By George Robbins
Movie theaters are currently giving it their all in order to draw people in so that they can make revenue for the first time in months. Things haven’t been working out so well for theaters as they were among the first round of businesses to shut down at the start of the pandemic. Considering the fact that theaters are nothing but enclosed spaces that seat numerous people for hours at a time, this isn’t really all that surprising. The next few months to follow their closing have been nothing short of interesting as they have been trying to figure out how it is that they actually wanted to reopen their doors. Not too long ago, they were actually given that opportunity and most theaters opened back up to the public.
The reopening of theaters was not without issues as they have had nothing but trouble in drawing people in to watch movies. This is why we are now hearing about theaters in the United States thinking about shutting down once again because they aren’t getting enough customers. Considering how volatile the situation with the pandemic is in the United States, it is no surprise that consumers are wary to go back to theaters. This is the correct response during this period of time because why would people want to go back to the aforementioned enclosed spaces filled with disease. Due to the fact that it is kind of hard for the average person to be able to tell who has the virus or not at a glance, this should be expected.
Now that theaters in the U.S. are suffering after reopening their doors, the box office in the domestic market has really started suffering as well. This is most apparent with Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster ‘Tenet’ due to the fact that, despite having a strong opening weekend, the movie has had nothing but bad box office returns since. Originally, the film was set to release back in July, but due to theaters pushing off their openings due to the pandemic, they pushed it to August. The final release date for the film was set near the end of August for international releases and the end of August/early September for domestic. After those two openings, it had managed to bring in nearly $150 millions, but as previously stated, this started to drop off.
Despite many theaters being opened domestically and rules for occupancy being put in place to protect customers, people simply didn’t want to risk it. This is how the movie ended up only grossing a few million domestically the following weekends after the film’s release. This was something that didn’t just affect ‘Tenet’ as it meant that theaters were going to have a rough time moving forward, but it definitely affected ‘Tenet’ pretty hard. This is due to the fact that the movie has to apparently bring in a total of $500 million at the box office in order to cover the film before marketing costs. Needless to say that things just aren’t looking up for the studio and its movie given the fact that they need to make a lot more than the $500 million to break even after everything is said and done.
It would appear now, that the studio might not have an incredible amount of trouble to worry about as it seems the movie is still on its way to making its goal. Although it is still a long ways off, the movie has still been doing alright internationally, though still not to the degree the studio is hoping for. While the domestic box office is remaining pretty stagnant, the international one is slowly climbing as ‘Tenet’ is now sitting at around $300 million. This gives the movie a pretty good chance at getting to the break even goal within a couple of months time, but it still doesn’t fix the whole issue. The movie still has a long way to go before it makes the money Warner Bros. was hoping it would.
By George Robbins
There are not many films that hold their place among the annals of the most famous movies out there, but a fair number of comedies hold a place there. Among those movies are the ‘Ghostbusters’ movies which I am sure most people have seen and made sure that others have seen as well. It has essentially become a part of culture as a whole that people have seen the films and made their friends and family watch them as well. They are held at a high standard and for good reason because they are a part of a number of films from the 80’s that people will always love. It is because of this that, even now, they receive special treatment.
This special treatment can be seen in the fact that they are still coming up with new forms of media which rely heavily upon the two original films. The 2016 rendition of the film was pretty much considered a commercial failure as many did not like the direction in which the movie was taken. Not too long ago however, we found out that there would be another entry in the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise which is aptly named ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife.’ Unlike the 2016 film, this one has become much closer to the original films in style, even putting in direct callbacks to the original movies. The question at that point became whether the film was actually going to have anything to do with the originals.
If this upcoming film did have something to do with the original films story-wise, then it can easily be called ‘Ghostbusters 3’ by the public. The things is that enough time has passed that it just wouldn’t feel right if people did this, but apparently it would be a proper naming convention. According to actor Ernie Hudson who played Winston Zeddemore in the original films, the movie will, in fact, tie in with the original movies. This means that we will essentially be seeing a new story which builds off of the old films which is what many hoped for with the 2016 film. Hopefully with this background to it, the movie will not be disappointing like the last release was.
By George Robbins
This pandemic has been nothing but a huge financial drain but there is not much anyone can do because of the threat it poses. There are industries all over the place which are greatly suffering from the fact that they can’t get back to things like they normally would. Unfortunately, those businesses have had no choice but to adapt to the new situation or have their entire livelihoods shut down. Fortunately, there are some safeguards in place to prevent businesses from just losing everything they have, but it doesn’t make things any easier for them. In fact, the full effects of the pandemic are starting to be felt now.
The industry which seems to be suffering the hardest due to the pandemic has been the movie theater industry and, by extension, a good part of the film industry. Movie theaters have been doing their best to get things back up and running the way they were before the virus started the pandemic. Unfortunately, this just cannot be the case as there are restrictions in place that are there to prevent more people from contracting the virus. This means that theaters are limited on the number of people that they are allowed to have be in there at one time, which makes things a little difficult for them to bring in revenue. This still hasn’t changed the fact that they were very much hoping people would want to go back out to the movies.
Recently, the blockbuster ‘Tenet‘ had its theatrical release where it first released internationally and then a week later it released domestically. Unfortunately for both the studio and theaters showing the film, the movie could not create enough draw to really make people want to go back to theaters during a health crisis. This shouldn’t really be much of a surprise, but it apparently was for them because after only three weekends on the market domestically, ‘Tenet’ is really not bringing anything in for the box office. This ended up being the driving force which made studios decide to push back their movie releases and it has theater companies in the U.S. deciding whether they want to stay open or not. Among the studios that decided to push back a lot of their content due to this was Disney.
Disney, like all other companies, is still trying their best to come up with ways of making money at this time and it doesn’t seem like it’s going well. Needless to say, they are still making money, but they will most definitely be reporting a huge loss due to theaters and their parks being shut down for so long. The amount of money they have lost out on this year is staggering to say the least, but they are doing what they think is best to keep making money. Unfortunately, the things they are doing are not great as they have already caught flak for much of what they are doing right now. For instance, the whole release of ‘Mulan’ on Disney+ is essentially cursed, but the $30 premium on the film has definitely made them money.
‘Mulan’ proved to them that they can actually make money outside of theaters for new films, but it just won’t be as much as through theaters at their peak. This is why they pushed all of their big releases, in the hopes that they can have theatrical releases for them when things calm down. What they are really looking forward to is a rise in consumer confidence in theaters once again, but it will be awhile before that happens because the pandemic situation isn’t looking good. Movies aren’t their only way of making money though, as we all well know by now because they have their amusement parks. These have been affected just as harshly as their film sector unfortunately and now it is taking its toll.
Just like their film sector, they have been catching flak for how they are handling their parks side of things. One such reason is because they have apparently been letting COVID-positive employees work in the parks with guests around and around their co-workers. So not only does this make it appear that they don’t care about their employees, but also their customers. On top of this, they have been getting complaints since they started re-opening parks because people didn’t, and don’t, think that it’s safe enough for parks to be opened back up again. This is why the State of California decided not to let them reopen Disneyland because it would make things even more hazardous than they already are. Now, Disney Parks is using this as an excuse to lay off 28,000 employees, citing the fact that the state won’t let them reopen as the reason they had to do it.
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, has most certainly become something of a household name over the past twelve years. Marvel Studios now produces films that manage to captivate most of the audiences they are trying to and they bring in plenty of revenue for their parent company, Disney. This has easily made them one of the most successful franchises to date outside of Disney’s other property, Star Wars. It is pretty easy to see why things have been working out for them because Marvel Studios has pretty much been able to perfect the whole superhero genre film thing as a whole. So now, we expect nothing less than a good film whenever a new film of their’s comes out.
These days, a lot of problems now find themselves being pushed up front and center given how much is currently going on in the world. Over the past couple of years, Marvel has been doing their best to pull everything together in spite of their shortcomings. This is why the state of the MCU as a whole is something that is debated upon by the general public because everything that has been seen thus far has given a moment of pause. This mainly stems from the fact that the film industry as a whole is a mess right now and that Marvel has had their release plans set already. This makes things kind of difficult as they are now somewhat bound to a formula.
Even though Marvel has had a release plan for all of their movies over the years, there has been some level of flexibility involved in order to get storylines working. This is how they were eventually able to incorporate characters like Spider-Man and Thanos into their over-arching introduction saga. I say introduction saga because they called the entire first three phases a saga which means they plan on keeping this going for a very long time. This means that, in the future, there are sure to be more issues which mess with their movie plans going forward and they need a level of flexibility to deal with it. Although they have some flexibility with their stories, there is still the issue of them not having flexibility with their releases.
They had plenty of plans in place for how they were going to kick off Phase 4, but those plans got changed already a couple of times. The first time their plans were interrupted was back in 2018 when James Gunn was temporarily let go from directing ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.’ Originally, the plan was for the third film to be the one that would actually have the chance to kick off Phase 4 of the MCU. This plan was changed and now the film was moved much further down the roster. Not that it was really much of an issue at the time, but it showed that they needed some flexibility to move things around. The problem really started coming into play, though, when they released their launch plans at San Diego Comic-Con last year.
At SDCC last year, they announced the line-up and release dates for their films, but obviously they will not be able to keep this line-up the way they planned. The new first film on the line-up was meant to be ‘Black Widow,’ but the pandemic forced back the release date to some time in 2021. This has effectively pushed back the releases of every other film and shows that when they released their plans, they lost some flexibility. Another issue to crop up was the deal between Sony and Marvel for Spider-Man as Disney was trying to go back on their deal with Sony as they felt they were not getting enough money out of the character. Eventually this issue was resolved and we ended up getting new possible future films out of the deal.
When the new deal was made between Sony and Disney, it became known that Disney would get 25 percent of the profits in return for paying roughly a quarter of the production costs as well. On top of this fact, Sony would get more creative liberty to use the MCU’s Spider-Man in their own Spider-Verse films. This overall presents the possibility that we could end up seeing Sony’s Spider-Verse films becoming a larger part of the MCU in some way. So it appears that not every change made to the MCU will be a bad one as people have been wanting something like this to happen for awhile now. This just goes to show though, that the MCU is something that must be flexible moving forward or else the over-arching stories will end up suffering as a result.
Although their have been plenty of changes thus far, it is certainly apparent that Marvel Studios pretty much knows what they are doing in the long run. The pandemic has made it a bit more difficult for them now in terms of movie releases and when they can work on producing their films, but they have a pretty good idea of what they are doing. They have had to deal with many changes to Phase 4 already and it would not be surprising if they came up with a new line-up for the public soon enough. Marvel Studios has a long road ahead of them because it is highly likely that they will be changing even more due to the pandemic, but we know they can handle being flexible. We just shouldn’t be surprised if things continue to change in the near future for the MCU.
By George Robbins
Sacha Baron Cohen is a well-known face in the movie industries for his work on parodies which make fun of life in general. Basically, he takes aspects that would be seen as ridiculous in other cultures and makes them realized as parodied versions of themselves on screen. This is what he did when he made the movie ‘Borat‘ and it showed aspects of people’s lives in America that people would consider ridiculous. This was meant to be a satire for the people of not only America, but the world as a whole as it allowed people to see what American reactions would be like in certain situations. Now, we will have the chance to see the ridiculousness once again.
The movie ‘Borat’ has become very culturally significant since its initial release back in the year 2006. It very quickly became offensive to people, especially those who appeared in the film because they were not paid actors, so there was a lawsuit put against the film. This did not stop the film, and more importantly, the character from blowing up and becoming a well known part of the film industry. It became so well-known that Cohen had to retire the character of Borat after just a couple of years because he would not be able to use the character in public without people knowing it was him. Recently, this has become less of an issue apparently because he filmed a sequel in secret.
‘Borat 2,’ as it is currently being called, was a project that very few people knew was actually being worked on in secret by Cohen. It was only made news to the public recently when someone revealed that they saw the character being filmed somewhere driving around. It now appears that we will have the chance to see this film far sooner than we ever would have anticipated as it is set to release later this month. Although we only just heard about it, the movie has already had test screenings and is set for a release, so it is set to apparently release on Amazon Prime near the end of October. It might only be coming out in a month, but we still don’t know the name of the film and we may not know it until it comes out at this point.
By George Robbins
Clint Eastwood is responsible for being a part of some of the most well-known westerns of his generation. More specifically, he was a huge part of the spaghetti western films of the time period which were made with western audiences in mind to make them more appealing to the general public. After all, it was mainly the western audiences that were going to go see those films as westerns ended up being some of the most well-known movies for an entire generation. Among those westerns were a series of three films that all took place in the same universe and involved the same character otherwise known as the ‘Dollars’ trilogy.
Among the famous ‘Dollars’ trilogy was ‘A Fistful of Dollars,’ ‘A Few Dollars More,’ and to cap it all off, ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.’ The last film served as the prequel for the entire trilogy, but the original was, in its own rights, considered an incredible film. In actuality, ‘A Fistful of Dollars‘ was a spaghetti western remake of Yojimbo from director Sergio Leone which saw a man tricking two rival gangs into killing one another. This eventually led to a lawsuit by Toho because this was not a movie that they allowed to happen, but in the end it gave the western world a version of the film they could relate to. Needless to say, the film and those involved with it were excellent.
Given the potential for the full story of the film to be drawn out to make things more interesting, it is no surprise that a TV show is in development for it. These days, movies of the past either get remade as new movies or turned into TV shows. It seems we got the latter with this one and to be honest, it definitely seems like it will be interesting. Needless to say, this is a project that we should all be on the lookout for as it will definitely be worth watching if the story stays the same. Given that the state of the film industry nowadays isn’t so great, we may not see it for awhile, but it is something to look forward to.
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