by Nathaniel R
What is that old line. 'Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice?' Who would've expected that our particular world (i.e. moviegoing) would end due to an exceptionally incompetent cruel government's mishandling of a worldwide pandemic? There's no poetic ring to that!
Movie theaters have been closed here in NYC since late March. Moviegoing as we knew it might have died months ago while we were busy stupidly thinking of it as an induced coma that we would all purposefully awake from once treatment options improved. We were not expecting the movie studios themselves be the ones urging us to pull the plug and plan a funeral. As you probably heard today, Warner Bros, one of the last standing behemoth movie studios, has announced that they'll be premiering the entirety of their 2021 slate day and date on HBOMax and in movie theaters...
It was one thing to write off Wonder Woman 1984, an easy billion dollar grosser in a normal world - on the grounds that somethings gotta give with the pipeline of movie production and revenue and such when things have been closed-down for several months. But to write-off over another year's worth of event pictures and the theatrical model itself (which will now be endangered; you can't put genies back in bottles) feels like cultural and even economic suicide.
WARNER BROS BIGGEST 2020/2021 TITLES - the ones that looked like (potential) blockbusters. How many new HBOMax subscribers do they need to offset the, oh, 3-5 billion they just lost with this move?
- Wonder Woman 1984 (last title in this franchise earned $821 million globally)
- The Matrix 4 (last title in this franchise earned $427 million globally)
- Dune
- Godzilla vs. Kong (last title in this franchise earned $566 million globally)
- The Suicide Squad (last title in this franchise earned $746 million globally)
- Space Jam: A New Legacy (last title in this franchise earned $230 million globally)
- Tom & Jerry
- Mortal Kombat
- The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (last title in this franchise earned $320 million globally)
- In the Heights
- King Richard
Massive event pictures like Dune will be available at home (if you have HBOMax) they day they arrive in theaters. If theaters still exist but this news will surely not convince any theater chains to stay open long enough to find out if survival is possible Who will go see a movie for $15-20 a person in theaters when they can just share their HBO password and gather as many people as they can fit around their TV with a ticket price of $0.00 for everyone? Why would a movie studio that regularly produced the kinds of event movies that earn 100s of millions to a billion in the theatrical model, abandon that proven money-making model so entirely when their newer models like VOD / streaming subscriptions, haven't proved as lucrative? So Warner Bros is essentially going from two unequal revenue sources -- one formerly mighty that's currently in the hospital and one less lucrative that's functioning better than usual with people trapped at home all year -- and purposefully reduce it to only the latter? All when we keep hearing that vaccines will be rolling out next year.
Do the movie studios or the execs at Warner Bros know something we don't about the psychological makeup of civilians (possible) or the ins and outs of the promised vaccines (unlikely)
At any rate Warner Bros' decision feels less strategic than self-sabotaging. In fact, it feels like Netflix's wet dream, to only have streaming competition in a field they basically invented and can play Goliath in while fighting over dozens of miniature Davids who are also fighting each other. It's a win-win for Netflix. Netflix will soon no longer have to wage the more complex two-pronged fight against other streamers AND the theatrical model and just concentrate on stepping on their comparatively puny streaming opponents.
Does Warner Bros not have a lot of faith in the footage from their 2021 franchises, many of them long in the tooth, or are they just placing a big bet on the future (streaming only) and will attempt to figure out how to monetize later?
This probably shouldn't leave us so pessimistic or shocked but it did bring on a highly specific crushed kind of mood. We're feeling so bruised and battered. After months of being holed up in our apartment, the last thing we wanted was a notice that our future would be.... well, more of this. Sitting at home consuming 'content' can be fun but we long for film experiences outside of the couch and away from the laptop.
The movies were invented well over 100 years ago. Moviegoing was different in 1920 with regards to many specifics but at its core the experience is still the same. You left your house. You sat in a dark place with other strangers and had an entertainment experience in a communal setting. That experience has miraculously survived many massive cultural and economic shifts including the birth of television, the internet, the death of studio system, the rise of laserdisc, than vhs, than dvd then blu-rays, cable, videogames, internet, prestige tv, and piracy. To survive all that and then just throw in the towel (which is what Warner Bros announcement feels like) due to a (mostly) finite triple threat of streaming wars, a pandemic, and the incompetencies of the GOP's leadership-free reign? That feels grim.
We've already seen how unspecial movies became during the pandemic. They've been plentiful but they've mostly been perceived and received as mere "content" rather than movies. People watch them than discard them and no conversations about them last longer than, say, a week. It's like an album of all filler without a hit single. Streaming is so beautiful as part of the entertainment landscape -- we're not knocking its convenient pleasures. But an entirely streaming future is depressing as hell. We've all been shut-ins for month. After the pandemic is over, Hollywood, or at least Warner Bros, is betting that we'll never leave our houses again.
They might be right (for reasons that are best left to psychologists to unpack) but it's confusing to us. Unless you have a truly spectacular home or apartment, why would you want to lock yourself in for all your entertainment? But what will be left standing outside the home if all the communal spaces shut down or become too cost prohibitive to attend?
We're in a dark place around this news. Are you feeling as hopeless or do you see a light at the end of this COVID-19 'movies are now just tv pilots that weren't picked up' tunnel.