They’re not going to have much choice here. Cinemas aren’t opening at all until 17 May at the earliest.
They’re not exactly allowed to lie to their investors. I mean this has and can get company’s in not shallow water trouble to knowingly do something like that. If they change their mind later… different entirely. They just have to be careful with that sort of thing.
Based on Marvel’s previous releases, I don’t think that poor returns will affect Marvel’s long-term plans for a sequel. They probably have a pretty solid ten-year plan at this point.
But if they are going digital for Black Widow, it means they may not get a lump sum upfront in the first month or so, like traditionally in tentpole releases. Instead they will get steady income over months or even years. Whether structurally Disney can handle that is a big question. There is also the question of how you measure the financial success of a tentpole release if you do concurrent digital/physical release (i.e. how to tell Wall Street that you are doing just as well, if not better than before).
However given that they have been sitting on their hands for a year now (hence plenty of time to make structural adjustments), I won’t be surprised if they are forced to do concurrent digital/physical release. Wandavision is their MCU test run, plus other data points from other Disney releases like Mulan and Raya. The fact that they are not screaming from the rooftop saying Wandavision is a homerun IS saying something, but they probably got little choice since their theme parks business is absolutely tanking.
A year ago if they’d released Black Widow as a premium Disney+ release, I’d be wondering what that means for the rest of their movies—the MCU, everything.
But now? If they watch the situation leading up to May 7 and decide to go premium Disney+ with BW, I’m going to assume that’s just a final mitigation of the COVID impact and the last film Disney will release as a theatrical+digital simultaneous premiere.
I don’t know what the long term future looks like, but Disney has almost a year of Marvel projects already in the can, the vaccine is rolling out, stonks saved AMC, and at least for the moment, summer 2021 looks like everyone’s going to do their best to get people back in seats. It’s still going to be a rough year, capacity will be slow to ramp up, but it’s going to be about theaters and studios hoping to demonstrate that it’s not too late to save themselves.
So I did find out my local Dallas-FW Alamo’s are franchises, and they announced they still plan full reopening with no changes. This could be interesting if the mother company decides to change course.
I personally have no allegiance to Alamo the brand, but loved the quality food, clean theaters, great beer list, and no talking policy. They can call themselves whatever they want if they stick to that formula because the other offerings in DFW pale in comparison.
I don’t expect any changes now. Corporate acquisitions often take months or years to change the direction of the company. I just worry long term. But you are correct, it is possible that franchisees could split off and keep many of the great bits. (Probably not the fun preroll videos or the festival films etc, though.)
Wait, WB pictures are going to be exclusive to Cineworld theaters for the first 45 days? Or they’re going to be exclusive to theaters in general? I don’t really care about the latter but I would be pissed AF if it’s the former. Cineworld doesn’t do the theaters I want to go to.
Also one wonders what the impact on WB’s previously announced schedule of releases on HBO Max will be.
It’s a little ambiguous, but I think the latter. If they couldn’t couldn’t even secure a theatrical window in the US in 2021, seems unlikely they would get chain-exclusivity.
Oh, I missed the “Beginning in 2022”. So yeah, still doing the HBO Max thing this year. And I doubt they actually wanted to do simultaneous post-pandemic. Fingers crossed that 2022 will be post-pandemic.
I’d actually be relatively happy about Cineworld exclusivity, not that I really care about most of WB’s output. My walkable cinema, and the one I have a membership at, is a Cineworld sub-brand. If Odeon were to get exclusivity, that would be seriously annoying.
They’re not the Alamo, and can therefore fuck off as far as I am concerned.
Lots of dates shifting for Disney movies.
I just want to quote myself.
Which was in response to me saying I thought there was wiggle room in Chapek’s statement that BW was still not planned for D+, if we’re just patting ourselves on the back. 😁
Also…
From Menzo’s linked Variety story:
So they’re not entirely all-in on Disney Plus.
Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing Black Widow in theaters on July 9th. I’ll be vaccinated by then and theaters are already opening here in California.
-Tom
Yeah it’s really weird to see the AMC near me have actual movie times.
I don’t understand why some new Disney stuff is “Premier” and other stuff is just bundled in. Is it a kind of A/B testing or something?