Live action Tom and Jerry Movie

[Dacey]

Tom & Jerry to go straight-to-HBO Max "and theaters"--along with WB's entire 2021 slate:

https://deadline.com/2020/12/warner-bro ... 234649760/

RIP to the theatrical industry. There's no way Disney and Universal don't do something similar next year. Can't wait to watch Godzilla Vs. Kong as it was intended to be watched--on my laptop!

[Ben]

Arrogant people in a rush to get to the end of their own lives: "I want to watch new movies at home!"

Sensible People with patience and a respect for filmmaking craft: "Wait just a couple of months after they’re in cinemas and then you can!"

Pirates: "Bring it on! Once these brand new films hit the web we'll rip and get you the files so you don’t even have to pay! Below the line talent be damned and goodbye to $200m blockbuster films!"

Thank-you, cinemagoing experience. It’s been a blast for the past 100 years, but the greedy stupid people have taken over...

[EricJ]

Arrogant people in a rush to get to the end of their own lives: "I want to watch new movies at home!"

(Er, wouldn't arrogant people in a rush to end their lives be the ones seeing it in a theater? Presumably California or Florida?)

Sensible People with patience and a respect for filmmaking craft: "Wait just a couple of months after they’re in cinemas and then you can!"

Pirates: "Bring it on! Once these brand new films hit the web we'll rip and get you the files so you don’t even have to pay! Below the line talent be damned and goodbye to $200m blockbuster films!"

Physical disc fans just drooling for karmic payback after Flixster:
"Eat it, Warner, EAT IT! Savor every delicious bite of your sweet defeat! Thrill to those $20M you're going to fall on your knees and be grateful for, if Kong v. Godzilla manages to scrape that much in an entire month, bwahahahaaa!!..."

(And if there's the occasional "Down go the last of Warner's 'shared franchise universes', toppling like sorry dominoes!", that is in no way meant to sympathize with the Pirates, who use their paranoia about Big Expensive Corporate Things to justify not paying for it.
As opposed to just so, so wanting to see it happen after Skull Island, Godzilla 2 and the Zack Snyder movies.)

[Dacey]

...what?

[Ben]

(Er, wouldn't arrogant people in a rush to end their lives be the ones seeing it in a theater? Presumably California or Florida?)

Er, I’m obviously talking about the modern rush of life in general, and not about Covid times specifically, where everything is me, here, now, and people are in such a rush it seems they are on a mission to burn through their lives as fast as they can. Obv.

Physical disc fans...crap, crap, crap, blah, blah, blah...Zack Snyder movies.)

Well, where WB is actually being smart is in going day and date. Their streaming model will no doubt be a variation of PVOD, not going "for free" to HBOM. So cinemas *will* make some money, and as we have seen from worldwide grosses, this will cover about half the cost of a movie if it’s a hit. And the PVOD is all their taking.

So their plan will generate returns, but only on average around $500m per title, and that’s on big "hits" that people want to actually lay out for. Not everyone will want to spend $20 on every movie they see, so maybe one or two films a month benefit from this, but cinemagoing will begin to pick up as screens can reopen safely. And of course the pirates will have an effect...once a film has been out a week on PVOD, it’ll be out there "for free", so why go to the cinema or pay at home? This is where the real danger lies.

So we will soon, or eventually, see one or two big movies being held back — "this one you have to go see on a big screen!" — to get people back into cinemas, probably towards the end of 2021, because there won’t be any billion dollar blockbusters on this model. BUT...it should ensure that all those films on a shelf actually pay for themselves at the very least, even if they don’t generate any meaningful profits.

And at this point, that’s the game...just to cover the cost of completed titles that are actually costing the studios money to keep them on the shelf. Bond apparently is costing somewhere like $1m a month for MGM and Universal to keep it on the shelf, and we heard last week that another Universal spy thriller, The 355, that I worked on over a year ago, has not been pushed back from Jan '21 to Jan '22...! In light of WB's announcement that may change again, but the danger will be closures of cinemas in the meantime.

Moviegoing will return, when studios realise that they can just about cover a budget but not generate those big billion dollar event pics, but it may be a much reduced kind of experience for a long while, the biggest threat being the availability of pristine, sometimes master quality 4K files, being actively let loose on the net on the same day films hit cinemas.

(And, yes, Eric, I'm not just talking about the current Covid situation, since this plan will continue way past when vaccines make it safe to visit cinemas again.)

[Dacey]

Exhibitor stocks plunge (even further) after WB announcement:

https://deadline.com/2020/12/warnermedi ... 234650018/

[EricJ]

Moviegoing will return, when studios realise that they can just about cover a budget but not generate those big billion dollar event pics, but it may be a much reduced kind of experience for a long while, the biggest threat being the availability of pristine, sometimes master quality 4K files, being actively let loose on the net on the same day films hit cinemas.

Yes, just that my point was that up till now, Warner was the last stubborn studio still trying to pursue the "Marvel-envy" franchise formula of the 10's, where studios lump together any old properties they own that another studio doesn't, and nonsensically try to force links to an un-asked-for six-film "Shared universe", hoping another Avengers will emerge out of it.
Every other studio lost their shirts throughout the 10's trying to pursue one--Paramount tried the Transformers, Ninja Turtles and Star Trek, Universal had Tom Cruise's Mummy, and Sony's still flogging any Spiderman characters that Disney doesn't own, although that "Valiant Comic Universe" that Vin Diesel's "Bloodshot" was supposed to start didn't exactly pan out.

At this point, the writing was on the wall for "crossover universes" four years before the pandemic, but Warner thought as long as they could promote big weekends--big THEATER weekends--for their Kongverse, Scoobyverse, Wonderverse and revivals of old properties like the Matrix and Willy Wonka, the "Marvel 10's" would live forever. Oops.
A smart studio would realize that this was now a game changer, and that now would be the good time to move to that model of smaller slush-pile scripts and less ambitious "middle-tier" pictures analysts keep talking about. Warner is NOT a smart studio, and willfully and stubbornly refuses to be one.
If they were, they might've waited for the May grosses on "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" to come in, before already starting production on the big "crossover" franchise blockbuster it was supposed to lead up to. Could have saved themselves a lot of trouble, virus or not.

[Dacey]

Paramount never tried to have a “shared universe” with their Star Trek and Turtles franchises—especially since 2009 Trek predates Avengers by three years!

Kong Vs. Godzilla would’ve made more than KOTM on the promise of its two monsters fighting each other.

WB just made $1 billion off Joker—a movie which had a budget of only $55 million. So they must have some smart people in marketing.

Not sure what any of the HBO Max news has to do with your rant.

[EricJ]

Not sure what any of the HBO Max news has to do with your rant.

Oh....Well, how about this, then?:
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/lege ... 234847605/

[Ben]

I’m not sure just posting a link to another story supports your previous post, but Chris Nolan is also not a happy bunny:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... -bros-plan

[gaastra]

Well Legendary is talking about suing wb plus nolan and james gunn are now angry at wb. Nolan called hbo max the "worst streaming service ever". Directors guild is talking about banning all of wb! Movie stars Denzel Washington, Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman and Angelina Jolie are all ticked at wb and now Village Roadshow and Bron are talking about suing wb! And this is just the start! Yikes!

Also sony has responded to wb in the japan morphius trailer that they are releasing films IN THEATRES!

And on top of that the roku deal may have stalled!

WB is wanting to kill all of hollywood just to catch up to disney plus. Did they not think hollywood would not fight back?

[Ben]

Nolan's comment in full is in that THR link I posted above, as well as another comment that again makes the point that once a pristine 4K copy of a film is online, that’s effectively game over for a film's longterm chances as people will just watch things at home for free, and new content again just becomes this thing that can be turned on and off without any thought of how much or how long it took to create. So that will continue to devalue everything — basically Wonder Woman 1984, Matrix 4, etc, become "YouTube videos" — and big movies will disappear.

In their rush to again catch up, WB clearly didn’t learn their lesson from Justice League, did they?

[Dacey]

From what I’ve been hearing, it sounds like this was top brasss at AT&T making the call more than anything, and that the primary goal was pleasing shareholders.

Disney announces their slate later this week, but there’s no reason to assume they’re not going to want to ensure they’re playing the same game now.

[gaastra]

Disney had 6 billion films last year! Why the heck would they give that up to make only tv movies.

Sony has confirmed they are sticking to theatres also. Japan and demon slayer movie is breaking records at the box office overseas shows people will return to movies when this mess is over.

[Ben]

Disney will split films between cinemas and streaming. Higher the budget and profile The less chance it will end up on television.