Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

This year has been an arduous one and it isn’t quite over yet, but that doesn’t mean that once the year ends that things will not be any easier for us. We have been blaming this year itself for everything that is going wrong, but just because the number of the year is going to change doesn’t necessarily mean that the year itself will be better. The truth is that we are going to be stuck with this pandemic until some form of vaccine is found and from how things have been going thus far, it may be awhile yet. Hence, we need to start looking forward to how we are going to deal with the pandemic and its affects going into next year. One industry that has shown that they are trying to make the best of this whole situation is the movie industry as a whole.

The film industry is one of the industries that has had a relatively rough go of things ever since this whole pandemic began back in March earlier this year. At first, just like any other businesses, everything involved with the film industry had to shut down when the pandemic first began. This was a shared struggle that literally every public business had to contend with as the pandemic first started. What followed were months where pretty much nothing was allowed to happen and it was up to individual governments to allow businesses the opportunity to reopen their doors. Unfortunately for the movie industry, most of what they do is considered high-risk in regards to the spread of the virus, so they ended up being near-last on every single list.

Since every facet of the film industry essentially ended up being last on every single list when it came to who was allowed to reopen or resume business, they sort of fell behind. It really isn’t anybody’s fault that this is how things turned out as it was simply the natural progression of how the rules work during this pandemic. Of course not allowing high traffic locations or operations to resume would be the natural course of events after what we have seen happen so far. Eventually though, movie productions were slowly given the green light to resume their filming processes and movies that hadn’t started filming yet ended up becoming planned out ahead of time. Movie theaters, which are the backbone for movie studios making back their money on films, and then some, were simultaneously given the green light to reopen.

Even though movie theaters were given the green light to reopen their doors to the public, they were still considered high risk and they weren’t all given permission. Some governments took even longer to allow theaters to reopen their doors given the high risk areas they are in, but eventually they relented. Of course, there were rules that were made up to follow new health and safety guidelines that have been put into place that theaters also had to adhere to. Even though things were set up to be difficult for theaters to follow, they still managed to come up with ways to reopen to the public. Thus, they then spent a fair bit of time trying to come up with something that would bring people back as no new films had released yet. This is where a large majority of their issues then came from and it has unfortunately affected how the film industry as a whole now functions.

After movie theaters were able to reopen their doors all over the place, the problem they faced was even bigger than anticipated. It turns out that movie theaters need new movies to show to the public otherwise people will have no reason to go out to theaters. So despite being able to open up, theaters remained closed for the most part because they needed studios to give them films that they could show to the public. Thus a dance began wherein theaters simply waited until studios decided on a release date for their films and studios waited for theaters to open before they decided on a release. Finally, after about a month of this, AMC broke the stalemate and decided that their theaters would all reopen by the middle of August.

This whole dance between studios and theaters began when there was a surge in virus cases that got everyone rightfully worried about what would happen next. After AMC decided that they would be opening up regardless of what happens, Warner Bros. was the first studio to follow suit by saying they would finally release their new blockbuster ‘Tenet.’ For a long time, they were trying to decide exactly when they were going to release this film because of the aforementioned surge and the dance that happened. With all of that going on, they decided to release the film first internationally and then they would follow-up in the near future with a domestic release. Luckily for them at the time, they wouldn’t have to wait long as they released the film in both markets one week after the other.

Considering the fact that it was the first time since the pandemic began that there was a new blockbuster, it could be seen both ways as both a good and bad thing that the movie brought in $150 million in those two weeks. Good because it did a good job of bringing in a fair amount with everything that has been going on, and bad because in both markets it only brought in that much while being the aforementioned first blockbuster since March to release. It is debatable as to whether the first two weeks were really all that great but in comparison with what followed, it most definitely was. For a few weeks following the film’s release domestically, the box office dropped tremendously to the point where many would probably consider it to be a failure. The movie needs a lot of money back in order for it to even break even but after only the third week domestically it was barely bringing in a few million.

With the, what some would consider, failed release of ‘Tenet’ many studios immediately pulled out most of their films from this year’s line-up. They have either decided to put their movies on the backburner for now with no official release dates, or they have picked dates that go well into some time next year. What happened with ‘Tenet’ was simply fear from the public that going out to a movie theater presents a large risk of becoming infected and even with the new rules in place for theaters, this fear is not unfounded. It has been awhile now since ‘Tenet’s’ launch, but the fact remains that it is still clear on many people’s minds that theaters are in trouble after this. Regal Cinemas even closed up all of their theaters because they didn’t want to lose anymore money with people no longer coming in.

Despite everything that is happening within the movie theater industry right now, the larger film industry is trying their best to move forward with their plans. There are still many films in the making that have not stopped being worked on, save for those with temporary shut downs due to confirmed Covid-19 cases. Ever since filming productions had resumed, many projects have been working very hard to finish up as soon as possible. Whether this be just to save time for post-production or preparing for more planned projects coming up, there is no doubt that the production side of the industry is working very hard. Even though their films will not end up releasing for quite awhile still, studios are still building up their repertoires in order to have catalogs of films available for when theaters eventually manage to reopen, and they can actually bring people in.

One such studio that is working very hard to ensure that they have content ready to roll out to the public after the pandemic is over, or at least handles better, is Marvel Studios. The folks behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, have continued to work hard even now to try and get their upcoming films worked on. As we all know by now, they have their projects split up into Phases that we have seen play out over the years, but this pandemic has thrown them off just a bit. While much of what they have planned is still scheduled to release in relatively the same way, their movies have all had to adjust in some way shape or form. The order that we may see those upcoming films worked on and released may end up being changed as time goes on. Despite that, it is clear that we will be seeing a lot of work going into those upcoming films soon and this next year may just end up being a big one for the MCU.

While no MCU films were able to be shown on the big screen this year, we know that they were certainly not slouching and they have been working on their upcoming films. Just recently, they even announced that they finished filming ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ and that it is now entering post-production phase. This upcoming year is going to be an even bigger and more important year for them in terms of production since we still aren’t sure how things are going to turn out with this pandemic. What we already know is that they plan on starting production for ‘Ant-Man 3’ in June despite it not even having been announced as part of their next phase. We also know that they will be working on TV shows that will premiere on Disney+ such as ‘Moon Knight’ which has just been announced with actor Oscar Isaac taking the leading role.

With all of this in mind, the next production that they will be putting all of their work towards is ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ which is the much-anticipated fourth Thor film. While we are still none too sure about what the main plot of the film will focus on, some bits and pieces have been floated out there since the announcement of the film. The story will see the return of one Jane Foster played by Natalie Portman and some believe, with hints from the actress, that this movie will see her character become the female Thor to some degree. She has already stated that Foster will wield the mighty hammer Mjolnir in the upcoming film, but whether or not this is true will remain to be seen when more information about the movie becomes available. We also don’t quite know what the name of the villain for the upcoming film will be either.

Things are starting to come together for the upcoming film as actor Christian Bale has recently arrived in Australia to prepare for the upcoming production. While we may not know who the villain for the upcoming film will be, we do know that Bale will be the one playing the role of the villain in this upcoming film. We also know that the film is meant to start filming in early 2021 and more specifically than that, it will begin filming in January. Needless to say, their preparing for the film now is helping out a lot in the long run as it will make it easy for them to transition into actually starting the production. That is to say that many people just need to hope that things go smoothly until then and that the production will not need to be halted in any way.

The truth of the matter right now is that things are still highly volatile at the moment due to the pandemic. We never really know what will happen on a day to day basis as some things just seem to keep getting worse and worse as time goes on. Despite this fact, Marvel Studios is continuing to do well and they are making sure that when all of this is over, for the most part, that we will have something to see on the big screen that lets us know they are working hard no matter what. The film industry hasn’t halted and they have been doing their best so that we will eventually get entertainment that we’ve been hoping for all of this time. Although ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is still a ways off from release, knowing that they will soon be working on the film is nothing short of exciting.