HBO's "Westworld", starring Anthony Hopkins/produced by J.J. Abrams
- Thread starter Ensign_Redshirt
- Start date
I get the feeling that WBD is going to end up being bought by some other company in the near future. Westworld's premiere was one of HBO's most watched shows, erasing it to save money reeks of desperation.
I wish Disney would do that. I would love to have some of their plus shows on physical media
They don't want to pay residuals. If you work on a movie or show, you get a paycheck for when it's shown on tv or from media sales. That's been expanded to include streaming, it's a really dirtbag way to avoid paying people for their work.
I don't know the business side of residuals but if they have to pay minimum residuals regardless of views I could see that being an issue if it costs near or more than they get in return for airing them.
It's important for those who are currently watching the show, either for the first time or as a rewatch.
I think this is correct. I'm sure contracts for residuals are written to ensure that they don't cost the studios more than subscription revenue brings in, so I don't believe that's the issue. The issue is that Discovery borrowed a massive amount of money to buy the WB, and now Zaslav and the top brass are looking for ways to pay off that debt as quickly as they possibly can; if that means leasing Westworld streaming rights to another service, so be it. It does indeed seem strange at best that they're willing to devalue their brand on such a big show by leasing it out, but it's not hard to understand their logic, either.
It's also unusual due to the fact that there's no precedent for an HBO show to be pulled like that, and so soon after airing no less. That makes it complicated for someone who may have been waiting until it aired to watch it. This makes me wonder if other cancelled shows will be pulled to make the service look more appealing to investors. But if so, this brings up the question of longterm viability. If someone is paying for a streaming service for their exclusive shows, only to be told they're going away.... well, it would make you question why you're putting money into it.
They already pulled a bunch of animated shows and some original HBO Max movies back when the merger was finalized. Some of which never had a physical media release so they're lost media now.
Yes, you've established that it's your personal opinion that it's not necessary, newsworthy, or noteworthy. Four times now. Seems less like casually expressing a personal opinion and then moving on and more like repeatedly insisting on a course of action and not stopping until people give in to your **subtle** demands to stop talking about it at this point.
Just because you don't consider it worth mentioning doesn't mean everyone else has to fall in line with your view.
Anyway, I'm disappointed, since even though I watched both Westworld and The Nevers as they aired, I had planned on binge-watching them all together again during the Summer when a lot of shows are on hiatus, and I'd rather not have to subscribe to yet another streaming service to find them when I already pay handsomely for HBOMax and several others. There's no more blood to draw from this stone.
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It is unusual and newsworthy because studios don't usually pull popular shows that the own completely off their own streaming services. I can guarentee people would be reacting the same way Disney pulled started pulling Marvel and Star Wars shows off of Disney+.
That's something I've always worried about with Streaming. A lack of archiving, which in effect means a loss in historical accounting. An entire generation relies on streaming, has only ever had access to streaming. Their childhood programming could be gone in an instant, only to have vague memories as they grow up.
Not unlike older shows in Canada which never had physical releases and are vague memories, and a large swath of largely forgotten shows.
That's why a small group of people, especially among critics and film afficionados, really push people to buy physical media still. Because at any moment the ability to stream can be gone.
Back in the day when I was in the hospital all the time (and before everything was on streaming) I made sure every blue ray I bought had digital codes. I still ended up losing access to movies and co.panies closed or lost the rights despite the codes being included in the discs.
A few weeks ago I got a new tv and wante to test it with Fury Road. I went to YouTube and even though I had the 1080p digital code YouTube had apparently decided that any views from a TV or cast to a device from a phone maxed out at SD quality. Seems they made the decision during gCovid lockdown a to save bandwidth and never changed it.
I ended up finding the disc (which survived my house burning down) and watching it via my PS4.
I 99.9% stream only buying physical on extremely rare occasions. Fav movies only. And even then not always - I haven't bought Dune because of the inevitable double dip coming at the correct ratio. Although I'll probably break when the blue+digital hits $10.
I still buy physical media, mostly for rarer films that might not be on streaming or if there is a nice release with extras.
Of course, the option to buy physical media isn’t always offered these days.
In certain cases though, unless an older show is popular enough to receive a physical release, it almost never does, at least in Canada with some of our older shows which have all but disappeared after first-runs. I don't even think Beachcombers got a physical release of any of their season despite being one of the more popular releases from back in the day. And I don't think they're streaming either. It's like they're stuck in purgatory.
Yeah, it still exists on there. Hasn't been removed.
Well yeah, it's licensed by Bell. My point was that it shot up to a top trending spot, probably in part due to the news about HBO pulling it across the border.
I've probably been contributing to it since that's what I'm currently watching.
