the Disney-Fox merger and film/TV production/exhibition hegemony in general

this is otm. When I tell friends I still get Netflix DVDs through the mail they react with astonishment, as if I told them I've decided to give up electricity. This weekend somebody saw a red envelope on my coffee table, pointed to it and literally said "Oh my god, have you been saving that all this time as a memento?!"

lol otm. It's not students in front of whom I have to explain my attachment to Netfix: it's so-called adults over thirty who don't get that you can't stream every fucking thing.

hmmm there was a 2006 Wind In The Willows by a future Dr Who director, starring two future Dr Who companions and Bob Hoskins

nah, I'll be right, ta

then Disney picked it up for video and retitled it after their theme park ride

their secret of survival in a v nasty world iirc

I was more referring to a movie based on the ride, which I believe they decommissioned. It was nearly original to Disney World, and was flat cartoon images on the walls and a car that followed a twisty track through a relatively tiny building

Not a wild ride

(Wind in the Willows book is great)

Avatar was the first movie to be a huge hit in China. I believe the sequels make their money back internationally, even if they don't do so well in the US.

Christopher Robin: The Movie: The Ride: Avatar Edition

you don virtual reality goggles to experience life as a frustrated workaholic middle-aged man. your childhood hallucination, Pooh, returns to take you in a journey to the world of Avatar

in related news

NEWS: Viacom and CBS boards agree to merge, according to an executive with direct knowledge of the deal. Details to follow.

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) August 13, 2019

Does Viacom have one good and popular current show outside of South Park and Spongebob?

i don't live in the US anymore but... those are "current" shows??

LOL

I would think the appeal is in the brands themselves and not individual pieces of content

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Viacom

They are still coming out with new seasons! South Park is still funny! Spongebob may have jumped the shark after Hillenburg left, but I haven't really been paying attention to new 'Bobs

yeah recent SP has been good

I mean, it's just such a different era than like 10 years ago when Viacom was just dominating with Jon Stewart Daily Show and Jersey Shore

yeah. CC has some other good content (I love Corporate for example) but AFAIK the ones you cited are the obvious stalwarts

oh for the days when jersey shore ruled the tube

well this sucks

wasn’t sure if i was allowed to say anything about this yet but it’s true, all of our fox contacts were fired and we’ve been all but straight up told as an indie theater that we can no longer book fox titles (rep or smaller new releases), but congrats on the fantastic four movie https://t.co/dfY1GSmc6X

— josh lewis (@thejoshl) August 27, 2019

Curious as to how that would affect Rocky Horror screenings, although I guess most theatres still doing them own their own copies on disc or DCP.

this seems to indicate rocky horror is an exception but who knows - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-08-09/will-disney-let-theaters-screen-old-fox-movies

I foresee theatrical speakeasies in our future.

Disney’s long-standing policy is to not allow first-run theaters or commercial discount cinemas to screen movies from its library, whether it’s an animated classic such as “Lady and the Tramp” or a more adult-oriented film such as “The Sixth Sense.”

I'm confused now, doesn't first-run theatres mean, well, most theatres? Wiki says "First-run theater: A theater that runs primarily mainstream film fare from the major film companies and distributors, during the initial new release period of each film." - is it usually used in contrast with big chains or something?

yes most cinemas, the only ones allowed screen films from the library will be those that only show repertory screenings

First-Run theatres that would be effected would mainly be Alamo Drafthouses, art houses that do midnight shows of stuff other than RHPS, and chain theatres that do Fathom Events satellite screenings.

So this is the rep rather than the smaller new releases, then.

disney has long kept its repertory on a super tight leash - the only non-current release of theirs i've ever seen big was a spellbinding showing of Snow White at a glorious 1920s movie palace a couple years ago. this being extended to the entire 20th century fox library is a very daunting prospect.

XP Yeah, but it's been speculated that those smaller Fox releases will be fewer and further between, as supposedly Disney has cancelled a number of risky projects and downsized departments at the studio specializing in such fare.

(my reminisce above excludes pre-1990-ish proper theatrical rereleases, including what may have been my first ever cinema experience... Song of the South)

heh, i remember seeing Song of the South as a kid at a local grocery store that was screening it (i'm sure illegally) against a back wall

forks, you're my age I think, and there was a full theatrical rerelease in 1986.

I have a vague memory of maybe a screening in my elementary school cafeteria in Florida ca. 86 or 87? And/or some sort of speaker telling Brer Rabbit/Uncle Remus stories as some sort of historical thing?

I foresee theatrical speakeasies in our future.

Recreating the movie theater experience as an act of transgression?

whiney, i think i woulda seen that bootleg screening before the re-release; I know I owned the clamshell vhs at one point. the historical uncle remus stories from Harris and the disney ones alike were not only accepted but beloved when i was growing up; i do recall having an elementary class drawing assignment where we were all tasked with drawing "tar babies"
the times they do change

My parents took me to see Song of the South in the early 80s. Seems like a really weird thing for them to do in retrospect.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah is still a jam though.

We sang "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah" at my kindergarten graduation in 1989.

Was it a wonderful day?

Sort of. To learn it, we had to watch the scene over and over again on VHS. Don't remember if was an official cassette, or taped from tv.

it should go without saying (though perhaps it doesn't) that i have no genuine nostalgia for this sort of ugliness, just a kind of sadness that this style of racist youth indoctrination was once so unremarkable that i didn't even notice it was happening

we got shown it in my elementary school gymnasium, on what i suppose was 16mm. the only other movie to get this treatment was.... The Black Hole

my niece adores Song of the South (and fully understands the historical context etc); my brother bought a DVD or VHS of it years ago on eBay and learned the hard way what NTSC and PAL were

I shouldn't count Fathom out just yet, as I've just seen an ad for a TCM-sponsored presentation of Alien happening in October (although that may have been OK'd prior to the latest upheavals).

So this is the rep rather than the smaller new releases, then.

It doesn't seem likely that he would have specified smaller mew releases if it didn't also mean smaller new releases.

Studios', but especially Disney's given their dominace of releases, first-run policies are also fucking independent theatres. A four-screen house in south Seattle had to abandon rep in toto last year, when they went from showing things like '50s Hitchcock and Le Roi de couer and Harold & Maude and Society to a summer program of '80s hits like Bill & Ted, and the prices got jacked on them. They've now closed their fourth screen altogether and are $250k behind in rent because Disney's new Aladdin sucked shit and ppl didn't want to see it:

We've gotten to a point where we can't keep up with the demands that the major studios want. If you want to open up a Marvel film and have that big, front-loaded movie, it's going to make all of its money in the weekend when it's first released. The studio is going to tell you, "This is our tentpole feature, you're going to have to cough up so much money as a guarantee so that we can get you a print…to play the film and we [also] want 65% of your gross."

So, what happened to us was we couldn't make the progression from playing first-run family film[s]. The last one that we could afford to get in an opening first run was Aladdin. Well, the audiences didn't show up for Aladdin, so Aladdin couldn't get us to a point where we could open Toy Story 4. So we had to open Toy Story 4 later, and Toy Story didn't help us get to a point where we could open Lion King because we couldn't come up with the guarantee that the studios have a right to demand.

The real heartbreaker was opening up Sony's Spiderman: Homecoming. It did okay but it didn't make enough money for us to guarantee what the studio demanded to open Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood. So we couldn't open OUATIH which would have probably made pretty good gross for us here… so we had to opt out of it.

I shouldn't count Fathom out just yet, as I've just seen an ad for a TCM-sponsored presentation of Alien happening in October (although that may have been OK'd prior to the latest upheavals).

The thread by the Revue programmer up there specifies that tonight is the last time they will be able to play Alien, because it was booked before this week.

(I do suspect the combo of Fathom and TCM will have more swing with the new Disney bookers than one guy in Toronto with 1,800 twitter followers, but it still might not be much swing.)

Our local Landmark theatre does regular weekend midnight screenings programmed like that Seattle house (plus The Room once a month and RHPS w/a shadow cast once every 2-3 weeks). I was just checking their schedule, which somewhat surprisingly was loaded with Fox stuff for the past few weeks and the next couple.

Some time back, I went to a midnight showing of Repo Man, which got started late. Those of us waiting got into a spirited discussion w/the theatre bartender, who mentioned that The Room and RHPS screenings, plus ringers like The Big Lebowski and Hitchcock/Kubrick revivals pretty much underwrote everything else.

Same for the main London rep - a lot of gimmicky stuff like a Studio Ghibli all-nighter, a 1999 Teen Movie all-nighter, Mean Girl quote-along, and "The Room w/ Tommy Wiseau Live on Stage" (7 times over 5 days, but it seems like it happens every month)

sic’s quoted post is heartbreaking because the films smaller theaters that try for mostly indie fair but aren’t exclusive coast on major releases and would make bank on a Tarantino pic and they’re getting fucked by the on-major, won’t boost smaller theater status

the fully international/repertory local theater is closing and I feel like the other is going to be british/french/a24 pics all the time now

yeah there's a lot of weird theater booking bs like that that hurts smaller theaters (smaller being any non-chain theater, but even the Alamos are included in this)

I'm wondering how this will end up hitting Alamo. They do big business here both with new features and older ones.