There absolutely are. When movies are budgeted and planned for streaming to begin with. Or when streaming services pay enough to counteract the loss of box office income, and the cast/crew who had theatrical participation points are otherwise compensated. Or when the film is part of an already massive franchise with associated merchandising revenue, and it's better for the overall business for one film to have a financial loss in order to keep the overall money making machine running. Dune is none of the above. The director and creative force behind the franchise literally wrote an open letter last week that day 1 streaming would kill the franchise before it started.
What a mess. I hope they get it all figured out but if money isn't recouped then I guess Dune is yet another one hit wonder in the theaters, or rather streaming in this instance.
Speaking of why WB may cave with regards to Dune, Sony is bragging about the increase in "creatives" (articles word, not mine) and production companies abandoning distributors who also own streaming services for them since WB made its announcement. Villeneuve and Nolan are specifically name dropped as creatives Sony now has a "massive advantage with". https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22...ing-disney-plus-theatrical-releases-hollywood “The real benefit has been the number of incoming calls from talent to us saying, ‘We want to be doing business with you because we know you’re a theatrical distributor and producer,’” Vinciquerra said. “That has actually worked very well for us.”
This is starting to look like one of the biggest PR disasters of the year, and in 2020, that's saying something.
Yeah, WB is definitely not ending the year on a high note. It will be interesting to see what kind of long term impact this will have on them if big name stars and directors really do start refusing to work with them now.
Yep. Sony is being opportunistic and trying to woo talent away. Other's might be considering opening their own studios or banding together to form one(similar to how United Artists started out)
It wouldn't be a bad thing for those "creatives" to form a new independent production house. It may actually be overdue with all of the consolidation in the industry over the last few decades.
I just don't see people surging back into movie theaters over the next couple of years (if ever) in the numbers needed to make this a success, vaccine or no. When this comes out and makes $40m, that's it for the second half. Dead franchise for another 20 years (as someone said above) I have the strangest feeling that's what will happen.
It depends entirely what's going to happen until summer. The vaccines are starting to be administered, the US thankfully is getting a sane and competent/rational government back, so if this works and restrictions are lifted until summer or fall i expect people to really rush out and make up for the loss of 2020. Hopefully this won't come back like a boomerang but we will see but everything related to social interaction such as going out to the movies will likely see a surge if people feel safe enough and it's backed up by numbers. Fingers crossed and i will really like to see it at the theater but i would have settled for streaming but not at the cost of it failing financially.
So WW84 pulled in just under $17 mil in the US, which is the most any film has all pandemic by $7 mil, despite the pandemic being at its worse level in the US. Another $68 mil internationally. I think that shows that there is definitely a pent up demand for getting out of the house when the pandemic is over, if people are already trickling back at the height of it (although maybe it's just all the anti lockdown activists and Covid is fake nutcases). I really wouldn't be surprised if by October 1.5 years of not being able to go to a theatre results in huge explosion in attendance. In Canada, it's expected that everyone will be vaccinated by the end of September. I don't know anywhere elses expectations though. Fingers crossed.
I'm very, very, very optimistic, but I've learned that even having a great cast, with a great director doesn't always guarantee a great film, so I'm not going to start talking about it being great 'til I've seen it.
Case in point. "Cowboys VS Aliens" Jon Favreau directing Spielberg producing Ron Howard producing Still ended up being subpar.
I'm one of the few people who actually liked Cowboys & Aliens, although even I'll admit, it probably wasn't as good as that kind of pedigree would make you expect.