REMINISCENCE : Promotion and Release (SPOILER ALERT)

[jo]

Reposting this as a new thread - as news now moves towards the film's future release.

Dec 3, 2020 15:17:30 GMT -5 jo said:

REMINISCENCE will get a dual theatrical and streaming service release, per new Warner Bros strategy for its 2021 film slates.


variety.com/2020/film/news/warner-bros-hbo-max-theaters-dune-matrix-4-1234845342/

Dec 3, 2020 10:30am PT
Warner Bros. to Debut Entire 2021 Film Slate, Including ‘Dune’ and ‘Matrix 4,’ Both on HBO Max and In Theaters

By Rebecca Rubin, Matt Donnelly


When Warner Bros. announced that “Wonder Woman 1984” would land on the streaming service HBO Max on Christmas, the same time it debuts in theaters, many expected it to be an isolated case in response to an unprecedented pandemic.

Instead, the studio will deploy a similar release strategy for the next 12 months. In a surprising break from industry standards, Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate — a list of films that includes “The Matrix 4,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” remake, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical adaptation of “In the Heights,” “Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” and “The Suicide Squad” — will debut both on HBO Max and in theaters on their respective release dates. The shocking move to simultaneously release movies day-and-date underscores the crisis facing movie theaters and the rising importance of streaming services in the wake of a global health crisis that’s decimated the film exhibition community.



Making the Cut: Variety’s 2020 Hitmakers and Hitbreakers Revealed
Warner Bros.’ 2021 release slate also includes Denzel Washington’s thriller “The Little Things,” biographical drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a remake of “Tom and Jerry,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” video game adaptation “Mortal Kombat,” “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” “Reminiscence,” James Wan’s “Malignant” and sports drama “King Richard.”

In the short term, the move will inject some welcome buzz into HBO Max, a Netflix challenger that launched last spring without generating much sizzle. One of WarnerMedia’s key rivals, the Walt Disney Company has strengthened its share price because of its investment in streaming offerings such as Disney Plus even as its core theme parks and film businesses have cratered. WarnerMedia and its corporate parent AT&T are likely making the move with an eye towards pleasing Wall Street.

Like “Wonder Woman 1984,” the films that Warner Bros. plans to release in 2021 will be available to HBO Max subscribers for 31 days. After the one-month mark, those movies will only play in theaters until they reach the traditional home entertainment frame. From there, people can rent through online platforms like Amazon, iTunes or Fandango. It’s unclear when the titles will return to HBO Max.

WarnerMedia chair and CEO Ann Sarnoff referred to the model as a “unique one-year plan.” Executives at the company have stressed the initiative isn’t expected to continue into 2022 or beyond — it’s considered a temporary solution in response to the ongoing global heath crisis.

“We’re living in unprecedented times which call for creative solutions, including this new initiative for the Warner Bros. Pictures Group,” Sarnoff said in a statement. “No one wants films back on the big screen more than we do. We know new content is the lifeblood of theatrical exhibition, but we have to balance this with the reality that most theaters in the U.S. will likely operate at reduced capacity throughout 2021.”

“With this unique one-year plan, we can support our partners in exhibition with a steady pipeline of world-class films, while also giving moviegoers who may not have access to theaters or aren’t quite ready to go back to the movies the chance to see our amazing 2021 films,” she continued. “We see it as a win-win for film lovers and exhibitors, and we’re extremely grateful to our filmmaking partners for working with us on this innovative response to these circumstances.”


Variety reported earlier this week that Warners. was considering sending several films to HBO Max and theaters day-and-date. But the studio opted to move forward with the rest of its upcoming slate because the film landscape is getting rockier as the pandemic worsens and parts of the United States consider implementing new stay-at-home orders. The idea that people will return to the movies anytime soon is looking more distant as the pandemic nears the one-year mark. It’s also unclear what kind of distribution footprint will await studios on the other end of the pandemic. More than 60% of U.S. theaters have closed down again, and that number could continue to rise if cases continue to spike around the holidays. Those that remain open are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. As a sign of these troubles, just hours before Warner Bros. disclosed its plans, AMC announced that it was selling up to 200 million shares of stock in an effort to raise as much as $834 million and shore up its liquidity.

To get theaters on board and allow Warners to break the theatrical contract for “Wonder Woman 1984,” the studio is giving cinemas a more generous cut of ticket sales. Theater chains are receiving as much of 60% of revenues. But sources say that won’t be the case for upcoming releases.

Thursday’s announcement from Warner Bros. is yet another example of just how dramatically the coronavirus crisis has shifted the power dynamic between studios and theater operators. Even with effective vaccines starting to be approved, the latest move by Warner Bros. suggests the balance may never return in favor of exhibitors.

Months ago, Universal Pictures took an axe to the theatrical window — industry parlance for the amount of time a new release plays exclusively in theaters. But in comparison, Universal’s terms of agreement with movie theater chains AMC and Cinemark make them look like downright martyrs. Under those pacts, the studio can put new movies on premium video-on-demand platforms in as little as 17 days. Films that generate at least $50 million in opening weekend ticket sales, however, will have to play exclusively in theaters for 31 days, or five full weekends. Traditionally, new releases remain on the big screen for 75 to 90 days before they move to digital platforms for a $19.99 rental fee. Universal has agreed to give the two circuits a cut of digital sales to get them to play ball. It’s not clear if theaters will receive any benefits from Warner Bros.

Warner Bros., perhaps more than any of its rivals, knows how unforgiving the theatrical market can be amid a pandemic. When the studio released Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” in September in an attempt to revive a nationwide return to moviegoing, the $200 million-budgeted sci-fi epic mostly fell flat. “Tenet” generated substantial ticket sales overseas, but returns were lackluster in the United States. As a result, the movie is expected to lose many millions.

In an interview with Variety, studio chief Toby Emmerich said the hybrid plan came about after exploring various options for “Wonder Woman 1984.” The international box office has significantly rebounded and even fielded some big hits in China and Japan. Alternatively, the domestic market hasn’t seen any movie come close to blockbuster levels in terms of ticket sales. HBO Max is only available in the U.S.

“We thought it could be a win-win and give the consumers the best choice,” he said. “Unfortunately, the U.S. has been one of the most hobbled markets in terms of theatrical. Outside the U.S., in places like China, South Korea, Japan, parts of Western Europe, our films will only be available in theaters. We think those markets can perform better.”

“After considering all available options and the projected state of moviegoing throughout 2021, we came to the conclusion that this was the best way for WarnerMedia’s motion picture business to navigate the next 12 months,” said WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar. “More importantly, we are planning to bring consumers 17 remarkable movies throughout the year, giving them the choice and the power to decide how they want to enjoy these films. Our content is extremely valuable, unless it’s sitting on a shelf not being seen by anyone. We believe this approach serves our fans, supports exhibitors and filmmakers, and enhances the HBO Max experience, creating value for all.”



Warner Bros.' 2021 Domestic Theatrical Slate

Film Release
Mortal Kombat Jan 15
The Little Things Jan 29
Tom and Jerry Mar 5
The Many Saints of Newark Mar 12

Reminiscence Apr 16

Godzilla vs. Kong May 21
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Jun 4
In the Heights Jun 18
Space Jam: A New Legacy Jul 16
The Suicide Squad Aug 6
Dune Oct 1
Elvis Nov 5
King Richard Nov 19
Matrix 4 Dec 22
Judas and the Black Messiah TBA
Malignant TBA
Those Who Wish Me Dead TBA

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

Dec 3, 2020 16:18:45 GMT -5 jo said:

[jo]

To refresh our memory --

here is the detailed interview with Lisa Joy early on when the project had just been picked up for a greenlight by Warner Bros --

deadline.com/2019/01/hugh-jackman-rebecca-ferguson-reminiscence-lisa-joy-jonathan-nolan-michael-deluca-aaron-ryder-berlin-film-market-1202545314/



SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT*****SPOILER ALERT

Hot Berlin Pic: ‘Westworld’s Lisa Joy Directs Hugh Jackman & Rebecca Ferguson In Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Reminiscence’

By Mike Fleming Jr

Mike Fleming Jr
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Film

@deadlinemike

January 30, 2019 9:44am




EXCLUSIVE: As the Sundance deal avalanche abates, it is time to focus on the film packages to be unveiled next week in Berlin. In what instantly becomes a hot property there, Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson are finalizing deals to star this fall in Reminiscence, a film that Westworld executive producer Lisa Joy has scripted. She will make her feature directorial debut.

Jonathan Nolan Lisa JoyThe film will be unveiled for major studios later this week by Endeavor Content, which is brokering domestic; FilmNation’s Glen Basner will be at the European Film Market to make international deals starting next week. Joy will make the trip to pitch her vision in a theater. Joy, Jonathan Nolan, Michael De Luca and Aaron Ryder will produce a film that is being mounted as a co-production between Kilter Films, Michael De Luca Productions and FilmNation Entertainment. Principal Photography begins October 21 for a film that will shoot in New Orleans and Miami. This allows Joy and Nolan to complete their work on the third season of their HBO series Westworld.




It is a re-team for Jackman and Ferguson, who worked together on the hit musical The Greatest Showman. The script, which made the Black List several years ago, is complex and layered, but essentially, Jackman will play a private eye who deals in recapturing vivid cherished memories for clients. He becomes vexed by one of those clients (Ferguson). It is set slightly in the future in a Miami that has been changed by global warming, with much of the city submerged underwater.

Joy partners with Nolan on Westworld, which took an old Michael Crichton script and blew it up into an intricately woven world that has fueled two seasons and heads into a third. The world in Reminiscence is just as complex. While she’s stepping behind the camera on a feature for the first time, Joy has been writing and imagining this film for the past five years. “It has been a labor of love and also vision,” she told Deadline. “I know exactly what I want this to be, including all of the action set pieces, and turning Miami into a sunken world. Working on Westworld has been an incredible experience in learning to make something with the scope of a feature on a TV timeline with a budget nowhere near what you would expect for a feature film equivalent.”

Joy, in fact, conceptualized the movie so completely without giving away its spoilers that, in a first for Deadline, I have invited her to pitch her vision here. If you’ve never been pitched a big movie project by a ferociously intelligent, passionate filmmaker, buckle up.



“I’ve always been fascinated by memory and I remember Jonah, when we first started dating, was working on something involving memory. It was early on in our relationship and I was like, damn it, I wanted to do a movie on memory. That was Memento. It was a fascination that took me back years and years. I remember in high school; one of my science teachers was talking about how, when people are having brain surgery and their brains aare being operated on and when different nerve endings are stimulated given the electronic impulse, patients having the surgery report having the most vivid memories, while they are under.

Almost as though that electrical stimulation is unlocking some raw date file in their mind, from a moment from long ago that they haven’t thought of, since. Our memories, the way we tend to experience them, are sort of fuzzy around the edges, like a watercolor that has bled into the past and is not totally clear. In this procedure, when people would think back and have this stimulation in their nervous system, the memories that they impact are so immersive and vivid, it was like they were there, again. The smells, the touch, the sound. It wasn’t like they were remembering from a distance, a third party on their own life. It was like they were transported over time, to that very moment.

I was thinking about that phenomenon a lot, while I was writing this piece. I was pregnant, for the first time. It’s such a beautiful and strange moment, and there’s this whir of hormones and feelings you are going through. As I was finishing the first draft, I had my baby daughter, and I remember holding her in my arms. It was that feeling for me where, there is that smell…I remember holding my daughter, this tiny baby in my arms, and I remember smelling her hair. And that precious smell that only babies have, and that evaporates after a while, and you never smell it exactly the same, again. But in a moment when you are smelling it and you’re holding them in that dark room, trying to get them to sleep, and you’re sleep deprived and crazy, but it’s still the most magical moment in your life. And you think, I wish I could bottle this moment, this smell, the feel of their little hands in mine. The feeling that I have, right now, with all my fears and my worries, and my dreams. I wish I could go back to this moment, forever.

There was a lot happening in my life. There was birth; there was family members passing away, and there was this idea of the ephemerality of all these experiences and how, even if you have the happiest of lives, it’s sad at the end. Even if you live to be a ripe old age, you live long enough to see the people you love pass away. You live in memory, and wouldn’t it be nice to be able to go back and feel those sensations, again. That’s kind of the underpinning, conceptually, of this film.


Reminiscence posits a world where that technology does exist. And there’s a character named Nick Bannister, played by Hugh Jackman. He is a kind of a P.I. of the mind — think Wolverine meets Humphrey Bogart — and he has a business where, when people want to remember something, they come into his office and he’s almost like a psychologist. All the files from our past are stored in our minds, and the question is, which one do you access? How do you get it to the right moment, the moment you’re looking for. His skill is asking questions and taking people through this lulling experience, where he finds the moments that you desire to reengage with and immerses you back in them. For a small fee.

People come back to remember their youth, their loved ones, their children, the dog that they used to run around with in a field behind their parents’ house in childhood, old lovers, things like this.

One day, a beautiful mysterious woman comes into his office. And she has a very simple request. She lost a set of keys, and she just needs a quick nudge, to remember where she dropped them. That meeting is the beginning of a really epic romance, where they fall madly in love and you just watch the relationship evolve. And then one day the girl, suddenly, goes missing. Nick Bannister is completely bereft, confused and lost, at the loss of his love. He decides he has to find her. He has to get her back.

It turns into a thriller, where, to get the girl, he has to unpack her past. And see different aspects of her personality that he didn’t know before, in order to find her again. This entire thing, the heart of it, is this love story.

It’s wrapped in this very thrilling world of action set pieces that we haven’t seen before. I’m a huge fan of directing action, it’s one of my favorite things. This world is particularly unique, so it lets me do action set pieces that I’ve never seen before. Part of the conceit of this world is, it’s set mostly in Miami, and it’s ten years from now.

For futurism, there tend to be two different types. I love both. One is an iPad store, sleek, gleaming buildings, flying cars, holographs. It’s beautiful but it’s a little cold to the touch. And it’s a little far away feeling from where we are now. Then there is the dystopian, very gritty version of the future, which is also very thrilling to watch. Neither of those is what I’m going for. What I’m going for is the way the future will probably naturally unfold. Buildings don’t change that much over ten year’s time. If you look out the window, it’s probably the same bodega that was there 20 years ago. Cities tend to have an evolutionary pace, all their own.


The one thing that has changed the evolution of this city, as it’s Miami and global warming has made the oceans rise. You see a much changed Miami, where the waters encroach the land itself and the outskirts of the city are flooded. The dry lands that are more inland have become the home of the rich, who have taken over the dry inland part and left the rest of the community to create new communities on the flooded outskirts. The way that this looks onscreen will be beautiful, as though Miami — turned into Venice — meets the floating markets of Thailand. That’s what this culture looks like. I wanted to create a really immersive culture of life and sensuality that’s really appealing. My parents are European, and Asian on the other side. So whenever I would travel I would look at different communities and the way they are often presented with a distanced gaze as though their way of life is apart from ours, and something to be pitied or idolized. To me it’s like, no, this is just life, and it’s beautiful and it’s rich and complicated. And you get the hustle and bustle of what Miami would look like, in those circumstances.

There’s one other element to it. Which struck me when I went to Spain for work. When it gets hot enough in Spain, they have siestas, and they take naps in the middle of the day because the sun is just so unbearable. So I extrapolated that principle for this, and imagined not only a world where the waters have risen, but where the city has essentially become nocturnal. So when the city sun starts to set and the neon lights go on, on Ocean Drive with the waves washing over them, and people commute to and fro in boats, you see school children waking up as the sun goes down, and packing off to school. You see commuters waking up, eating cereal and bagels in the morning, and ferrying themselves off to work.

It’s an inverted day rather than a night dynamic and that itself creates really interesting opportunities for action set pieces that, typically, when you’re in the chase or meeting the villain, it happens at night on a dark and gloomy street. Here, it happens literally at high noon. There’s a touch of that Western aspect, where the sun is beating down on you and our heroes are winded, sweaty and looking through the city that is essentially empty save for the people who are the denizens of the night. That’s the general world we’re looking at.


A little bit about the characters and the love story. The beating heart of this, is the love story. For me, there’s a reference within the film, but it’s loosely inspired by that myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus is this man who’s a wonderful singer, and the love of his life, Eurydice, dies. She’s bitten by a snake and goes down to hell and Orpheus’ grief is so extreme that he descends into hell, of his own volition, to try and barter with the devil and get his love back. And the song that he sings, is so beautiful and pure of heart, that it even moves the devil himself. He says, you can have your life back, you can take Eurydice back to the world, on one condition: don’t look back. As you’re descending up to the mortal realm, you can’t look back at her. The struggle is, will he or will he not look back. It started me thinking about love, itself. Both my philosophy on love, and there’s this meta-philosophy about film.

For me, love, and I married my love and we’ve been married a long time, but love is an ever changing thing. You fall in love with one person, but that’s not who they are, entirely. An entire person takes awhile to discover. It’s not just the glossy exterior. There are regrettable moments, from their past and that will happen in the future. There are flaws and darkness, along with the light and the beauty. For me, true love means not just seeing the good and saying I love you, but rather seeing all of it, the entire portrait of a human being, flaws and all, and saying, you. I love you. The greatest act of love is seeing, unconditionally, and accepting. In this movie, in order for Bannister to be reunited with his love, that’s exactly what he has to do. He has to learn to see her.

For me, in terms of film and TV, and it’s something I think about a lot on Westworld, it’s the ideas of tropes in femininity and masculinity. Film has this way of being able to say, push closer. Look at this person, fully. Don’t just look at who they should be, or who society thinks they should be. Try to embrace all of them. For me that’s really important for the women and the male characters. A lot of time in thrillers and any kind of major genre films, the women are either the good girl, a little bit passive and waiting around for love. Or they’re the bad girl, that comes with sexuality and all sorts of things that are thought of as more risqué. And the truth is, that’s complete nonsense. Women have just as many multitudes as men. And men have more dimension to them than we are usually allowed in film. This odyssey in love is seeing characters, fully. Both the women and the men.


That’s why casting was critical for these really challenging roles. For the woman, you have to be the romantic hero, the siren, the girl who needs saving, the girl with secrets. All twists and changes. While Bannister is discovering that about the woman, he’s going through his own changes and you see different sides of him. He starts just as the laconic veteran of a war who’s a bit closed off. He opens up into this emotional creature with this woman. He goes through these twists and turns within his own arc that take him through from hero to villain and potentially back again. And you have to be with all of these characters and totally understand their emotional landscape, throughout.

All the years I was writing this, I would see the scenes fully in my mind and I was directing it and planning the set pieces and drawing the artwork for the world. The one person who was always in my mind, from the first day, was Hugh Jackman. It’s this crazy love story and it’s totally unreal to me. I drew his costume on him, I have all these sketches and I thought, it has to be him. This is a man who, whatever character he inhabits, whether it’s in Prisoners, or The Greatest Showman, he has a range that’s like that of a character actor. You always believe his characters. He has so much heart. Even if he’s playing a flawed character. You can just see that heart underneath that and you forgive him because you see in his flaws, your own.


Then you couple that with, my God, he’s Wolverine. The most charismatic, handsomest movie star. The idea he’s all those things combined, with the sensitivity and the action, the sheer physicality to pull off this physically demanding role. He was all I could picture. I didn’t talk to anyone else. I sent him an email and went out to meet him and we talked about the script. I stayed so long, they were like, you want to have dinner here? We were in his living room that long. I decided to leave him to dinner with his family and not encroach anymore. It was an instant connection in that way. He totally viscerally understood and inhabited that character.

I just recorded some voiceover with him and it was so moving to see him say these words that I’d imagined in my head so long. The life he brought to them was even better and more nuanced than I had imagined. That’s my lead.

Once I started talking to Hugh, it was, who do I find for May, his romantic partner, this mysterious and elusive woman? For me, these films are always about the woman. It has to be someone who, you want to be her, you want to be her friend, you understand her, even if she’s doing something morally compromised. When I started watching Rebecca Ferguson, I was blown away. In very intense scenes with huge movie stars, my eyes would drift to her because she was this powerful core in the center of this whirlwind film. She has this intelligence to her eyes and her performance speaks volumes. You just want to keep looking closer to figure out who she is. She’s got this timelessness to her performances that defies expectations and she’s beautiful and sexy. But that is literally just the tip of the iceberg.


She’s riveting and you can see all these emotions, roiling underneath her surface. One of my favorite actresses is Lauren Bacall, especially in To have And Have Not. I thought, who’s the actress today who could do that line, “You know how to whistle, don’t ya?” Who is that person who can have every man, woman and child lean forward and just stop breathing for a second? For me, that’s Rebecca Ferguson. Then, unbelievably, this builds into a love connection where my emails are now just filled with the back and forth with Rebecca Ferguson, where we are finishing each other’s sentences when we talk. It’s a really great creative match, and they have great chemistry. They worked together before, and I thought, I want to see more of you guys together. I want this to be the main story and now it can be.”

Joy and Jackman are repped by WME; Ferguson is repped by ICM Partners and Tavistock Wood.

[jo]

The one person who was always in my mind, from the first day, was Hugh Jackman. It’s this crazy love story and it’s totally unreal to me. I drew his costume on him, I have all these sketches and I thought, it has to be him. This is a man who, whatever character he inhabits, whether it’s in Prisoners, or The Greatest Showman, he has a range that’s like that of a character actor. You always believe his characters. He has so much heart. Even if he’s playing a flawed character. You can just see that heart underneath that and you forgive him because you see in his flaws, your own.

And this was before BAD EDUCATION, another character portrayal in which Hugh Jackman also excelled and won near-unanimous raves for his characterization!


Jo

[jo]

I posted this on BWW - to help put others on notice about REMINISCENCE, in a thread reporting on the new Warner policy for 2021 releases.

jo
Send PM
Broadway Legend
joined:5/15/03

Full Warner Bros. 2021 film slate, including IN THE HEIGHTS, will debut in both theatres and on HBO Max#9

Posted: 12/3/20 at 6:45pm
Too bad HBO-MAX is only available in the USA. According to the Variety article, cinemas overseas did much better with the recently-released TENET compared to the dismal showing in the USA. But that will also depend on the pandemic situation in each country - whether cinemas will be allowed to be open or not by 2021. Will Warner allow the release of movies via HBO-GO? Hope so, as I am very keen to see a movie opening on April 16, 2021-- REMINISCENCE led by the former co-stars of Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman (who is coming back to Broadway in The Music Man) and Rebecca Ferguson. It has a BlackList script written by and the film directed by Westworld's Lisa Joy Nolan. I have read the first draft of the script and it is an exciting sci-fi romantic thriller. It deserves a big screen as much as any movie musical does, given its theme and film treatment.

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

A few tweets which seem to have some inside knowledge have used the HOT emoji!

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I recall reading that Lisa Joy says that she has not seen a love scene that seems to satisfy her artistic curiosity. I wonder if she has filmed some unforgettable love scenes with Hugh and Rebecca

Gasp!


Jo

[jo]

[njr]

Yay! I get HBO Max free because I subscribe to HBO!

[jo]

[jo]

Change in distribution policy by Warner Bros deemed not good for the actors.

variety.com/2020/film/news/hbo-max-warner-bros-dune-matrix-4-theater-owners-1234846103/

Hollywood, Theater Owners Sound Off on Warner Bros.’ Bold HBO Max Move: ‘They’re Playing With Fire’
By Matt Donnelly, Rebecca Rubin

“I guess the movie theaters will just be Halloween stores now.”

That was the glib response from a veteran studio executive on Thursday, joining a chorus of powerbrokers, agents and other Hollywood insiders floored by the news that Warner Bros. Pictures will be releasing 17 movies — its entire 2021 slate — simultaneously in movie theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max.

In the moments leading up to the announcement, which will make the likes of “Matrix 4,” “Dune,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” and “The Suicide Squad” available for free to HBO Max subscribers for 31 days on the same day they release in theaters, film journalists started softening up the ground on Twitter. They promised an extinction-level event, the kind audiences typically find in the blockbusters cooked up by the Burbank-based Warner Bros.


Many in Hollywood had expected traditional studios to follow the lead of Universal Pictures, which brokered a milestone deal in July to shrink the theatrical window — the exclusive period in which movies run in theaters — to just 17 days before Universal would have the option to take their wares to paid video-on-demand. But few expected a change this drastic.

“There’s no question that WarnerMedia is leveraging this pandemic moment, and making a decision for the future of their company by prioritizing streaming. The question is, at what cost to this art form?” asked one C-suite executive at a rival studio.

Another well-known, high-flying executive estimated that WarnerMedia had “parted with easily $2 billion in assets, gift-wrapped for HBO Max, that will see absolutely no return.”

The executive refers to mega-budget genre and franchise titles like “The Matrix 4,” DC’s “The Suicide Squad,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” and big potential earners like the “Sopranos” feature film prequel “The Many Saints of Newark,” Lin Manuel Miranda’s “In The Heights,” and Hugh Jackman’s “Reminiscence.” The box office returns for those films will certainly be adversely affected by the decision to move forward with a hybrid distribution strategy.

While many in show business have been following the contentious debate around theatrical windows for years, in which global theater owners say big-screen exclusivity is essential to making movies a lasting part of the cultural conversation (and essential to selling popcorn and soda), few were prepared for how swiftly WarnerMedia let this particular axe fall.

Warner Bros. Entertainment CEO Ann Sarnoff and motion picture group chairman Toby Emmerich briefed CAA, WME, UTA and other major talent agencies on Thursday morning just before the news hit, insiders said. The bread-and-butter job of a studio head is to keep talent happy, and many traditional star deals are structured around box office participation. By releasing movies on HBO Max in the midst of a pandemic, where movie theaters in major markets will likely remain shuttered in the months ahead, star compensation will clearly take a hit when watching from home is safer. Restructuring those deals and making sure their top stars for 2021 — including Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Timothee Chalamet, Margot Robbie, Jackman, and Miranda — is on a laundry list of administrative headaches the surprise announcement will bring for the studio.


The news was particularly upsetting to theater owners, whose business has been decimated by the pandemic. Prior to Thursday’s bombshell, Warner Bros. had announced that “Wonder Woman 1984” would debut on HBO Max on Christmas, the same day it starts screening in theaters. Normally, that would have caused outrage in the exhibition community. But in that instance, theater operators understood it was a unique situation in response to the pandemic, and they were desperate for new product to offer customers. They couldn’t have anticipated what would follow.

Part of the reason why theater owners felt betrayed by the announcement that Warner Bros. is relying on HBO Max to bring its film slate to the masses is because the studio broke the news as numerous vaccines are starting to be approved. Exhibitors said they would have understood if Warners sent movies to HBO Max on a case-by-case basis. But the decision to send the entire 2021 slate meant they still believe the return of moviegoing is many, many months away.

“The year-long part was a little befuddling,” said Mark O’Meara, who owns two movie theaters in Fairfax, Va. “They’re claiming it’s a COVID model. I think there’s some truth to that. But theaters are closing, and it’s getting tougher.

He adds, “I don’t think we’ll ever get back to three months,” referring to the standard 90-day window.

Larger movie theater chains mostly stayed silent; numerous other circuits declined to comment. In a statement, AMC’s CEO Adam Aron didn’t mince words expressing his frustration.

“Clearly, Warner Media intends to sacrifice a considerable portion of the profitability of its movie studio division, and that of its production partners and filmmakers, to subsidize its HBO Max start-up,” Aron said. “As for AMC, we will do all in our power to ensure that Warner does not do so at our expense. We will aggressively pursue economic terms that preserve our business.”

Cinemark, one of the country’s biggest theater chains, said it will assess movies individually before booking them to play in theaters.

“At this time, Warner Bros. has not provided any details for the hybrid distribution model of their 2021 films,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Privately, theater owners are trying to remain optimistic that they hybrid model won’t outlast the pandemic and praying other studios don’t follow suit.

“If Disney follows this template in any capacity, movie theaters are done,” one film executive said on the condition of anonymity.

Jeff Logan, who runs a small theater chain in South Dakota, said he was “surprised” by the news, calling it one that was made “in haste” and “without much foresight.” He felt consternation, not toward Warner Bros. distribution executives, but rather the higher powers at WarnerMedia and its owners, AT&T.

“It’s like they aren’t listening to the news — or they are listening to three months-old newscasts. It doesn’t make sense when we’re on the verge of vaccines being distributed,” Logan said. “To do it on one picture, I could understand. But the entire slate for the year made absolutely no sense.”

He’s not blind to the fact that even with a vaccine, people might be hesitant to immediately return to the movies. But he’s confident that once a notable part of the population is vaccinated, audiences will be eager to watch the next big blockbuster on the silver screen.

“I think things will get back to near normal faster than the Warner Bros. decision would indicate,” Logan said. “They’re using this as a cover to push HBO Max. I would hope they would come to their senses than sooner than after a year.”

In the meantime, theater owners worry that legions of fans are getting accustomed to watching new movies at home and fear that it could have irreversible effects.

“We’ll see how this plays out. I just hope movie theaters are around to see how it plays out, Logan said. “They’re playing with fire at the expense of our livelihoods.”

As game-changing as 2021 will be for Warner Bros. and the theatrical film business, the C-suite executive Variety spoke with said the Thursday bomb-drop comes down to one thing: Wall Street.

“This is AT&T justifying the billions they paid for Warners Bros,” the executive said. “This is bad for creativity and the long term, but is it good for their stock this week? Absolutely.”

[jo]

Warner Bros needs to release a first trailer pronto!

[jo]

The most incisive article on the fallout caused by the unilateral decision of WarnerMedia to put its 2021 film slate to streaming --



www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christopher-nolan-rips-hbo-max-as-worst-streaming-service-denounces-warner-bros-plan?

Christopher Nolan Rips HBO Max as "Worst Streaming Service," Denounces Warner Bros.' Plan
4:36 PM PST 12/7/2020 by Kim Masters


To many insiders, WarnerMedia's blindsiding of talent and their reps with news that it would send 17 films directly to HBO Max in 2021 felt like an insult.

For many in the movie business — producers, directors, stars and their representatives — Dec. 3, 2020, is a day that will live in infamy.

“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” filmmaker Christopher Nolan, whose relationship with Warners dates back to Insomnia in 2002, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Added Nolan: “Warner Bros. had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker’s work out everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak. They don’t even understand what they’re losing. Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction.”


Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet,' distributed by Warner Bros., grossed $359 million worldwide and $57.6 million in the U.S.
On that now-infamous morning, Ann Sarnoff — whose ungainly title is chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group — and Warner Bros. film studio chairman Toby Emmerich called the heads of the major agencies to drop a bombshell: Warners was about to smash the theatrical window, sweeping its entire 17-picture 2021 film slate onto its faltering HBO Max streaming service, debuting them on the same day they would open in whatever theaters could admit customers.

Surprisingly to some in the industry, sources say the idea was the brainchild of Warner Bros. COO Carolyn Blackwood who, looking at a relatively weak 2021 slate, saw an opportunity to avoid the humiliation of potentially bad grosses while currying favor with streamer-obsessed higher-ups.

The instant response in Hollywood was outrage and a massive girding for battle. “Warners has made a grave mistake,” says one top talent agent. “Never have this many people been this upset with one entity.” Like others, he had spent much of the day dealing with calls from stunned and angry clients. And that swooshing sound you hear? It’s the lawyers, stropping their blades as they prepare for battle: that Warners was self-dealing in shifting these movies to its own streamer, perhaps, or that the company acted in bad faith. Some talent reps say the decision affects not only profit participants but others who have worked on films as the move might affect residual payments. They expect and hope that the guilds will get involved. (The Writers Guild of America declined to comment.)

The Warners move poses big, maybe even existential questions: How do theaters survive this supposedly onetime, excused-by-the-pandemic move? Genies are hard to put back in the bottle — and no one believes Warners intended this to be temporary, anyway. What damage will be done to exhibitors by training customers that if they sit on their sofas, the biggest movies will come? And will Warners face serious backlash from important producers, filmmakers, guilds and onscreen talent? “Warners was the quintessentially talent-friendly, filmmaker-friendly studio,” says one agent. “Now Warners isn’t the first place, second place or third place you want to go.”

Many in Hollywood think WarnerMedia opted for this drastic move to play to streaming-infatuated Wall Street and redo the botched launch of HBO Max, which has netted a dismal 8.6 million "activated" subscribers so far. But one prominent agent notes that the top executives at WarnerMedia and its parent — AT&T CEO John Stankey, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and, of course, Sarnoff — “don’t understand the movie business, and they don’t understand talent relations.”


While Kilar pays what is seen as lip service to movies, industry veterans say Warners is sacrificing the huge profit that comes from selling movies in multiple formats and on multiple platforms around the world.


Even before Warners made its play, there was grumbling among agents that Sarnoff, who has been on the job for more than a year, had yet to get acquainted with key players on the film side or make much of an impression at all. That’s why many are focusing their wrath on Emmerich. “Toby’s passion is only about managing up,” says one agent who represents major Warners talent.

By the weekend following the announcement, Emmerich was calling important filmmakers with projects set for 2021 to assure them that their movies wouldn’t be dropped on the streaming service without warning. “As if anyone would believe he had any control over the situation,” says one producer with a major Warner property. “Toby probably had a really bad weekend, not that I feel bad for him,” says one agent.

According to a source, Emmerich tried to soothe In the Heights director Jon M. Chu by pointing out that the movie was still getting a “global theatrical release.” But industry insiders say the studio is pretending that pirates won’t pounce as soon as these films are streaming on HBO Max. As soon as one does, there's an “excellent version of the movie everywhere immediately,” notes one industry veteran.


WarnerMedia’s decision to attack without warning may be understandable given the blowback that was foreseeable. But to many insiders, blindsiding talent and their reps seemed like an insult. Sources say studio president Courtenay Valenti was the only Warner exec who dared to speak up about the need to reach out to key creative partners, but she was quickly hushed.

Much of this outrage will surely be mitigated if WarnerMedia is prepared to write big checks to all the profit participants in the films that have been moved. “It’s a critical time for them, at the highest level, to make this right with the talent,” says one rep. But agents say the guidance that’s been provided so far suggests that the company isn’t planning to offer what is now called "Wonder Woman money," in honor of the rich deal the studio gave profit participants in Wonder Woman 1984 when that film was moved to HBO Max.


Warner Bros.' 'Wonder Woman 1984' will debut on HBO Max and in theaters on Dec. 25 in the U.S.
WarnerMedia had to shovel tens of millions at Gal Godot and the other key players because the company wants a third in the series. But that sets the bar high. Sources say even Suicide Squad director James Gunn, who is platform-agnostic, was not pleased when the studio followed its shocking announcement by floating a lackluster formula for compensating him and other profit participants in the film.

At minimum, WarnerMedia has opened the door to arduous negotiations with the major agencies over compensation for multiple profit participants in 17 movies. Did the Warners numbers crunchers, in projecting the cost of premiering its entire 2021 slate on HBO Max, factor in the cost of widely anticipated legal challenges? Industry insiders believe WarnerMedia may have opened itself up to those, especially as it is selling the movies to its own streaming platform when none of the profit participants has had a chance to figure out what Apple or Netflix might have paid for the opportunity to stream their projects day-and-date. Allegations of self-dealing are almost sure to follow.



Many think Legendary will be the first to file a legal challenge. The company fired off a previous lawyer letter after Netflix offered something north of $225 million for the rights to Godzilla vs. Kong, which has seen its release date moved from March 2020 to November to May 2021. Though Legendary financed 75 percent of the movie, Warners had the power to block the sale and did. Legendary asked whether the studio would then give it a deal to stream the movie on HBO Max — and got no clear answer until its executives woke up one December morning to find that the movie was going day-and-date on the service without the benefit of a negotiation. Legendary’s even more expensive picture, Dune, is getting the same treatment. The other companies that finance Warners movies, Village Roadshow and Bron, are also said to be aggrieved parties that might end up going to court.



And then there’s the talent. Dune director Denis Villeneuve is said to be among those who felt most strongly that a traditional big-screen release was essential for his film. Chu, who along with Lin-Manuel Miranda went through an intense courtship with multiple suitors for In the Heights and who had turned down a huge Netflix offer for Crazy Rich Asians because he cherishes the communal theatrical experience, told an associate he was “shell-shocked” after being informed of the Warners decision.

Sources say WarnerMedia insiders have been hoping that Disney will follow its lead and shift its slate to streaming. But Disney, which had seven billion-dollar-grossing movies last year, isn’t about to do that. Instead, it is moving some films to streaming, as it did with Hamilton and Artemis Fowl — likely Cruella and more — but an agent notes that the way Disney has handled the shift stands in stark contrast to what Warners has done. “They didn’t do a unilateral thing,” he says, adding that studio executives made pre-emptive calls to talent and their reps that helped smooth the process.


It’s also worth noting that Disney+, which has dwarfed HBO Max in terms of subscribers, has gotten a lot of mileage out of one original hit, The Mandalorian, which is based on an iconic movie property. “There’s never been a full-fledged franchise blockbuster launched on a streaming service,” observes an executive at a Warners competitor. “It starts with theaters and it starts with opening weekend.” And so far, those blockbusters have been the ones that generated merchandise sales and theme-park attractions.


Warners doesn’t have theme parks but it has reaped big benefits from movies that almost certainly would have been dropped onto HBO Max had the option been available at the time. Consider last year’s megahit Joker. Film studio chief Emmerich was not a fan of the project; it was defended by worldwide marketing president Blair Rich, who was recently pushed out. Emmerich lowballed on the budget to discourage director Todd Phillips from making it, and when the filmmaker persisted, sold off half the movie. Joker then became a cultural phenomenon that grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide, was honored with 11 Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Would any of that have happened had Joker been dropped onto HBO Max?



Despite their assertions to the contrary, many industry insiders believe that neither AT&T chairman Stankey nor Kilar has much interest in the legacy movie business. Kilar has said this move was made for the fans and told CNBC, “If we start our days and end our days focused on the customer, we’re going to lead the industry.”

That brings to mind a line in the new Netflix movie, Mank — a warning delivered to the upstart Orson Welles by grizzled veteran Herman Mankiewicz: “You, my friend, are an outsider, a self-anointed savior-hyphenate. They’re just waiting to loathe you.”

It also leaves out a long-standing Hollywood maxim: Content is king. And content comes from artists who aren’t always motivated purely by money. Says an agent who represents extremely important talent with business at Warners: “You had a decades-long legacy as being known as the most talent-friendly studio. Now you’ve gone from that to a studio that in starburst colors lit up a sign that says, 'We don’t give a fuck about talent.’”

I agree

Jo

[jo]

The NYTimes weighs in on the controversial WarnerMedia release policy for 2021 film slate --

www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/business/media/warner-bros-hbo-max-movies-pay.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Trading Box Office for Streaming, but Stars Still Want Their Money

If studios are no longer trying to maximize ticket sales, what will that mean for often lucrative pay packages tied to a film’s performance in theaters?

The actress Gal Gadot received more than $10 million from Warner Bros. after the studio decided “Wonder Woman 1984” would not have a traditional theater release.


By Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling
Dec. 7, 2020




LOS ANGELES — Last month, Warner Bros. quietly approached Hollywood’s two biggest talent agencies, William Morris Endeavor and Creative Artists. The studio wanted to release the much-anticipated “Wonder Woman 1984” simultaneously in theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max on Christmas Day. And they wanted to get the film’s star, Gal Gadot, and director, Patty Jenkins, on board with the plan.

WME, which counts Ms. Gadot as a client, and CAA, which represents Ms. Jenkins, had a lot of questions, but the biggest involved money: How are you going to pay them?

With “Wonder Woman 1984,” agents argued that Ms. Gadot, Ms. Jenkins and the producer Charles Roven (among others) needed to be paid what they most likely would have received had the sequel been released in a traditional manner (an exclusive run in theaters before arriving online) and not during the height of a pandemic. After all, that was what they signed up for, and Warner Bros. and HBO Max, its corporate sibling, wanted their help in promoting the film, did they not?

After a tense negotiation, Warner Bros., which is owned by AT&T, agreed that Ms. Gadot and Ms. Jenkins would each get more than $10 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private agreements.




The upshot: Warner Bros. kept crucial talent and their powerful representatives on its side.

Last week, when Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia’s chief executive, announced that 17 more Warner Bros. movies would each roll out on HBO Max and in theaters à la “Wonder Woman 1984,” talent was handled in a very different manner. To prevent the news of the 17-movie shift from leaking (and to make the move speedily rather than get mired in the expected blowback), WarnerMedia kept the major agencies and talent management companies in the dark until roughly 90 minutes before issuing a news release. Even some Warner Bros. executives had little warning.


The surprise move left agencies on a war footing. Representatives for major Warner Bros. stars like Denzel Washington, Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman and Angelina Jolie wanted to know why their clients had been treated in a lesser manner than Ms. Gadot. Talk of a Warner Bros. boycott began circulating inside the Directors Guild of America. A partner at one talent agency spent part of the weekend meeting with litigators. Some people started to angrily refer to the studio as Former Bros.



“For the longest time, Warner Bros. has been known as the best home for talent, and that has been a significant competitive advantage,” Michael Nathanson, a founder of the MoffettNathanson media research firm, said in a phone interview. “With this move, they alienated the very talent they have worked so hard to attract. These aren’t engineers you can just replace.”

The company cited the pandemic as the primary reason for moving the entire 2021 Warner Bros. slate to a hybrid release model, although some films — notably the big-budget “Dune” and “Matrix 4” — are not scheduled to arrive until the fourth quarter, long after vaccines are expected to be deployed.



“Our content is extremely valuable, unless it’s sitting on a shelf not being seen by anyone,” Mr. Kilar said in the news release. “We believe this approach serves our fans, supports exhibitors and filmmakers, and enhances the HBO Max experience, creating value for all.”



The 97-year-old studio, the ancestral home of Humphrey Bogart (“Casablanca”) and Bette Davis (“Now, Voyager”), suddenly finds itself at the uncomfortable center of a Hollywood that is changing at light speed. Even before the pandemic, streaming services like Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video were upending how movies get seen and their creators are compensated. Now, with theaters struggling because of the coronavirus and the public largely stuck at home, even traditional film companies are being forced to evolve.



It’s not that all actors and directors are against streaming. Plenty of big names are making movies for Netflix. But last week’s move by Warner Bros. raised fundamental financial questions. If old-line studios are no longer trying to maximize the box office for each film but instead shifting to a hybrid model where success is judged partly by ticket sales and partly by the number of streaming subscriptions sold, what does that mean for talent pay packages?

How studios compensate A-list actors, directors, writers and producers is complicated, with contracts negotiated film by film and person by person. But it boils down to two checks. One is guaranteed (a large upfront fee) and one is a gamble: a portion of ticket sales after the studio has recouped its costs.

If a film flops, the second payday never comes. If a film is a hit, as is often the case with superheroes and other fantasy stories, the “back end” pay can add up to wheelbarrows full of cash. That money trickles down through Hollywood’s financial ecosystem to agents, lawyers and managers — funding Pacific Palisades mansions, the latest Porsche and $1,000-per-person Urasawa dinners.

But are the days of the jackpot back-end payoffs now coming to a close?

“Precedent is being set over the value of talent and what kind of transparency is essential to creating equitable partnerships,” Bryan Lourd, a co-chairman of Creative Artists, said in an email. “We will do everything necessary to make sure artists are fairly compensated for the value they are creating, and that their creative and artistic work and rights are protected.”

William Morris Endeavor declined to comment for this article.

It is unclear whether Warner Bros. has a legal requirement to renegotiate back-end arrangements for the 17 movies, as it did with “Wonder Woman 1984” heavyweights. Mr. Kilar said in a phone interview on Friday that, while these changes might be jarring to those who expected one thing for their movie and were now getting something very different, the end goal was to honor talent relationships as the studio had done in the past.


“The most important statement to make is we endeavor to be generous,” he said. “It has served us well for 97 years, and I think it will serve us well going forward.”


WarnerMedia has called its hybrid movie distribution plan a one-year-only strategy. But most people in Hollywood believe it will prove permanent. Mr. Kilar publicly positioned the move as being all about fans, many of whom have chafed at Hollywood’s traditional rollout of movies (first in theaters for an exclusive period, then online for rental and purchase, then on streaming services and television). He’s just going to take that away in 2022?


Each movie Warner Bros. releases next year will appear on HBO Max for only one month before leaving the service. At that point, films will cycle through the usual release “windows,” leaving theaters when interest has run out and heading to iTunes, DVD and points beyond.


Under the WarnerMedia plan, HBO Max will pay Warner Bros. a licensing fee for the 31-day concurrent rights. The fee will be equal to the studio’s portion of ticket sales in the United States. (Ticket sales are generally split 50-50 between studios and theaters.)

Other factors could influence the fee, including the percentage of theaters that are operating. HBO Max and Warner Bros. also agreed to a floor for these fees: $10 million or 25 percent of the film’s net production cost, whichever is greater.

In the eyes of some agents, this is unfair self-dealing. They believe that WarnerMedia had an obligation to maximize value for the profit participants — to make a good-faith effort to see what prices other companies might have paid for the Warner Bros. movies before selling them to itself. The licensing fee does not appear to be connected to the value each movie will create for HBO Max in the form of subscriptions or engagement.



Litigation over self-dealing has been relatively common in Hollywood since the 1990s, when industry consolidation led to media superconglomerates.

WarnerMedia’s aggrieved partners include Legendary Entertainment, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Owned by China’s Dalian Wanda Group, Legendary produced the upcoming “Dune” and “Godzilla vs. Kong” under a deal that required Legendary (and its affiliates) to ultimately shoulder 75 percent of the production costs, with Warner Bros. paying for the balance. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” a science-fiction epic starring Timothée Chalamet and an array of other big names (Zendaya, Jason Mamoa), cost an estimated $165 million. “Godzilla vs. Kong” cost about $155 million.


HBO Max has begun advertising itself with footage from “Dune” and other films.

Not only did Warner Bros. blindside Legendary about the distribution shake-up, but HBO Max immediately began advertising itself using footage from “Dune” and other movies. Stars involved with the much-anticipated project were stunned: Some had agreed to lower their upfront fees (to reduce production costs) in return for expected back-end paydays. In success, “Dune” could spawn multiple sequels.


Legendary was already upset with Warner. In recent months, Netflix had offered the partners a huge sum — at least $250 million — to buy “Godzilla vs. Kong.” Legendary was in favor of the deal, which seemed to optimize the film’s value. But Warner had blocked the Netflix sale.

Legendary declined to comment, as did Warner Bros.

[jo]

It looks like LISA JOY and REMINISCENCE could benefit from association with the NOLAN name. In this exchange re major filmmaker/auteur CHRIS NOLAN, the tweeter sees the connection of excellence in REMINISCENCE --

Translated from French by GOOGLE --

And Lisa Joy, her sister-in-law, is going to release a film with an intriguing pitch with Reminiscence (Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, beautiful people in the cast). What a family !https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscence_(2021_film)
(but I bet I know what reads they have every now and then)



Could the tweeter also be a fan of THE FOUNTAIN ?

This artistic rendition came from the graphic novel of THE FOUNTAIN ( Darren Aronofsky & illustrator Kent Williams)


JO

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

In relation to the recent development which affected the channels for releasing RRMINISCENCE --

Dec 10, 2020 4:06:36 GMT -5 jo said:

variety.com/2020/film/news/wonder-woman-patty-jenkins-aaron-sorkin-streaming-1234849063/

Dec 9, 2020 8:57am PT
Patty Jenkins, Aaron Sorkin on Warner Bros.’ HBO Max Shocker: ‘We’re All Scared Everything’s Going to Change Now’

By Adam B. Vary

Patty Jenkins Aaron Sorkin
Variety

“Wonder Woman 1984” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” both made headlines this year when their respective studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount, chose to circumvent the pandemic by shifting the titles from a theatrical to a streaming-centric release. In the case of “WW84,” Warner Bros. chose a day-and-date release on HBO Max and in theaters on Dec. 25. For “Chicago 7,” Paramount sold the film outright to Netflix, which opened the film in limited release in theaters in late September, and on the streamer weeks later in mid-October.

In a wide-ranging conversation for Variety‘s upcoming Virtual FYC Fest, “WW84” director Patty Jenkins and “Chicago 7” director Aaron Sorkin both conveyed their relief that audiences nationwide are getting to see their films safely and in a timely fashion. But they also expressed significant skepticism that the industry-wide pivot to streaming — including the recent contentious decision by Warner Bros. to release its entire 2021 slate of films on HBO Max on the same day they debut in theaters — marks the death knell of the theatrical experience. Jenkins even suggested that top-tier talent could start tipping the scales in the other direction.




“We’re all scared that everything’s going to change now,” Sorkin said to Jenkins. “That movie theaters are basically going to become, like, art houses, and that the films that you and I make will only be seen on streaming services.”

He continued, “I don’t think that that’s going to happen. I think that for 4,000 years, nothing has replaced the experience of being part of an audience. That shared experience — being in a theater when the lights go down, everyone laughing at the same time, gasping at the same time, being silent at the same time, and having the final moment of the film reverberate at the same time.”


Jenkins agreed, noting that the death of moviegoing has been foretold since the advent of television in the 1950s. But with so many media companies now aggressively placing streaming at the center of their business — WarnerMedia with HBO Max, Disney with Disney Plus and Hulu, Comcast with Peacock, ViacomCBS with Paramount Plus and PlutoTV, not to mention Apple TV Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and, of course, Netflix — Jenkins also believes the industry is missing a considerable economic opportunity.


When Warner Bros. proposed releasing “Wonder Woman 1984” day-and-date on HBO Max and in theaters, Jenkins said the unique conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic essentially forced her to prioritize her desire for “communion with an audience” over all other considerations. To make up for the loss in expected box office-related bonuses, Warner Bros. also reportedly paid Jenkins and star Gal Gadot each $10 million. But in her conversation with Sorkin, Jenkins suggested that A-list directors and actors who value the audience experience above all will start seeking out studios that buck the streaming trend, especially as the pandemic subsides.

“When every single studio in town starts chasing the exact same thing, you’re like, Why doesn’t someone differentiate themselves?” Jenkins said. “In this case, I think what’s going to happen is … some studio is going to be smart enough to be an outlier, and all the great filmmakers in town are going to go there, and the theaters are going to favor their movies. Because right now, if there are studios that announce that [releasing day-and-date on streaming] is what they’re going to start doing, every filmmaker’s going to head to the studio that promises they’re not going to.”


As Sorkin nodded, Jenkins evoked United Artists, the company founded in 1919 by director D.W. Griffith and actors Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks to favor artists’ interests over the then-nascent studio system.

“It’s not going to be that easy,” she said of the shift to streaming. “I think there’s a sentiment right now that change is coming and there’s nothing you can do about it, and I think that doesn’t take into consideration the artists who can very much United Artists-it up and make a big change.”

“I hope that you are at the forefront of those United Artists,” Sorkin said.

Jenkins laughed. “Believe me, it’s in my mind.”

The full conversation with Jenkins and Sorkin will run as part of Variety‘s Virtual FYC Fest, from Dec. 15–17.

Very thoughtful insights!

Film is an art form -- and individuality and creativity shown in the right setting will become the premium avenue for the best filmmakers, best creatives, and best actors!

Hope Hugh Jackman will be among the near-future's UNITED ARTISTS!


Jo

[jo]

REMINISCENCE is about 4 months from release -- but we have not seen a trailer.

Hopefully, there will be one soon!


From a past interview with Hugh (when he was doing promo for BAD EDUCATION) --

nd that original, and I think audiences are really craving that. I’ve been part of a movie franchise, where I played the same character nine times. It’s important that I do some original content.


It sounds like a really cool sci-fi thriller, and to know that it’s original, what most impressed you about what Lisa Joy was able to create on set and about working with her?

[jo]

REMINISCENCE is about 4 months from release -- but we have not seen a trailer.

Hopefully, there will be one soon!


From a past COLLIDER interview with Hugh (when he was doing promo for BAD EDUCATION) --

What’s the status of Reminiscence?

JACKMAN: We finished filming, and they’re editing now. I don’t know exactly what they’re doing, but I guess (writer/director) Lisa [Joy] is probably editing at home. We finished filming, at the end of January. I’m really excited for that film. I loved doing it. I think Lisa is an incredible talent. I said yes to the movie, in my head. I didn’t say this to her because, you’ve gotta be cool, but she pitched me the movie. She said, “I’m gonna pitch it before you’ve read the script because I want you to understand the world of the film.” As she’s pitching, I’m like, “I’m doing this movie.” And then, I was reading the script, and 20 minutes into the script, I was like, “Honestly, I don’t even need to read this. I’m doing it.” It was that good and that exciting and that original, and I think audiences are really craving that. I’ve been part of a movie franchise, where I played the same character nine times. It’s important that I do some original content.


It sounds like a really cool sci-fi thriller, and to know that it’s original, what most impressed you about what Lisa Joy was able to create on set and about working with her?


JACKMAN: She’s like a savant, in the way that she prepares. She knows every cut and every angle. When she walks on the set, she has this preparation that you’ve never seen before, and a knowledge of how things are gonna go down, and because of that, which goes back to what you were saying about preparation, she has the ability to take on active suggestions. It feels like you’re really creating and flowing, but you have this foundation where you know you’re gonna make your day and you know you’re gonna create some things that have never been done before. And we were doing things in camera that have never been done before, but she had prepped it all. It was super exciting to be part of that. She’s just got an incredible brain. She never loses her temper. She always is laughing and having a good time. This was a really big film, and I was just proud to be part of it.


Does it also feel like a very different kind of character for you?

JACKMAN: Yeah, it does, and a different genre character than anything I’ve done. This puts me more in the Bogart world. It’s very much a film noir romance. Coming off of doing Frank, Gary Hart and The Greatest Showman, it’s been a really interesting time for me, and I’m really loving having the variety of characters that I’ve been offered and am lucky enough to do, but this does feel very different. And I got to work with Rebecca Ferguson again, who I think is ridiculously talented and amazing, and I love her. I had never met Thandie Newton before, but I now am equally as impressed with her.

To have relegated this to a streaming service for its release ( albeit with a questionable theatrical schedule due to the pandemic, which may still be a serious issue in April?) seems unfair. It seems to be a project that Lisa Joy has planned and executed so carefully, with a well-conceived cinematic vision, but would not benefit from a major theatrical release. It would have been better off if WB had rescheduled the movie release to the second half of 2021 when theaters would have opened more widely. But it seems the real reason why WB was prodded to do a simultaneous streaming release was to beef up the subscribers list of the flailing HBO-MAX

Jo