Legendary Lawsuit Against WB Could Save ‘Dune’
By George Robbins
This pandemic began back in March when the world at large was made aware of the greater danger we were all facing with this pandemic as a whole which could easily spread and kill people. Thus, the rules were made known to the general public and they were put into place in order to allow the general public to help prevent more people from getting infected than absolutely necessary. Though to be honest, no one should have really had to be infected at all if people actually listened properly to the rules which were explained to us from the start. This pandemic was pretty much weighted against us from the start and there was nothing that really could have been done to fix this. Therefore, we were given a chance to see things play out that we had no real way of dealing with once all of this initially began.
This pandemic is one that has easily made it difficult for just about everyone at this point in time and there is no fixing this as people are still trying to figure out how to handle what is happening. It is extremely difficult for some people to process just how much has changed for the world just over this past year and things aren’t going to get a whole lot better moving into the new year. For instance, even though the pandemic could possibly be coming to an end in the coming months, some things are now in place which will permanently change the way people interact in the world. This is why we are all now very wary about how things will end up turning out within the next couple of months because this pandemic has fundamentally changed the way some people handle their day to day lives. Therefore we can’t be too far removed in order to figure out what to do from now on.
Not everyone is trying to stay on the same playing field these days however, because as we reach the end of this year, it would appear that some, namely one, studio(s) is trying to cheat the system in some way to make their money. That studio would be Warner Bros. who are now taking the initiative to try and mess with as many people as they possibly can before the year is over it would seem. As mentioned previously, Warner Bros. were the studio responsible for putting out Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet‘ to theaters and therefore they took the hit for the movie’s theatrical failure. Considering the fact that this hit was one straight to the wallet, they did not take it well and thus we ended up in the situation we are currently in where they are doing something no one would have thought doable before. They are going to go with Universal’s original attack plan for releasing movies both during and after the pandemic.
Warner Bros. new plan would take money immediately away from directors and actors who would otherwise make most of their money from the contracts where they have to get paid based on percentage of ticket sales. In response, they immediately started complaining to the studio that they should be compensated for the sudden change in release structure, which is further cemented by the fact that the studio already made the decision to do this with their upcoming ‘Wonder-Woman 1984.’ They made a new contract deal with Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins that said that they would receive $10 million each in compensation for the move to HBO Max. It turns out that no one else from the 17 other releases Warner has coming out next year have been given a similar type of compensation thus far and this is leading to some major future changes for the studio. It turns out that chief among those new changes for the studio is the fact that many directors are discussing boycotting Warner for any future films.
Not only does Warner have this on their hands, but if they go through with this for every film in the upcoming year, then they are going to have a very hard time if the pandemic ends. Movies release in theaters before they release digitally primarily because it means that they will end up making more money in the end off of the movie. If they release movies at the same time when things go back to normal, then people will have no reason to go out to theaters which will result in a huge loss in overall revenue at the box office. It has already been projected that the total loss in funds at the box office with this move could be somewhere around $1.2 billion because Warner mainly only puts out blockbuster films. It remains to be seen how much of that can be compensated though with many people then subscribing to HBO Max to watch new films.
Warner Bros. just like every other company with a streaming service, is just trying to expand their subscriber base and this is very necessary at the moment because of their overall lack of revenue they suffer from at the moment. It is due to this lack in subscribers that they are now taking measures that other people would now consider ridiculously unfair to the industry as a whole and this is because of their new plans for exclusive content. Streaming services tend to have the hardest time attracting new subs because they need to incentivize people to come to their platform and exclusive content is what allows for that incentivization to happen in the first place. So exclusive content easily becomes the best way for streaming services to draw people in which is what Warner is now hoping for going into next year. They plan on bringing in as many people as they can with their new content even if it means ruining the plans of so many others in the industry.
This wasn’t originally going to be their plan of attack though as they were just going to continue releasing their content as it was available with some unique content being spread in there in some way. One of the biggest releases they have coming up is actually the Zack Snyder Cut for ‘Justice League’ which was an announcement that many fans were waiting a long time for and when news of this broke, people immediately became excited. This, plus the fact that the movie is meant to premiere in four parts exclusively on HBO Max made it an event that people everywhere were going to have to sub for. Unfortunately, the release is in some time early-2021 and people would only really have to sub for about a month or so and then they could stop anytime they wanted which would ruin their plan to try and keep recurring subs on their site. So what could they do to continually keep people subbed to their site all-year round and maybe longer than that?
The apparent answer to that question is to release all of their new films pretty much straight to HBO Max while simultaneously releasing their new content in theaters. This means that they will be splitting their revenue streams over the course of the next year between both release methods in a bid to more so drive people to their streaming service instead of the theaters. Of course, there are many people and institutions out there that are not taking too kindly to all of this though and want Warner to back down and change their minds about everything that they plan on doing over the following year. Of course, they don’t actually plan on doing this and it is now leading to a point of no return where people are just straight up deciding not to be involved with Warner anymore. This is all dangerous to the industry as a whole and it can easily result in everything going downhill from this point forward even as things seem to be coming to a close.
With Warner’s insistence on releasing their new movies on both platforms simultaneously, the anger arising from every other company involved with them is becoming more apparent. This is becoming more apparent through the actions of the Legendary production company which is responsible for some of Warner’s biggest upcoming movie releases for the next year. They are now intent on actually bringing Warner Bros. to court over the release of their upcoming remake of the movie ‘Dune’ which has been long-awaited since its announcement. The original Dune movie was widely considered to be a disappointment by the general populace, but things seem to be turning around after the trailer came out for the new reboot which is supposed to release some time next year. Fortunately, it seems that many people truly are looking forward to seeing the movie come out next year.
Due to Warner’s plans to release the movie on HBO Max, as mentioned earlier, they will be losing out on a lot of potential revenue that they would get if they went along with the original release plans. This of course has Legendary upset as they are the company that is actually responsible for the film and thus they are losing out on possible revenue as well. It is now because of this that Legendary has put forth a plan of action to sue Warner for doing this and going against the original plans they had in place for the movie’s release. This plan of legality is one that could not only have a strong affect on this one movie going forward but could also have huge repercussions within the whole company for the rest of the movie releases moving forward. Regardless of the outcome, we will be seeing a huge change come over the industry over the coming months.
Whether the industry begins to suffer in the coming months, or nothing actually ends up happening, we will be seeing changes the likes of which many never thought they would see. The movie theater industry as a whole is very likely going to change as the months roll on and this lawsuit could wildly affect how movie releases are handled as this new year comes into being. If they do not succeed in their attempts in court then they will be seeing the failure of not only their movie in movie theaters but also the possible failure of movie theaters as a whole moving forward. Legendary’s lawsuit is one that we will be watching out for and this will most certainly be a momentous battle in cinema history.