Mulan Will Cost Less Internationally Than in the U.S.
By George Robbins
When the coronavirus began back in March, it offset a lot of different projects and delayed even more. Many different projects that were being worked on ended up being delayed while films that were already done had no choice but to delay their release dates. This made it difficult for the movie industry as a whole to move forward since they can’t release any of the films on time and most films ended up delayed. The films that weren’t delayed were instead released straight to Video on Demand, or VOD, in order for studios to start making money back on their films. This was a tough decision for studios to make as it means they would inevitably end up losing money from not having a theatrical release.
Within recent history we have seen a lot of things happen with the movie industry because of some businesses reopening with new rules in place. These new rules usually just mean that there is a limitation on how many people are allowed to be gathered in one place and what they must do to stay there. Essentially, it is a way to keep the spread of the virus down until a long-lasting cure of some kind can be found. This is still a pretty big ways off though, so there is no way of going about everything without new rules in place. Thus theaters are slowly reopening and studios are much more comfortable with releasing their movies to movie theaters. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case with all of them.
Disney has been trying their best to try and release their movies theatrically which is why they are delaying most of their films for so long. However, it seems like this was just not meant to last because they have already made decisions in regards to a couple of their films that they would release them digitally. They tried their best by pushing back the date as much as possible for one of their major releases, ‘Mulan.’ Although I say that it is a major release, it is one that Disney has put off for awhile now because it was supposed to release in late March but the pandemic caused the original delay. They have reached the point where they are not going to delay it anymore and they will instead release the film digitally.
To quickly explain, ‘Mulan’ is the upcoming live-action adaptation of the original animated film, but it is more true to real life than other live-action films. Many of Disney’s other projects have adapted even fantasy elements from their other films, but for ‘Mulan’ they felt the need to make it more true to life than its original incarnation. They will be releasing it on their premium streaming service Disney+, but it will cost an additional fee of $30 in the U.S. to get it digitally. People will only be able to keep it so long as they are subscribed, but the reason for why it is so expensive is because, at least in the U.S., it will be forgoing a theatrical release. With the theater market opening back up in China and in other places around the world, they will only charge the original rate in those places.