By George Robbins
For many years, the ‘Star Trek‘ franchise has held its place as one of the most popular forms of media argued about over the internet. This stems from the fact that there are obvious similarities between the ‘Star Trek’ series and the ‘Star Wars‘ series. By many similarities, I mean that they both take place in space and that there is really nothing else all too similar about them whatsoever. They both take their own approaches to how they handle the space sci-fi genre and they have entirely different concepts to handling it. This is the actual reason why many people end up arguing over both series because they are just trying to prove that one series is superior over the other. In reality, it doesn’t matter in the least and both series are entertaining in their own ways.
Back in 2009, we were given a treat that no one really expected to see all that much and that was a resurgence in ‘Star Trek’ as a series. This came about when J.J. Abrams made the 2009 ‘Star Trek‘ film which went back and retold the original story of how James T. Kirk became the captain of the Enterprise in the original series. This change was a welcome one and it gave us three very interesting films to watch which kept us entertained over the following years. Those three movies all told their own story and they kept us entertained as time went on without it feeling like they might have been overdoing it. This revived many more peoples’ interests in the franchise as a whole and the past few years have been abuzz.
‘Star Trek’ not only started to make its resurgence again on the big screen as TV shows started releasing once again. More specifically, a new set of shows started going into development because the studio saw how much of a desire there still was for ‘Star Trek’ content. This need to continuously get content led to the development of numerous shows and even continuations of older shows in general. There is no doubt in any ones minds that the movies had a huge part to play in the ‘Star Trek’ renaissance that we now see today, but where then, is the next movie. The answer is simple, it is on the way, just not anytime soon.
According to the studio, they never planned to stop making the newer ‘Star Trek’ films and they actually want to keep them going. Unfortunately for fans of the films, their own popularity spawned the television series that were previously mentioned. The studio is actually planning on focusing more heavily on the TV programs for the foreseeable future because they see that as being the better investment. They have assured fans though that ‘Star Trek 4’ and other future films in the new series are definitely not cancelled. This means there is hope that we will see new ‘Star Trek’ films, just not for awhile yet due to the way things are currently going down on planet Earth.
By George Robbins
Christopher Nolan’s newest blockbuster film ‘Tenet‘ has had a lot going on with it recently with the way things currently are in theaters. When the movie released in theaters about a month ago, it started off pretty successful and it managed to rake in a fair bit both domestically and internationally given the current state of affairs. Unfortunately, what followed was nothing but a downturn, not only forth movie, but the theater industry as a whole. ‘Tenet’ has been getting nothing but mediocre returns at the box office ever since its first week domestically which is shaping the way theaters are handling things moving forward.
Despite the fact that the movie has been reviewed fairly favorably since release, it is still a tough situation for the studio moving forward. Theaters are more than likely actually going to shut down once again because they are now seeing what kind of affect the pandemic has had post-lockdown. Many customers are weary of actually going back out to see movies in an enclosed space with a bunch of other people around even if they are spaced apart from one another. Therefore, ‘Tenet’ is suffering and in the past couple of weeks the film has made a drastically smaller amount of money than when it first released. So it is sort of a surprise that the film’s star is now talking about wanting to be in a sequel for the film.
‘Tenet’ star John David Washington has made it known recently that he wants to actually be in a sequel to the film in the future. According to Washington, the film’s open ended conclusion left a door open for his character to appear in a sequel to the film. Therefore he actually wants to have a sequel for the film be made. Unfortunately, sequels won’t often get made for films that have had little to no financial success and this seems to be the route that this film is going in as of now. The film is still drastically shy of the massive $500 million before marketing that is needed just to break even. It is highly unlikely at this point that we will actually have the chance to see a sequel get made for the film.
By George Robbins
Tom Cruise is an actor who is well known by now by the world as a whole for the various films he has been a part of over the years. Although most of the films he has played in over the years have been action films, he has held parts in various types of films over the years, Therefore he is pretty much an actor of worldwide renown that that held peoples’ attention for many years. This has allowed him the opportunity to do things that some people would have never imagined and he has become known for even more than just this. As stated already, Cruise is known for the countless action movies he has been in over the years, but not just for that reason.
Although he is known for his roles in action films over the years, he is perhaps just as well known for the fact that he performs all sorts of insane stunts in those films. Perhaps the most pervasive set of films in which he is known for this is the ‘Mission: Impossible‘ series of films where he tries to one-up himself as time goes on. Even now, with the seventh film in production, he is doing all he can to put himself in danger to make sure that his stunts pay off and we end up with something interesting to see in theaters. One thing that we weren’t expecting though was his plan to actually go to outer space in the future.
It isn’t too much of a surprise given his track record that Cruise would want to one-up himself in a spectacular way by doing something totally outlandish in the future. This came up a few months back when it was discovered that Cruise was teaming up with SpaceX and Elon Musk to try and convince NASA to send him to space. After a relatively short discussion, the decision was made that he would be able to go to the ISS to work on a film in the future. It would now appear that his travelling to the ISS will happen sooner rather than later as the 2020-2023 International Space Station manifest shows that Tom Cruise is officially headed into space to film his new action-adventure movie. This is bound to be an exciting landmark in the history of the human race.
By George Robbins
Disney is the home of family entertainment the world-over which has drawn in families for generations with their movies and television shows. This has given people the opportunity to be better than they ever were before growing up because countless people grew up learning new values. At least this was the intention of Disney films as people were growing up, whereas now, Disney is just remaking a lot of their older films in new mediums in order to make some way of getting more money over time. Much of these new projects are live-action films which are just remastered versions of their older animated films.
The newest iteration of an older Disney film to get a live-action face-lift was the movie ‘Mulan.’ The live-action version of the film just had a very long and painful process of actually being able to release to the public and it only succeeded due to Disney’s acceptance that the theatrical market is currently in shambles. For those somehow unaware, the movie theater industry has had a lot of trouble recently due to the pandemic. They haven’t really been able to bring in any revenue due to the fact that people haven’t been able to actually go out to the movies. This, coupled with the fact that they were given restrictions for when they reopened made it much less easy for them to start back up again.
Now that theaters have actually recently opened their doors back up again, they have been hopeful that people would brave the pandemic to go see movies. That hope was further increased upon the release of the much anticipated movie ‘Tenet‘ which finally made its debut to the world after about a one and a half month long delay. Unfortunately for those companies, those hopes were almost immediately shattered because the film is not doing so hot. Unfortunately, over the past couple of weekends, the movie has only made about $11 million domestically for a grand domestic total somewhere around $60 million. This is severely shy of studio estimates as well.
Movie studios have been giving it their all to try and bring in the money they have been losing by not releasing any films recently. ‘Tenet’ was on that laundry list of films until its international release about a month ago. After one week it had its domestic release and, unfortunately, what followed is what has already been iterated upon. The movie has not made as much as the studio expected it to which, in order to just break even before marketing costs, is somewhere close to $500 million. If things continue this way in the theater industry there will be massive losses like this all over the place. It is actually due to this that movies that have already had severely pushed back release dates were pushed back even further than before.
Needless to say, this doesn’t set a great precedent moving forward and now people are left wondering what exactly is going on in the movie industry. With Warner Bros. possibly ending up taking a massive loss in the long run due to this, it is clear theaters are not ready to be reopened. Without customer confidence, theaters are not going to get anywhere near the numbers they need to stay open moving forward. Studios are beginning to acknowledge this fact and because they still want to make money on their blockbusters, they are delaying them further. This is how Disney is choosing to handle their bigger films moving forward as well. Their smaller films, though, are another story altogether it would appear.
Not so much their smaller films, but the ones they feel will not make as much money as they feel other films would. On that list was a movie that was severely pushed up from its original release which was set for next year, ‘Hamilton.’ As many people might be well aware of by now, ‘Hamilton’ is a play that was put on Broadway which told the story of one Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America who played a huge role in the forming of the nation and had a relatively interesting life story to tell. It wasn’t a story many cared about, however, until Lin-Manuel Miranda made a musical based on it. Needless to say, if you’ve heard of it, you know just how popular it is.
The popularity of the musical made it a prime candidate for it to be made into some kind of movie adaptation. Unlike most other adaptations though, it was not turned into an ordinary live-action film. Instead, the movie was a live performance of the musical which was then edited down so that camera cuts and time constraints could be put into the performance. Because of the popularity of the show and the fact that it was a show that people could watch all the way through, it became extremely popular on Disney’s streaming service. It was supposed to have a theatrical release some time next year, but this ended up not being the case.
‘Hamilton’ had a release on Disney+ a couple of months back which turned out better than they expected it to and people flocked to the service in order to watch the film. Even though Disney wasn’t expecting it to do so well, it therefore turned out better than they ever could have expected it to. It was not the only feature film to end up having its release be on the Disney+ platform as ‘Mulan’ recently followed suit. The reason for this is because ‘Mulan’ was a live-action remaster which was supposed to drop in theaters back in March. The pandemic hit, so they moved the release date back to July and what followed was a series of unfortunate events where they just kept delaying it til’ they reached the end of August.
Eventually, they decided that they would no longer wait for a release window for a theatrical release of the film. Thus, ‘Mulan’ had its full release on the Disney+ service with a $30 premium on top of the subscription fee in the United States. Disney wanted their film to obviously have its release in China still, but due to Disney+ not being available in China, they had to find another way to do things. Fortunately for them, theaters in China are open so they had the movie release to theaters there while it released to Disney+ domestically. Unfortunately, the movie is just a central point for controversy no matter where you go and it was considered a failure on the Chinese market. This did not stop it from being kind of successful on Disney+.
Even though ‘Mulan’ has had nothing but controversy surrounding it since release, it has made Disney realize that they can make more money than they thought through their streaming service. The same goes for ‘Hamilton,’ because even though there was no real premium for it, people signed up for the service which brought in a lot of money. Both movies having mild success through the service shows Disney that they can make Disney+ work multiple ways. It shows them that many strategies are now open to them moving forward, especially with the state of the movie theater industry at the moement.
By George Robbins
Movie theaters are just having a terrible go of things as time currently goes on and it doesn’t seem like it will be getting any better in the near future. Back in mid-March of this year, movie theaters, like most other businesses were forced to shut down in order to adjust to the pandemic. This meant that for months, they have not been able to bring in any kind of income and they still had to maintain their businesses for when they actually got their doors open again. Within recent weeks, they were actually given this grand opportunity and for the first week everything looked great. Then the inevitable thing called time happened and it has been miserable ever since.
Theaters have not exactly been given a wide selection of films in order to keep people entertained with the biggest one being the movie ‘Tenet.’ Director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. were banking heavily on this film being the one that would “save” the box office once theaters chose to once again open their doors. When the movie first released, it did so internationally and then one week later it had a domestic release. During its opening weeks, the movie actually fared better than expected and it brought in over $150 million. This gave theaters and studios confidence that maybe they were right and it was time to reopen their doors and show new films.
This was pretty much immediately proven to be incorrect as the following weekend, the big blockbuster that is ‘Tenet’ only brought in around $6.7 million nation-wide. This past weekend was even worse and it shows that this downward trend isn’t one that seems to be going away any time soon. This time the movie only brought in a total of $4.7 million which just goes to show that the trend was not just a one off show of bad luck. To put into perspective just how bad this is, the movie apparently needs something close to $500 million before marketing costs to break even. Warner may have ended up biting off way more than they could chew when they agreed to a full theatrical release for the film.
By George Robbins
Music plays a huge part in movies to the point that despite not thinking about it most of the time, we can’t live without it. If we were to watch a movie and the film had nothing in it but he voices of the characters and no score whatsoever, we would think something went horribly wrong. There are plenty of moments in films where there is absolute silence, but so many more where music permeates throughout the medium. This is resulted in unforgettable moments and lasting memories for fans of different films throughout the years. Some films have music that is so memorable that we will never be able to forget it no matter how many years go by.
One of the people responsible for the creation of one of those iconic composed themes was Ray Parker Jr. who composed the theme for ‘Ghostbusters.’ The theme for the film is easily one of the most memorable pieces of audio media that the world has ever heard. It wouldn’t just be used for the films, but would also go on to inspire countless forms of pop culture as time went on. You would think that with a piece of audio media that important to the world, that Ray Parker Jr. wouldn’t have any regrets from his time in the industry. Well as it apparently turns out, he does have a regret and that is the fact that he passed over Mel Brooks’ ‘Spaceballs‘ film.
As many well know, ‘Spaceballs’ was Mel Brooks’ parody on the, then and now, new series ‘Star Wars.’ While the film was a standalone, it still remains a very well-loved piece of media over the years. Ray Parker Jr. was offered the chance to work on the film, but according to him, was off “fooling around, doing something, chasing girls or waterskiing,” and therefore didn’t work on the film. This would be an action he very much regretted doing as he actually thought about it afterwards that he would have loved to meet and befriend Mel Brooks. Even now he is hoping he may one day get the chance before it is too late, but it just goes to show that sometimes it may be better to stop and think about a choice before saying no or you may regret it.
Get Some Strange!
