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.
By George Robbins
Eddie Murphy is a man who has, over the years, managed to make himself a household name due to his work in comedy. Ever since the 1980’s, Murphy has made it apparent to the world that he has comedy chops that make him a contender as one of the most memorable comedians of the era. Not to mention the fact that he has managed to successfully cement his place in Hollywood because he also knows how to act as well as be hilarious simultaneously. This has made him one of the most acknowledged people of our time and we wouldn’t expect anything less. The place where he truly got his start with the industry though was ‘Saturday Night Live.’
‘Saturday Night Live’ or more simply, SNL, is a weekly sketch show that has maintained a strong place on the air for a couple of generations now. Without SNL, much of the comedy industry would be an entirely different place as it gave starts to many of the most profound comedians in the industry. Not only did it give comedians their starts, but it also gave plenty of inspiration for what we see in the comedy medium today as a whole. Among what was known by many fans as the Golden Age for SNL were the members of the cast at the time and included in that cast was the aforementioned Eddie Murphy. Murphy played a huge role in SNL and definitely helped shape it into what it had become going into today.
It is a bit surprising that despite the fact that Murphy played such a huge role in television as a whole on SNL that it wasn’t until recently that he ended up getting an Emmy. In fact, Murphy received the Creative Arts Emmy for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for hosting Saturday Night Live recently. He received the award for guest acting and not an award for appearing as an actual actor. Despite being a huge part of the show in the 80’s he only just now won an award for being a guest. It is no surprise though considering how triumphant a return it was with his reprisal of so many roles from that period of time. Hopefully this will be the first award of many as he stated that he even plans on returning to stand-up starting in the near future.
By George Robbins
The movie industry has been nothing but abuzz as of late due to production companies and studios as a whole getting back to work. This comes in the form of movies going back to what they were doing when they were forced to shut down back at the start of the pandemic. When productions were forced to shut down, studios had no choice but to wait things out until such a time where they could get back to task. This meant waiting for months on end and then having to follow new protocols that have been put in place so that crews could return to work. Therefore, we ended up with plenty of down time for crews before they could actually get back to whatever projects they were working on.
Despite new rules being in place for the sets which help to prevent the spread of the virus, they have been working hard on getting things done. Many movies which had to forego production for a few months have already started back up again to some degree. Not only have many started up again, but some have either already finished or they are nearing the end of the whole production process. This has made it a difficult but interesting time for production crews as they have to rush to finish their projects, but they had a lot of time off prior to this. Many movies even spent some of that time off getting work done from home so that they could finish soon after returning to the set.
This work from home approach did not work on every single film that had a halted production unfortunately, so they were forced to be delayed. Without a proper set-up, some productions were forced to hold off on going back to work for awhile, which also contributed to many delays we saw. As such, many movies are now going to have significant delays tacked on to their overall release window. This isn’t helped along at all by the fact that movies are now getting even longer delays for theatrical releases. This is stemming from the fact that people don’t want to go out to a public place during a pandemic in order to see a film they could possibly just watch in the safety of their own homes.
Even though there is so much that is currently going wrong with the movie industry as a whole, there is much progress being made. With many projects being worked on for the first time in months, it is a huge deal when we hear about movies starting to film again. This is just the case when we now talk about the upcoming ‘Fantastic Beasts 3,’ which has apparently begun the filming process once again. For those unaware, the movie had started production before the pandemic began, but just like all other productions, it was put on hold. Just like all other productions recently however, they have once again started filming again, at least according Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne, being the main star for the ‘Fantastic Beasts‘ saga, is a pretty good source for knowing when these things are true.
Word about the movie starting back up again began back in the beginning of June because of the movie production situation at the time. In England, where it was being filmed, movies were given the greenlight to once again start production. Unfortunately, many crews did not feel it was safe enough to once again start, especially if it was a large production and this movie was on that list of large productions. Due to this fact, they held off on filming until an appropriate point in time. This point in time is apparently around now because they have apparently already resumed the filming process so hopefully it won’t be too long before we get to see the movie have its release to round out the trilogy.
By George Robbins
As many people may have heard by now, Disney’s newest live-action remake for the movie ‘Mulan’ was pretty much a failure they will never live down. This mainly has to do with the various controversies surrounding the film and it has created plenty of heated discussions online. Among those controversies include ones regrading the cultural genocide currently going on in China, as well as the company’s poor attempts to appeal to Chinese audiences. It is no surprise that this is what they were trying to do, but the way they went about it just didn’t end up working out for them. In fact, it was so terrible that the movie underperformed spectacularly at the Chinese box office.
‘Mulan’ is perhaps the most divisive movie which has recently released on the open market due to everything that is currently surrounding it. On top of this, it is overall going to be considered a failure of a movie because of how little it made back against its $200+ million budget it apparently had. Although the release for the film will always be plagued by what is currently going on in regards to the film, Disney+ actually ended up coming out ahead due to the movie’s release. This stems from the massive surge in new subscriptions and the even more massive surge in expenditures on the service after the film’s release. This actually might end up helping Disney+ in the long run.
The fact remains that the Disney+ service is still relatively new and like every other streaming service, it functions based upon a monthly subscription fee. When ‘Mulan’ released, there was a 68% surge in Disney+ downloads which means that there was a massive increase in overall subscriptions so that people could see the movie. This is all well-and-good, but for those who noticed, ‘Hamilton’ had an over 70% surge after its release, but the difference is when the expenditures are added in. Unlike other films on the platform, since ‘Mulan’ was released straight to digital, there is a $30 premium to own the film on the service on top of the subscription fee. Even though the film did not do well overall, it proved that people would be willing to pay extra on Disney+ to see new films. This is an overall win for the service due to the release of ‘Mulan.’
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