Live action Tom and Jerry Movie

[EricJ]

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

Well, in another sense, that was my point: No. They did not.

And they'll KEEP trying to relive the 10's over and over until it finally "works".

[Daniel]

"that was my point" Your post that was riddled with inaccuracies? You sure took the long way around.

[Ben]

Warners are actually still trying to live the 90s over and over.

[gaastra]

So not only the directors guild but the actors and writers guild may ban wb if they put the films on hbo max also!

[EricJ]

Warners are actually still trying to live the 90s over and over.

No, the 90's had actual movies, and you could fill a plex with them.
It was the 10's where studios decided they didn't want to do anything anymore but Whatever It Was That Marvel Was Doing, and that was how every individual movie started being referred to as a "franchise", even if it was just one movie.

(Of course, if you want to nitpick, it started with '01, when Warner got LOTR and Harry Potter at the same time, and could sit back now that they knew they'd get the same serialized movie, every year, already written and in production, at the same time every year for the next three to eight years.
That way, they didn't have to think about their current movie, and could just announce "Schedules".)

[Ben]

The 90s created the term "franchise", and Warners was king with Batman. Every film they made was made with an eye on "can this be a franchise?", like The Fugitive for instance, which fizzled after two films, as did Ace Ventura and Analyze This. They had a lot of expensive misfires, like Wild Wild West and The Avengers, as well as some big hits that never got past film one (Twister, Maverick), before they unexpectedly hit paydirt with The Matrix.

And that’s the point: you can’t create a franchise. A "franchise'" will be rewarded to a studio when audience interest and the basic storyline organically allows this to expand. It’s not something that can be forced, and here WB doesn’t always understand this, though they were lucky — and how! — with the first three Middle Earth films and the Potter series, which ran just over ten years, not eight, and of course still continues today with the Beasts movies.

But anything WB made in the 90s was with an eye of creating the next Batman or Lethal Weapon type series that would essentially run and run. It wasn’t until way into the 2000s, but long before the 2010s, that this "franchise" term became something that all the studios started pursuing, ironically after LOTR and Potter. After Marvel blew the bloody doors off with Iron Man — and things would have been VERY different if the first Hulk had been a hulk-sized hit — everyone wanted their own MCU, including but in no way restricted to Warners. Literally EVERYbody was scrambling to see what they could start to crossover and turn their franchises into universes.

In this regard, Warners has actually been very slow off the mark, although no-one has managed to match the Marvel success, obviously, so far. Funny enough, all this has been done before, with the Universal Monsters films in the 1940s, and then at Disney's, where even they don’t realise that they had a whole Medfield universe from the late 50s to the mid-70s that far expands beyond just the Dexter Riley trilogy.

So, no, most of the 90s movies were intended as franchise starters (I think I first remember the term being used around Universal's WaterWorld, and look how that turned out), long before Iron Man was a glint in Marvel's eye (and even then they were initially attempting to mimic serial franchise offender Sony and Fox's successes with Spider-Man and X-Men).

Funny enough, the number one reliable franchise, for anyone, is still...Batman.

[EricJ]

The 90s created the term "franchise", and Warners was king with Batman. Every film they made was made with an eye on "can this be a franchise?", like The Fugitive for instance, which fizzled after two films, as did Ace Ventura and Analyze This. They had a lot of expensive misfires, like Wild Wild West and The Avengers, as well as some big hits that never got past film one (Twister, Maverick), before they unexpectedly hit paydirt with The Matrix.

Of course, the 90's--for which we especially doubled our plex screens after Jurassic Park and T2--also had the, quote, "middle-tier" movies:
You could go to see Batman or the Matrix, but since those only came out in summer, the rest of the year, you could go see a Julia Roberts rom-com, or a Steve Martin comedy, or a Wesley Snipes action thriller (well, okay, nobody went to see those), or even one of those 90's animated knockoffs that didn't want to sell anything but toys and videos.

Problem is, you need a struggling screenwriter to write an out-of-nowhere movie that studios don't want to take a chance on, and do with a small budget for a March or October release.
And after the Writers' Strike of '08, writers and studio execs didn't want to talk to each other anymore--Writers knew they'd never sell their spec-scripts, which had too many expensive union ties, and studios petulantly wanted to show that now that we had YA novels, comic books, classic remakes and TV shows that audiences already came running for, they didn't NEED ungrateful jerks to make up something new that audiences might not.
So, studios started figuring out ways they could hire their own for-hire writers to write "Franchise-starter" five-year marketing blockbuster strategies on the studios' own terms, and the poor jilted screenwriters took their poor little first-drafts--with no one to "fix" them into a more coherent shooting script--and set out to become Bold Independent 21st-Cty. Filmmakers.

And that's the reason why plexes were empty even before the Pandemic: There's nothing in the middle anymore.

[Ben]

But...that’s not exactly news, is it? That’s exactly what Martin Scorsese was bemoaning when he made his (admittedly ill-advised) "Marvel are not movies" remarks. Why do you think Netflix has taken off so quick? Because anyone who wants to make what you call a "middle movie" has been taking them to the small screen as series for years now.

[Dacey]

Not that it's going to matter to Eric, but the first Matrix (the only "90's one") wasn't a summer movie. It opened in March.

[gaastra]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/10/disney- ... -plan.html

[Dacey]

And Disney just announced they’re doing a “theaters and Disney+ premiere access” release for Raya.

[Ben]

But not for Marvel or Star Wars. Because that’s all they really care about now.

[gaastra]

The pixar movie and jungle cruise is not access also. Not sure why but only raya is.

[Ben]

Because Raya is near finished. And they’d never waste a Rock movie on D+.

[gaastra]

CAA sent this letter to wb.

Jason,

The blind side Warner Brothers announcement Thursday was entirely unacceptable to CAA and to the clients we represent.

So we are clear about what is unacceptable:

You made a decision to release our clients’ movies in an unprecedented manner – a simultaneous release theatrically and on your own streaming service, HBO Max – without consideration of our clients’ desires or contractual rights. It plainly violates the rights of a number of our clients who hold approval rights over distribution plans and streaming selections.

Your determination to release our clients’ movies on HBO Max at the same time as in theaters effectively torpedoes the theatrical release and dramatically harms our clients’ ability to earn backend compensation, which they negotiated for, expected, and have every right to protect.

You chose to release our clients’ movies on your own streaming service without any input from or discussion with our clients and you made no effort to negotiate with or otherwise seek out market-rate deals with other streaming services. This is the epitome of a self-interested corporate maneuver intended to benefit your company while wreaking havoc on the industry and ignoring and greatly damaging our clients’ creative and financial interests.

To the extent you negotiated a license fee with HBO Max, which remains unclear, we reject that entirely as that is the job of their representation and is, in many cases, in violation of our clients’ approval rights.

You made a decision about movie distribution based on your opinion about the potential theatrical marketplace when it is impossible to predict that marketplace through the end of 2021. Indeed, it ignores the very real possibility of a vaccine in Q1 or Q2 2021 that would likely result in a reopened theatrical market with robust demand.

Without any apparent basis, you have taken a contradictory position for the domestic and international marketplaces, seemingly with the belief that the international marketplace is safe and strong enough for our clients’ movies. In doing so, you have ignored the reality that the compromised domestic theatrical release will hurt films’ international performance, will hurt all of the downstream distribution channels, and therefore will hurt our clients.

You unilaterally determined a value for our clients and their work to benefit the long-term prospects of HBO Max and the finances of AT&T, a choice that our clients did not make and a value decision that is out of sync with the marketplace and other streaming platforms.

The bottom line is that you are trying to take advantage of our clients to benefit your company. Neither we nor our clients will stand for it.

Worst of all, in a business of relationships, you violated trust and boundary.

In doing so, Warner Brothers has made a statement that relationships with artists and their representatives are not important to the studio.

The leadership of CAA has worked with Warner Brothers for nearly four full decades. At one point, Warner Brothers took pride in the studio leaders’ relationships with artists. Today, the only scarce resource in our business is talent. To insult talent this way is to redefine your company in a way that is a major setback.

We reject the deals you have made with yourself on behalf of our clients.

Our clients’ contractual rights will be enforced.

Our lines of communication are open, but our point of view is clear.

CAA Leadership Group

https://deadline.com/2020/12/caa-richar ... 234654147/


Also--

Reports have the Directors Guild of America also having sent a letter stating it’s upset.