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

Untitled boot stamping on a human face forever

― milkshake chuk (wins), Tuesday, May 7, 2019 6:05 PM

Tiny funkopop boots stamping on our faces forever.

Reboots stamping on our faces forever.

Robin Hood featuring zoo animals voiced by Bobby Cannavale

Princess and the Frog: 2 Ribbit 2 Quit

The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe was built on Favreau convincing a bunch of executives that a middle-aged actor not long out of rehab and prison, who had described himself as "box office poison" even during his earlier 1990s heyday, would be the perfect Iron Man. https://t.co/C6tbVcTE8M

— Zack Stentz (@MuseZack) January 8, 2020

TBF, I'm sure the word of Jon 'director of summer tentpole action movie smash Elf' Favreau carried some weight in that discussion.

Hollywood, I will save you the time you would've wasted on your algorithm construction and suggest that you just create scenarios that favor you haplessly tripping over your own dick, because that seems to be the secret to your success time and time again.

winter tentpole, surely

Jokes bruv, suggesting that even Favreau's CV at the time didn't give him a lot of sway in an argument about what might or might not make for a blockbuster superhero film.

I'm looking forward to these AI-generated movies, though, tbh. Harry PotterPants & the Furious 97: John Wick? starring Brad Pitt-Morgan and Emma StoneStone should be amazing.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgifimage.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F10%2Fcomputer-says-no-gif-2.gif&f=1&nofb=1

Hanging with Mr Cooper...in Space!

William Fox nor any of his heirs haven’t had any control of the company since 1930. Fox died penniless in 1952. https://t.co/DFMZr59z22

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) January 17, 2020

Twentieth Century Pictures of 1933, merged with Fox Studios in 1935 to form 20th Century-Fox (the hyphen was dropped a half century later in 1985 under Australian Rupert Murdoch). For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has now claimed the 1935 merger as its founding date.

lol Zanuck finally fully erases Fox thanks to Iger

there was obviously some impressive vfx work done in this film but there's something so revealing about the the MCU that they would rather do cg instead of make-up or costuming because they don't want to be locked into having to make real creative choices on set lol pic.twitter.com/di4GRFSpRT

— josh lewis (@thejoshl) February 9, 2020

reply:

Fun fact: a very high % of the people on a film set are in unions, and basically no one in a VFX house is. A cynic might go so far to say the $22 billion annual revenue corporation wants to wrap production as quickly as possible so they can get the labor into the post sweatshops https://t.co/wb00aioWMq

— an cory (@corypalmer) February 10, 2020

via jaymc:

The US domestic box office total for the week of Mar 20-26 was $5,179. The same week in 2019 was $204,193,406.

$5,155 of that was home rentals of an indie shot in Klamath Falls, Oregon, whereby renters can direct $3.25 of their "ticket price" to an independent cinema in a handful of states.

The other $24 was for Lost In America (the new homeless documentary, not the Albert Brooks film).

Kino Lorber is doing something in that vein, VOD of new release indies and foreign films where profits are split with local theaters.

Yeah, Kino did a push for Bacarau last week, and this volunteer-run arthouse in Seattle has switched all possible existing bookings to home rental. I'm guessing that the "Phoenix Oregon" distributor was just canny enough about setting up reporting their takings.

Are you putting together the final pieces to prove that Disney Did Coronavirus, sic?

Disney+ didn't want butts on their platform so they edited Splash with digital fur technology pic.twitter.com/df8XE0G9om

— Allison Pregler 📼 (@AllisonPregler) April 13, 2020

The US domestic box office total for the week of Mar 20-26 was $5,179. The same week in 2019 was $204,193,406

The entire box office last week was $1,710 for Swallow, all at one Florida drive-in.

This week they're showing it in a double feature with Marcel Marceau Vs The Nazis biopic Resistance on one screen, and Trolls World Tour b2b with ET on another, so there could be a top 3 movies reported next week.

An Australian film was #1 for the weekend's US box office!

Jed Kurzel's Peter Carey adaptation The True History Of The Kelly Gang took $9,839 in 5 theatres.

Supposedly it's out on streaming services, but I can't find it in Canada.

this should work afaict

US only

ah, I vpn'd to look but 🤷

It took “Parasite” *nineteen weeks* to get onto 2000 screens. Because it was able to build word of mouth through the awards season.

This is devastating news for mid-size and indie studios.

— Kevin Jagernauth (@jag24fps) July 28, 2020

^ AMC and Universal have signed a deal reducing the theatrical window to 17 days, in exchange for AMC getting a cut of the VOC revenue.

*VOD

jesus christ, no

― mh, Tuesday, November 19, 2019 9:21 AM (eight months ago)
christ

― weird ilx but sb (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, November 19, 2019 9:57 AM (eight months ago)

five-baggers for everyone

― imago, Tuesday, November 19, 2019 9:59 AM (eight months ago)

Bob Iger's erection could cut steel today

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Tuesday, November 19, 2019 10:18 AM (eight months ago)

"Given this changing marketplace, the Court finds that it is unlikely that the remaining Defendants would collude to once again limit their film distribution to a select group of theaters in the absence of the Decrees and, finds, therefore, that termination is in the public interest."

:/

damn, man

wow a little naive maybe??

Or, y'know, completely cognizant of the havoc this will wreak.

'We completely trust The Big Bad Wolf to leave this huge, glistening, scrumptious turkey roast on the counter right where it is'

Sure would love to see that judge's stock portfolio.

Also, Disney phasing out physical media, significantly on the format that favours 20th Century Fox catalogue restorations

when Disney bought Lucasfilm, as contract-holder they stopped paying Alan Dean Foster his royalties on the still-in-print original 1970s Star Wars novels (one ghosted adaptation, one pre-Empire sequel). when they bought Fox, they similarly stopped paying his royalties on the adaptations of Alien, Aliens and Alien³.

Having already had the US copyright law rewritten to suit them several times, they are now attempting to break it through precedent for all prose publishing.

They will not respond to Foster's lawyers, to his agents, or to his professional not-a-union org, and have demanded that he sign an NDA before they will respond to him: http://www.sfwa.org/disney-must-pay/

what??? that is... completely fucked up!

It is. I was just reading that last night. Apparently their argument is that when they bought Fox, they bought the assets but NOT the liabilities. Insane.

Crooked as hell. Hopefully they do the right thing

Tracer wait until you hear about the guy who coincidentally started getting a million-dollar annual stipend from a future division of Disney, after he started going to court to testify that authors don't deserve royalties, because if they'd signed non-existent contracts decades before, the contracts probably would have said they had no rights

Does the world need to fall apart completely for Disney to die?

it’s a small world, after all

Apparently their argument is that when they bought Fox, they bought the assets but NOT the liabilities. Insane.

This is insane enough that, no matter how many high-paid lawyers Disney can throw at this suit, the judge who adjudicates Foster's case needs to award him some sky-high punitive damages. Something so big that Disney stock takes a hit.

They presumably think that the chance of setting legal precedent is worth the risk. And if you're soullessly evil, this is true!

Some discussion over on the "what to watch on streaming services" thread about AT&T, already slashing all their entertainment divisions (and various other ones) in order to make up losses on the botched launch of HBO Max, going day-and-date for all 2021 theatrical releases.

In this Daily Beast interview with Steven Soderbergh, he has several thoughts about this being a moderate move (NB: he has an exclusive deal with HBO Max already):

Is this the beginning of the end for theaters?

No. Not at all. It’s just a reaction to an economic reality that I think everybody is going to have to acknowledge pretty soon, which is that even with a vaccine, the theatrical movie business won’t be robust enough in 2021 to justify the amount of P&A you need to spend to put a movie into wide release. There’s no scenario in which a theater that is 50 percent full, or at least can’t be made 100 percent full, is a viable paradigm to put out a movie in. But that will change. We will reach a point where anybody who wants to go to a movie will feel safe going to a movie.

I think somebody sat down and did a very clear-eyed analysis of what COVID is going to do in the next year, even with a potential vaccine, and said, I don’t see this as being workable in 2021. Because let’s be clear: there is no bonanza in the entertainment industry that is the equivalent of a movie that grosses a billion dollars or more theatrically. That is the holy grail. So the theatrical business is not going away. There are too many companies that have invested too much money in the prospect of putting out a movie that blows up in theaters—there’s nothing like it. It’s all going to come back. But I think Warners is saying: not as soon as you think.

Are you worried that once the genie is out of the bottle, it’ll be difficult to put it back in?

No. I think it’ll finally push the studios and NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) to have some practical and realistic conversations about windowing. Because there needs to be more fluidity. There’s not going to be one template that fits every movie. Every movie is different. You need the flexibility. If you’re in a bad situation, and you’ve got a movie that you opened wide, and you know Friday at 3 p.m. it’s not working, you need to be able to get it on a platform as soon as possible. You spent so much money trying to make this work, and if it didn’t, you should be able to do whatever you want to do. Theaters are going to be pushing you out anyway because you bombed. They’re looking for the next thing that’s going to work. I just think we live in a technological world that allows for fluidity that we’re just not seeing right now. We’re still seeing this broad template that’s supposed to work for everything, and that’s not how it’s going to get solved.

Will theaters wind up being only the domain of big-budget spectaculars?

I think there are a lot of factors to consider when wondering if that’s the way things are going to go. One variable that hasn’t really been scaled up is that, now that we live in an all-digital world, all of these big theater chains have the ability to turn themselves into repertory cinemas in which they screen films from any period of the last 120 years for audiences who’ve never seen them in a theater. There are all these movies from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and early aughts that nobody has seen in a theater. Big hits, great movies. And I’m waiting for somebody to go, OK, we’re going to have a program where everybody knows that on these certain nights, or on the weekend, you put them out. When I was growing up, the repertory cinema had the calendar for the fall, and you would know, oh, they’re going to show Deliverance, they’re going to show this. There are options here to get people back into the habit of going to see movies, and giving them something they’ve haven’t seen before, that aren’t being explored at any sizeable scale. So that’s one thing.

The other thing is, every time we think that it’s just going to be tentpoles and blockbusters—and art-house movies on the other end—something shows up in the middle and works. Downton Abbey made a lot of money. That movie was coming out when we were in discussions with Warners about Let Them All Talk, and I pointed to that as an example of what I consider to be our audience. That’s our demographic; that’s the audience I want. And look, they showed up for that.

I’d love for his multiplex repertory idea to take off but that feels like something that already would have. Fathom Events do not get good reviews locally for picture quality.

it's not totally off-base. My local (non-AMC, non-Regal) chains already do one or two rep screenings a month. i do think it just hasn't fully been done right, aside from smaller examples like Alamo

More writers coming out and forming a task force to try to get Disney to pay the royalties they're ignoring.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/28/disneymustpay-authors-form-task-force-missing-payments-star-wars-alien-buffy

This is such nickel and dime bullshit, all the book and comic royalties they could possibly owe would be a rounding error on one page of their books.

This situation is no longer hypothetical. Fox had licensed the comics rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dark Horse. After Disney purchased Fox, they withdrew those rights from Dark Horse and granted them to Boom! Comics. When one Buffy author contacted Boom! about missing royalties they were told that “royalties don’t transfer.”

Disney is one of the owners of Boom! Comics.

Surely this is... illegal behaviour?