimpse at a game where the character we follow through the film is nothing more than an NPC. For those unaware, this stands for non-player character and it is any character in a video game that is not under player control. The main selling point of the film is that it follows this NPC named “Guy” as he finds out that the world he lives in is actually a video game. What follows is supposedly a journey for him to try and save his game, and therefore his universe, from shutting down.
For those of us who play video games, we never really focus on much of what actually happens to characters other than the ones we control in game. This is because, most of the time, we have no way of empathizing with any other characters unless the game really wants us to in some way. Even then, we may not really end up caring unless that character has been really well-written into the story and we come to see things from their point of view. Sometimes we don’t even have to see their point of view to realize that we feel for them in some way shape or form. Most of the time however, we couldn’t really care less what ends up happening to them.
According to Shawn Levy, the director, the movie is going to be a way for people to try and have more feelings towards the NPCs. According to Levy, this movie is one that many different people can relate to as it shows us this guy who is normally nothing more than a background character in someone else’s story being noticed. We are supposed to notice the background character this time around and understand what it must be like to be the one who is always sitting in the background and that they have their own story. If what Levy said is true, then this movie will be one that shows the importance of empathizing with people we often just see in the background instead of just whoever is front and center.
By George Robbins
Halloween is just around the corner, but this year is by far different from every year prior due to the pandemic. It is unlike any other moment in recent history because it means that we have to change the way that we celebrate the holiday. Some things like trick-or-treating aren’t going to be possible and, while some will ignore the restrictions, parties are pretty much a no-go. This makes it kind of difficult for people to find fun in the holiday this year and it will certainly be one that we will always remember just because we have no idea how to handle it. Ordinary civilians are not the only ones that don’t know how to handle what is currently going on though.
This time of year is perfect territory for horror movies and it is no surprise as to the reason why this is the case. Halloween month, otherwise known as October, is the month in which death is the norm and horror is just another part of everyday life. Unfortunately, the pandemic has resulted in all movies that were meant to be released this month being pushed back either to some time in early 2021 or an entire year to October of 2021. This still hasn’t deterred some things from happening though as movies are actually managing to find their way back in theaters. One such example of that just so happens to be the movie ‘Hocus Pocus.’
By Now, I’m sure we all know about ‘Hocus Pocus’ because it is put on TV constantly during the month of October and it has a very dedicated fan base. Since its release in 1993, the movie has gone on to obtain a cult movie level fan base that maintains the popularity of the film. In response to this, the movie actually had a theatrical re-release this past weekend where it ended up being shown in over 2500 theaters. While one would not expect much out of this, it managed to actually bring in almost $2 million for the domestic box office putting it as the second highest film for this past weekend. It may not be much overall, but it is still a surprise to see after what we have learned over the past few weeks about the movie theater market.
By George Robbins
Nowadays movie studios are not quite sure of when they want to release their new films due to the pandemic. This isn’t too much of a surprise given what we have already seen with the movie theater market within the past month or so. Now that theaters are opened up again, we expected them to at least get some kind of business to warrant companies to put out even more films. Unfortunately this did not end up happening for a couple of reasons. Those reasons being the fact that theaters are enclosed spaces that people sit still in for hours with many other people which creates a huge risk for spreading infection. Also, and partly due to the first reason, many domestic theaters are thinking of closing again until things get safer out there.
Now that we are unsure of just when theaters will be able to get back to true functionality, studios haven’t exactly been trying to put their stuff out there just yet. In fact, studios have ended up pushing almost all of their content into 2021 in order to try and create enough of a gap where theaters can get themselves put together. This essentially means that they are waiting until people start going back to theaters in earnest before they waste time and effort to put movies out into the marketplace. With this fact now established for pretty much every major studio out there, we now have many movies being delayed for upwards of a year. This isn’t something that there is really any control of though and we just have to wait and see how things turn out.
Not every movie is taking this as the worst possible news ever though, as the most recent trailer for the movie ‘Free Guy‘ has shown. The movie follows Ryan Reynolds as he plays a non-player character, or NPC, in a video game who discovers the truth about his own reality. The movie was initially on the Summer line-up, but like every other film on that list, it was pushed back. It ended up being pushed to December, but like other delayed films, it may be pushed back even further than that. This was acknowledged in the newest piece of media for the film and they essentially said that it will be out whenever they feel it is comfortable for the film to release. It could be out in December, or it could be a lot longer before we see it. We don’t know, but at least that fact has been acknowledged by the filmmakers.
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