By George Robbins
Movie studios are currently getting everything back on track by trying to get their productions going again within the past couple of months. They have been doing this the best they can considering the fact that most everything they have been doing has been shut down in some way. Even productions that have managed to start up again recently have had a bit of a time trying to get back on track properly as it has been anything but easy for them. For instance, they have restrictions on set with limit just how much they are capable of doing which has resulted in many people not being allowed on set. This has resulted in a significantly slower process when it comes to films actually being worked on by comparison.
What I mean when I say by comparison is that things cannot go as smoothly as they normally would if things were not as rough as they currently are. Basically what I am saying is that if studios were able to work on movies like they normally would, they would have everyone available on set all day, everyday to make sure things go quickly and smoothly. This is how movies would get finished filming so quickly and now this process has been hit relatively hard by the fact that this is currently not how things can work. Due to the rules in place for the pandemic, the overall number of people on sets is limited and everyone on set must maintain the current societal rules in place for social distancing.
Now that productions are getting back to work in relatively full swing, they are doing what they can to follow the rules while keeping cast and crew safe. That being said, it is still far from what people would consider the best case scenario, and therefore, troubles still ensue. Even with the countless problems that may crop up in the foreseeable future, studios are working on getting everything back up and running again which is how we are ending up with many films people have been looking forward to starting up production again or very soon. For instance, ‘The Batman‘ has resumed filming as of late, ‘Mission: Impossible 7‘ has resumed, and a number of other films have been announced that will start filming in the coming months.
One such movie that we will apparently be seeing filming start for soon is the sequel to the 2019 film ‘Shazam!.’ The sequel for the DC film is one that has actually been relatively well anticipated because the first film was received very well critically. It has been no secret that there would be a second film because of the popularity of the first movie, but it was a wonder on many people’s minds as to just when they would begin working on the movie. With the announcement of the ‘Black Adam’ film as well as the pandemic that is currently going on, no one knew when the film would be worked on. According to the film’s star, Zachary Levi, they will be working on starting the sequel’s production in early 2021 for their supposed November 2022 release. Though it still has a far-off release, it may just end up releasing earlier and maybe even closer to the original April 2022 release.
By George Robbins
These past couple of weeks have been a pretty big deal for folks in the movie industry due to everything that is currently going on with the pandemic still. Theaters have been able to open their doors back up to the public which has given them the chance to once again make some kind of revenue. Considering the fact that they haven’t been making any kind of money over the past six months or so, this is kind of a big deal as the film industry was losing money hand over fist. Losing money doesn’t really sound correct though as they weren’t so much losing it as they were not making any. If they aren’t making any money, then they are slowly losing it due to new production costs and maintenance fees to uphold maintenance on facilities.
Now that we are at least somewhat separated from the start of the pandemic, we have a better handle on things moving forward. Just saying that we have a better handle on things however, doesn’t actually mean that we know what we are doing. It does mean that we are doing our best to try and make due with the new rules that are in place that we now have to follow. Movie theaters have had one of the biggest snags to deal with as of late due to the restrictions that they have had put into place. These restrictions are there as a means of preventing more people from getting sick and, while helpful to the general public, they do movie theaters no real favors. This is mostly due to the fact that theaters are now severely limited on the number of seats that they can sell to the public.
Movie theaters kind of rely upon selling out their seats if they want to make any kind of legitimate revenue, but due to the new rules in place this isn’t easy to do. So the restrictions that have now been put into place limit the number of people who are allowed to occupy space in theaters. Now, at any given time, only a percentage of space in theaters can be occupied by people coming to see new movies. Even larger theaters have an upmost limit to them with many only being allowed to have 100 customers total in order to follow social distancing rules. Thus, it is kind of difficult for theaters to bring in the money that both they need and that studios need. Considering the very limited amount of options available at theaters now, this can get kind of troubling relatively quickly.
Among the very limited number of options currently available to the public at the moment is the new blockbuster from Christopher Nolan, ‘Tenet.’ This movie is one that has been hyped up since the moment trailers started dropping for it some time last year. This is something which is easy for people to understand because the movie instantly gave off an air about it where people just wanted to know what the movie was about. Most people know by now that any new movie Christopher Nolan comes up with, especially new original films, will most definitely be something worth watching. This movie was made all the more interesting by the fact that it was very early on made out to be a spy thriller, but with a twist. It would appear from an early stage that time manipulation of some sort was responsible for a lot of what would be happening.
All of this tied together is what drew the attention of the public and so when the movie was still planning on keeping its original July release date, many were excited. No one was more excited than Christopher Nolan who wanted his movie to be the first blockbuster available to the public once theaters reopened. Unfortunately, this release date was not meant to last as there was a second wave of the virus in the United States therefore, the release date was pushed back a couple of weeks to the beginning of August. Things continued to be negative for Warner Bros. though, as they had to push it again due to a high volume of cases. Eventually, they just decided to hold off until further notice and they instead decided to release the film internationally first. Luckily they were able to give a domestic release only one week after the international and they made a lot of money back.
While the movie has been getting flak for the sound mixing being all messed up to the point it is annoying viewers, the movie has made a lot of money. For instance, it exceeded expectations internationally by bringing in over $100 million on its opening weekend and this past weekend, the total amount brought in after the domestic release exceeded over $150 million. Though very much shy of the $200 million budget for production, it is a strong start to a trend that the studio wants to see continue. The problem is that the movie needs to bring in about $500 million at the box office to break even, before marketing costs are factored in. They are very much willing to go the distance with the movie, but it is a long ways off before they can make the money that they want to see from this movie.
By George Robbins
Christopher Nolan is a director who has become known worldwide as being a man who can make movies that both impress and confuse the audience. Over the past decade and a half, he has done his best to bring in countless audiences to see his films and it has resulted in billions of dollars in box office sales. His films often have people becoming fascinated with them just from the trailers alone and people are more than willing to go and see his newest films with little to no explanation as to what they may be about. If it wasn’t for his ability to create films that make people think about what is going on, then he wouldn’t have created such a dedicated fan base. He has had the chance yet again recently to bring people in with his movie ‘Tenet.’
‘Tenet’ is a film that he has been trying to advocate for awhile to get to be the first movie available in theaters once they were able to reopen. As such, it was originally set to release in mid-July and due to a second wave of the virus, it was pushed back again to the end of August. The movie was forced to have an international release first and then a domestic one this past weekend, one week after the initial release, due to the previously stated delay. As such, many were building up anticipation to go and see the movie once it hit theaters and it blew expectations out of the water. The movie ended up selling better than expected, though it was still very much shy of being called a true success.
This past weekend saw the domestic release of the new Christopher Nolan spy thriller and people have some relatively mixed feelings about the film thus far. Obviously, the fact that it is a cold war-esque spy thriller with time-manipulation elements has made the film a highly interesting one for people to go and see. Unfortunately though, it seems that the sound design for the movie has been an issue for a lot of the people who have already gone to see the movie. Audiences who have already gone to see ‘Tenet’ have complained that important dialogue in the film is unintelligible due to the bad sound mixing. This makes it seem like there are going to be some issues for the blockbuster moving forward and thus, problems for the studio. Maybe they can retroactively fix the issue, but at this point, only time will tell.
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is now considered to be one of the most expansive cinematic universes to ever exist and will go down as such in the history books. The amount of money that has been made based upon the box office of those movies is staggering and make it easily the most successful movie franchise in existence. Not only the box office but the merchandising that go along with it make it clear just how strong an influence these films have had over the years. The only other franchise with merchandising rights as strong as the MCU’s is the Star Wars franchise which is another cinematic universe controlled by Disney. Needless to say, the success of these franchises mean everything to the company.
All of this being said, there has been a lot going on due to the pandemic as of late and it has been affecting the production of these movies as a whole. Many of the productions being worked on in the MCU have had to be temporarily cancelled until conditions were once again safe enough for people to return to work. Within the past couple of months, these conditions have been met and productions have begun to start back up again. Not only have they started back up again, but there are plans in place in order to allow new productions to begin next year as well. One of the bigger ones that has been mentioned lately was the ‘Ant-Man 3‘ production which is set to start filming in June.
Another MCU production that we just found out was supposed to start in March of 2021 was the production for ‘Black Panther II.’ Unfortunately, it seems that these plans are going to be set back a bit because of the recent unfortunate passing of the lead actor, Chadwick Boseman. Boseman played the titular ‘Black Panther‘ in the film and was a major part of what made that character so great. With his passing, there is now a gap in what they had originally planned, and now they will have to wait a while longer before they can come up with something new for when they start production. Surely they will figure out what they are going to do, but this will not change the fact that the sequel will just not feel the same way as the original did.
By George Robbins
Christopher Nolan is now a household director name due to his work over the past few years within the film industry. A majority of the films that Nolan makes end up going on to be mind-bending films that really get viewers thinking about what they may have just seen on screen. This seems to be the case with his newest movie ‘Tenet’ as well because it has built up a reputation for itself as a mysterious film that sees some form of time manipulation being used. On top of that, it has been made known that the movie is a spy movie that sees agents trying to prevent the start of World War 3. Needless to say, it is a film that many are looking forward to seeing and many people internationally have already been given the chance to see it.
Nolan’s films managed to capture a lot of people’s imaginations when he started truly working on them, but there is one trilogy that made him so well known. That trilogy would be the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy which helped bring superhero films into the modern day. Not only that, but it revitalized the genre and the DC universe as a whole as it was a self contained set of films that did extremely well with audiences. The story of the ‘Dark Knight‘ movies follows Batman as he took on a number of well-known villains who were re-imagined in a way that makes them much easy to follow along with. To put things simply, his films were incredible and will always remain near the top as some of the best superhero films of all time.
With talks lately of the upcoming standalone film ‘The Batman,’ there were discussions among fans about whether Nolan may return for any more DC character films. Talks were brought up even more by the fact that the newest iteration of Batman is being played by Robert Pattinson. Pattinson just worked with Nolan on ‘Tenet’ and plays a major role in the film. With that in mind, some believed that Nolan may once again take interest in working on another DC film at some point. Nolan has confirmed that he has no plans to return for any DC films, which is no surprise given the fact he has so much creative control over his own films. Therefore, he won’t have to do what others really tell him to do moving forward.
By George Robbins
Disney is by far one of the largest companies to exist in the world at this moment and they control some of the biggest franchises in existence. The Disney Company was started by the eponymous Walt Disney many a year ago and it has evolved into a massive multi-media empire. Within the past decade alone, they have managed to obtain some of the biggest franchise rights in existence. This, combined with the animated films that their studios are known for, has made them catapult to the top of the industry. So now, Disney has become one of the biggest household names nowadays and they are known worldwide.
As of late, they have had a rough go of things due to the pandemic and therefore they have been losing out on revenue hand-over-fist. This has resulted in the company trying to come up with a good way to make back their money that they were losing. Unfortunately, this is to no avail because everything related to the company has been shut down due to the pandemic. Their amusement parks were completely shut down and even though a majority of them are now open again, they have restrictions in place. This is how we ended up with the vast limitations for their parks and the other option they had to decide on was when they were going to put their finished films in theaters.
As already mentioned, Disney is a multi-media empire, therefore they make most of their money from the shows and movies that they produce. Unfortunately yet again, theaters have been shut down since the start of the pandemic and thus, new movies haven’t been able to release. It is only as of recently that movie theaters have begun to reopen their doors to the public and even then, they have restrictions on them. Disney has been able to make up for this a little bit because of their premiere streaming service Disney+ which has hit its stride during this pandemic. It doesn’t make up for most of the money they lost out on, but it most certainly helps them in the long run. The newest upcoming title that will soon be available for people to watch on the service is ‘Mulan.’
‘Mulan’ is the upcoming live-action remake to the original animated film of the same name which follows the titular heroine as she fights the huns in China. The movie was pushed back numerous times due to delays in the reopening of theaters, but it eventually started taking too long. Even though Disney was holding out for a proper theatrical release, they eventually decided to make the film available on Disney+. The thing is, though, that people have to pay $30 on top of their subscription to own the movie. Disney+ is also not available in China, so Disney has decided that they will still give the movie its theatrical release over there and it will be much cheaper by comparison. This decision is one that some people can see a problem with.
Though it does make sense for Disney to release the movie in China if their theaters are readily open and available, the cost for it domestically is seen as being too high. That aside, this is their plan for releasing the film moving forward. The movie is set for its scheduled release date on the Disney+ streaming platform on September 4th. Meanwhile, they plan on releasing the films to Chinese theaters on September 11th, exactly one week later. This is all so that they can maximize the amount of revenue that they can end up making off of the movie and within a week’s time we will know if this strategy of theirs pays off. The movie could just end up being labeled a commercial failure.
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