Understanding the film business / Awards

[jo]

Can't post too much - proboards with problems!

[jo]

Re loss of STAR POWER (THR article)

James Mangold
Cory Finley ( playwright)
Lisa Joy Nolan

All directors cum writers!

Jo

[jo]

The changing dynamics of filmmaking and its participants!
www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/behind-martin-scorseses-killers-flower-moon-apple-deal-1296394

[jo]

Executive reshuffle - Emma Watts to join Paramount Pictures ( headed by Jim Gianopulos) as Motion Pictures Group as President after leaving Disney within less than a year of the merger with Fox.

Jul 1, 2020 9:07:41 GMT -5 jo said:

The Fox Exec who oversaw the production project of LOGAN (among other hits including The Greatest Showman), Emma Watts has now joined PARAMOUNT PICTURES as President for the Motion Picture Group, reporting to her former boss at Fox and now Paramount Chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos.

deadline.com/2020/06/emma-watts-named-president-motion-picture-group-at-paramount-1202974374/

She left Disney after staying for less than a year after the merger with Fox.


Hope Jim and Emma will have chance to work with Hugh Jackman once again!

[jo]

May not be very good news for indies distributors, with the expiry of the so-called Paramount Consent Decrees.

Studios or media companies may now buy movie theaters, which could not be friendly to indies, as they might use them simply for their own releases.


www.slashfilm.com/paramount-consent-decrees/

[jo]

Reorganizing the new media conglomerates ( which includes the film and TV business) in the age of direct-to-consumer and streaming operations, accelerated by the pandemic.

Disney, NBC/Univeral, Warner Media --


www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/behind-hollywoods-executive-ousters-great-reckoning-now-1306967


Also, with the passing of Sumner Redstone of the other media conglomerate( which include Paramount), will we also see major organizational changes there?


Jo

[jo]

The new reality --

film studios and theatrical runs may no longer be "the king of the hill"!

www.indiewire.com/2020/08/hollywood-movies-no-longer-king-1234579572/



Maybe what happened to Bad Education is a sign of the times?

If many movies no longer look at theatrical runs ( reserved for tentpoles only) --

maybe the AMPAS should now rethink their position ---

A movie is a movie, wherever it is seen!


They should not allow the Television Academy ( EMMYs) to lay claim to creative products which are the results of true filmmaking objectives and production!

They should not allow the real movies to be mixed up with TV shows. TV is simply a medium. If the AMPAS includes all kinds of movies ( defined by them in terms of filmmaking standards and not by manner of distribution), then the motion picture will retain its artistic significance!

The pandemic is a call to realign to many realities ( not necessarily because of the limitations of theatrical viewing NOW) ... but the reality that consumers have now moved towards strong behavioral patterns... on what and how to consume entertainment! Maybe it has been a long time coming...but the pandemic simply accelerated the process.

If the next Oscars is nothing but an empty ceremony -- the AMPAS has a major hurdle to overcome -- their own way of thinking of how movies should be appreciated by the public!


Jo

[jo]

What on earth is the AMPAS doing??

This is the MOST ridiculous direction the AMPAS is going! It is going mad! They are forcing artistic recognition even if not deserved!

deadline.com/2020/09/academy-shakes-oscar-best-picture-eligibility-1234573172/#comments



If I were some of the influential content producers -- I will band up together, withdraw from the AMPAS, and set up their own artistic awards standards, not social justice standards.

Jo

[jo]

deadline.com/2020/09/oscar-best-picture-shakeup-criticism-academy-heads-1234573760/comment-page-1/#comments

Ha - the comments continue to pour in, rebutting what Jim G is saying trying to justify their actions!

They say they consulted everyone --

except the most important member of this circus --- the moviegoer himself!

Jo

[jo]

From Reddit --

Penske Media Corp., which publishes Variety, is merging with MRC to form a new company to be called PMRC. The deal, effective immediately, gives PMC CEO Jay Penske control of the trade titles, which is largest part of the operation. MRC, run by co-CEOs Asif Satchu and Modi Wiczyk, will control a slice of the company that operates a TV and movie production studio.

“It’s the end of an era,” one media source said of the tie-up.

The new PMRC will operate PMC’s Variety, Rolling Stone and Music Business Worldwide and combine it with MRC’s The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe. PMRC’s day-to-day operations will be led by PMC, whose other brands include Deadline, WWD, SHE Media, Sportico and Robb Report.

What happens to critics's work? Will it now be a unified critic review for Variety/ Hollywood Reporter/Rolling Stone/Deadline ?


Jo

[jo]

Gazing into the future of the movie business and movie thaters --

deadline.com/2020/10/brian-grazer-ron-howard-covid-19-hollywood-tom-cruise-mask-1234600942/#comments

Brian Grazer And Ron Howard: Movie Theaters Will Turn Into Broadway — And Don’t Expect Tom Cruise To Wear A Mask Onscreen
By Dade Hayes

Dade Hayes
Finance Editor


Brian Grazer And Ron Howard: Movie Theaters Will Turn Into Broadway — And Don’t Expect Tom Cruise To Wear A Mask Onscreen
VIEW ALL
October 20, 2020 6:28pm

Imagine Entertainment partners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer expect COVID-19 to have an impact on Hollywood for some time to come — just not necessarily on screen.

“This period of our lives will not be in the history of film,” Grazer declared during the duo’s virtual appearance at the Wall Street Journal‘s Tech Live conference. “You’re not going to see an action movie with Tom Cruise and he’s wearing a mask.” For writers and filmmakers, the pandemic “will be a period that doesn’t really exist.”

Turning to business fundamentals, Grazer said, “it probably does accelerate viewer trending” toward streaming and other home viewing. (Grazer and Howard have embraced that shift already and plugged their forthcoming Netflix film, Hillbilly Elegy, during the session.)



“On the other hand, movies and cinemas should be restored,” he continued. “When that happens, I don’t know, but it’s singularly one of the greatest art forms of the 20th century. For audiences, for people to go into a theater without a political agenda and experience something this emotional and have that emotion be ignited with a group is a magnifier. And there’s no other replacement for it.”

Howard agreed and said of theatrical moviegoing, “I don’t think it’s going to evaporate.” Even so, he added, it will look a lot different on the other side. “The multiplexes are going to become a little bit like Broadway in a way,” Howard said. “That’s where the expensive projects go. It’s to get as many people in there to create memorable events.”

While that’s a natural environment for family fare, horror and comedy, Howard said, “there’s also going to be a place for dramas playing out on big screens, more sophisticated fare for perhaps older audiences. The exhibitors are going to find that price point” where the economics can work.

More than just movies will play in multiplexes, Howard predicted. TV premieres and other series fare will likely pop up more than ever in big-screen environments.

“We’ve already seen trends toward home entertainment. I feel it in my own viewing habit,” Howard said. “But I also think that the content you will see on those screens might change. The lines between what’s a movie and what’s a television show are blurring anyway. But I think that theaters and distributors and platforms are going to be looking to offering audiences those kinds of shared experiences, which build fan bases.”

[jo]

Will this be a temporary shift or does this augur for the future of theatrical distributions?



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

[jo]

deadline.com/2020/12/hbo-max-warner-bros-theatrical-slate-cinemark-response-1234649848/#comments

[jo]

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]

A thoughtful comment from Variety's Owen Gleiberman on the future of movies for streaming --


variety.com/2020/film/news/why-an-all-streaming-movie-world-wont-look-like-you-think-it-will-column-1234847237/#article-comments


Excerpts --

That future, as of now, is still unwritten. And it’s quite possible that even “Matrix 4” and “Dune” opening on streaming services will turn out to be a fabulous anomaly. It’s bound to boost HBO Max subscriptions to the max, so many will be crowing about that, and for the I-prefer-movies-at-home crowd it will surely prove to be a popcorn bonanza.

Yet I have some news for them. If they think this is a preview of the future, they are, in all likelihood, sadly mistaken. Why? Because the all-streaming-all-the-time future isn’t going to happen? No, it may well happen. The reason it’s not going to happen the way they think it’s going to happen is that if the movie theater experience, as a cultural force, winds up withering on the vine, then it’s likely that movies as we’ve known them will also wither on the vine. Pauline Kael said it best in the ’70s, when she was writing — witheringly — about the phenomenon of TV-movies. She said that what you make for television isn’t a movie. What you make for television is a TV show.


What the home-viewing disciples don’t want to consider is that when they revel in the virtues of their home movie experience — the comfort! the 70-inch screen! the lack of pesky people making noise! the beer breaks! — they’re having their cake and eating it too. Right now, they’re the supreme beneficiaries of having the best of both worlds: big-scale, swing-for-the-fences movies and the cushy at-home venue in which to experience them. This year, the sense of a brave new world of entertainment in your living room has steadily gathered steam, from the release of “Trolls World Tour” to “The King of Staten Island” to “Greyhound,” not to mention the deluge of exciting independent releases that have opened exclusively on streaming. It will culminate this Christmas with the simultaneous in-theaters-and-on-HBO-Max release of “Wonder Woman 1984” — which became the prototype for Warners’ apple-cart-toppling 2021 master plan.

But imagine, for a moment, that that prototype leads to a new normal. It’s several years down the line, and we’re in the middle of the streaming future. Theaters are becoming a marginal experience (a lure for nostalgic fuddy-duddies like myself), and movies now premiere in the place that most people want to see them: at home! Well, guess what? You’re not going to be seeing movies like “The Matrix 4,” “Dune,” or “Wonder Woman 1984.” I mean, you might be seeing some version of those movies, but it’s not going to be like the version that would have been made for the big screen. It doesn’t need to be — and it wouldn’t justify the budget. Lavishly scaled entertainments like that are based, economically, on a grand scale of viewing (i.e., millions of people around the world paying to see them in theaters). That’s why they cost as much to market as they do to make. You can call that expenditure decadent, but in good movies the money is on the screen. And good movies swing for the fences.

Movies made for the at-home experience swing for…fences that are a lot closer. Besides, in the age of peak TV, when many good series strive, more than they did before, for a cinematic aesthetic, what’s going to distinguish the new made-for-the-small-screen movies from television, except for the running time? You could be cynical and declare that not all that much distinguishes movies now except for the fact that people actually see them in theaters. And, of course, Netflix makes a big show of treating a few of its movies each year — “Mank,” “Da 5 Bloods,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7” — as old-school paragons of extravagant artistry. I don’t begrudge that. The existence of any good movie is to be celebrated.



But what I can’t escape is the suspicion, borne out by the vast majority of Netflix product, that movies made for the small screen have a smaller-scale vision. I say this not to bash Netflix, but because Netflix is already showing us what the future looks like. I say it because it’s like a law of physics. The largeness of movies (popcorn and art and everything in between) is an intrinsic part of what has made them cinema. And great movies have always had a larger-than-life quality. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it. You’re going to be seeing it a lot less if it’s streaming only

[jo]

Christopher Nolan is very angry with the decision of Warner Media to push aside the future and longevity of the theatrical experience to suit its longterm goal of pushing its streaming service.

www.joblo.com/movie-news/christopher-nolan-warner-bros-hbo-max-reaction

variety.com/2020/film/news/christopher-nolan-blasts-warner-bros-hbo-max-deal-1234848212/

[jo]

There might a legal challenge from the major producer of 2 of the blockbuster movies in the WarnerBros slate --


www.darkhorizons.com/legendary-may-stop-dune-on-hbo-max/

[jo]

Dec 7, 2020 21:23:09 GMT -5 jo said:

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]

On the other hand, this is the seemingly more subservient viewpoint from Deadline


deadline.com/2020/12/warnermedia-legendary-challenge-dune-godzilla-vs-kong-streamer-battles-looming-1234651283/

[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]

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]

Variety editor and critics weigh in on the implications of the WarnerMedia policy --

Dec 9, 2020 3:35pm PT
What Warner Bros.’ Streaming Strategy Means for Netflix and Movie Theaters: A Dialogue
By Brent Lang, Owen Gleiberman, Peter Debruge
Dune
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Movie theaters have been brought low by coronavirus and even the promise of a vaccine may not be enough to rescue them from financial ruin. With film studios putting upcoming blockbusters like “Wonder Woman: 1984,” “Dune” and “Soul” on streaming services and major exhibitors teetering on the edge of insolvency, will the big screen experience be able to outlast the pandemic? Brent Lang, Variety’s executive editor of film and media, and its two chief film critics, Peter Debruge and Owen Gleiberman, discuss what the HBO Max news means for the theatrical landscape and whether movie theaters are an endangered species.

Owen Gleiberman: The arrival of a COVID vaccine offers the first concrete hope that we may, relatively soon, be glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic. So what does that mean for movies, and for the battered landscape of movie theaters? Pretend it’s three years from now. The pandemic is behind us. Will going out to a movie look and feel the way it did in 2019, before all of this started? Will movie theaters occupy the same place in the industry? If not, how will it be different?



Brent Lang: I hope and pray there will still be movie theaters in three years. I know that I personally cannot wait to put COVID behind me and reemerge from my tiny apartment to visit my neighborhood theater (shout out to Cobble Hill Cinemas!). But I do worry that when that comes to pass studios will have moved with so much momentum towards their streaming future that they won’t be devoting the same kind of resources to making movies for the big screen. Warner Bros seemed to be mapping out that kind of “evolution” last week when it opted to release its entire 2021 slate on HBO Max at the same time the movies will open in whatever theaters are still open. What’s interesting is that many of the films, such as “The Suicide Squad” and “Dune,” are slated to be released in the summer or fall, past the point where medical experts have suggested a vaccine will be readily available. That’s not exactly a sign that the studio thinks theaters will come back strong.

Then there’s the financial part of the equation. That slate represents more than $1 billion in production spending spread across 17 movies – a massively expensive gamble and a move that will leave other studios, particularly those that have in-house streaming services, scrambling to counter by thrusting blockbusters out of the theatrical marketplace and into the digital arena in the hopes of feeding the binge-watching beast. What does that mean for Hollywood? The old totems of success, Oscars and box office grosses, may fade in favor of new signposts of financial favor. Don’t be surprised if agents, directors and producers start getting a lot better versed in subscriber churns rates and get a lot less animated about awards season or next year’s Sundance. If you look at the way that WarnerMedia, Disney and Universal/Comcast have reorganized their executive teams in recent months, it’s with a clear eye towards augmenting their streaming offerings and with a knowledge that the movie business is going to be a less important component of their bottom lines. That may be inevitable, but as someone who lives for cinema (I have almost a Pavlovian response to the smell of popcorn), I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t make me sad and worried about an art form I love.


Peter Debruge: I’d be lying if I said I loved the direction Hollywood was heading prior to the pandemic. Just look at all the “big titles” that have been postponed or pushed to streaming this year: a handful of superhero tentpoles from DC and Marvel, a couple live-action remakes of classic Disney cartoons, and more sequels than you can count, from “A Quiet Place” to “No Time to Die.” I enjoy seeing spectacular films on the big screen, surrounded by audiences and the smell of popcorn (even if I never partake of the stuff), but I miss the more modestly budgeted story- and character-driven movies — an area where the streamers had already stepped in to fill the void. The business had already reoriented around a “too big to fail” budget model, when the pandemic came along and eliminated the option of packing 3,000-plus screens to capacity, forcing everyone to consider collapsing release windows.

The big unknown through all of this has been the length of the pandemic, and the longer it drags on, the deeper the transformation to our moviegoing habits will be. Frankly, I’m astonished — but also encouraged — that the vaccine has come this fast. (Warp speed, indeed!) To your question, Owen, I believe that audiences are ready and willing to come back as soon as it’s safe. Just look at how they’re still crowding into restaurants and stores amid spiking test results. Old habits die hard, and this industry has withstood other challenges, like war and seven “Police Academy” movies. However, there was a huge segment of the market that had been priced out by ticket costs or who simply preferred the convenience of watching at home. Before the pandemic, they had no leverage to influence the industry’s release plans, but now, the industry is scrambling to give them what they’ve been asking for all along. “Dune,” “The Matrix 4” and the “Avatar” sequels will always look better on a big screen, and audiences will still be able to see them that way — but now, it’s not their only option, even if it’s the one I prefer.

OG: Let me float a radical theory. I think the model that Warner Bros. has just come up with — smashing the window to smithereens, opening the biggest blockbusters day-and-date — doesn’t have a prayer of working in the long run. It does make a kind of sense during the pandemic, when the number of movie theaters in operation is quite limited. Essentially, Warners is saying that in 2021, they’re going to open their big films on HBO Max, period. The sprinkling of theaters those movies will also play at amounts to a theoretical value added. Basically, these films are heading straight for the home screen, just as “Trolls World Tour” and “The King of Staten Island” did.

Yet once the pandemic is over, opening movies on streaming services and in theaters simultaneously makes no sense. Even winnowing down the window to, say, two weeks makes no sense. It’s what the exhibitors have argued all along: If you do that, you’re going to kill your theatrical revenues. Right now, it’s almost hip to say that theatrical is on the way out, and that streaming is the new king. But theatrical is kind of like print media: It’s supposed to be a dinosaur, but it’s still where the major money gets made. Once the pandemic is over, I think theatrical is going to get a burst of life — a shot in the arm, if you will, from the millions of folks who are tired of staying at home. And if I’m right about that, does the industry want to encourage those people to go out to the movies? Or does it want to discourage them? The latter option strikes me as bizarrely self-destructive. It strikes me as killing the golden goose (even if that goose is, admittedly, getting on a bit in years). And that’s what the Warners day-and-date model does. It kills theatrical — makes it irrelevant. I’m not sure that’s really been thought through.

BL: Owen, you raise a good point. It’s not just that Warner Bros. Is forgoing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales, they are also jeopardizing what is known in industry parlance as “downstream revenues.” That’s the money you earn from licensing movies to broadcast television and cable channels, as well as renting and selling the movies to fans (the latter a declining source of profits post-DVD boom). That means that “Dune” or “The Suicide Squad” has to make up that lost revenue by adding subscribers, which is harder to measure and, thus, monetize. Plus, a lot of these streaming services — Apple, HBO Max, and Disney Plus — have artificially bolstered their subscriber numbers by offering free trials. When people are asked to pay for their HBO Max subscription, it may take a whole lot more than the prospect of watching “The Many Saints of Newark” to get them to share their credit card info, especially if the economy continues to teeter, impacting discretionary spending all over the place.


So, in the long run, I think you’re right, Owen. This era of streaming blockbusters isn’t sustainable. In the short term, I worry about something that Peter alluded to when he talked about the gap Netflix has filled in the movie business by making films from directors like Spike Lee (“Da 5 Bloods”) or Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma”) that studios deem as too risky or “too small to succeed.” Can Netflix continue to be the home of auteurs when HBO Max and Disney Plus are offering up populist fare? Owen, we both loved “Mank,” but I noticed that David Fincher’s masterful look at Hollywood history didn’t even crack the top 10 most streamed films on Netflix last weekend. That’s a lot of money to shell out for a movie that’s more admired than watched. My guess is that Ted Sarandos exerts more energy getting another sequel to “The Kissing Booth” or a follow-up to “Extraction” into production than he does listening to pitches from Noah Baumbach.

PD: The irony of the Netflix situation is that the company is still doing theatrical-first releases of prestige titles like “Hillbilly Elegy” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” whereas Disney and Warner Bros. have pulled the plug on those plans and gone streaming-only with “Soul” and “Wonder Woman 1984,” respectively. This has less to do with Netflix’s professed love of movies (it shows how little Netflix understands its subscriber base that it would banish 1930s-era classics from the service, but back an expensive black-and-white drama about the writing of “Citizen Kane”) than its desire to compete at the Oscars. This year, the Academy bent its rules to allow streaming releases, but only those that already had a theatrical plan in place. I’m pretty sure that Netflix and Amazon, which stand to clean up at the Oscars this year, are only playing theaters because they don’t want to be disqualified, whereas studios are throwing their exhibitor relationships under the bus to keep the ship afloat.

I admire the distributors with the fortitude to wait this out, such as Searchlight Pictures and A24, which have pushed most of their slates — from “Antlers” to “Zola” — indefinitely into the future because they believe in the big-screen experience. But there are a hundred outdated aspects of seeing movies in theaters that continue to frustrate, like the fact that if you don’t live in New York or Los Angeles, you typically have to wait weeks or months until films from those distributors reach your local art house. Subscription-based streamers and VOD options make the films available to audiences no matter where they live, turning specialty titles into wide releases. I continue to believe that the theatrical experience can and must change. For example, admission prices will probably go way, way up or way, way down. Pre-pandemic, the MoviePass phenomenon showed that many people would be going to theaters far more if they could afford it. But the answer may actually be to swing in the opposite direction, turning cinemas into a luxury experience for those willing to pay a premium.

OG: I think you’re right, Peter, that the theater experience needs to evolve. But I if it turns into a luxury item, and going to the movies comes to be thought of as a boutique event, then that, to me, will just be a fancy way of movies dying on the vine. For 100 years, the cinema has been a popular medium, and that has been its lifeblood. Going forward, I think the industry needs to heed the criticisms and think in terms of making the theater experience friendlier, more accessible, and maybe less expensive, in the way that the MoviePass moment indicated. I don’t want to come off as a nostalgic dweeb, but years ago movie theaters were thought of as palaces. People relished the chance to go to them. I don’t think that hunger has vanished. So here’s a question: Could that feeling come back? In the next 10 years, is it possible that we could see the movie-theater experience not destroyed but rejuvenated and redeemed? Stranger things have happened.

[jo]

One of the 2 top agencies, CAA ( the other is WME), has sent its strong reply to WarnerMedia --


deadline.com/2020/12/caa-richard-lovett-rebuke-warnermedia-jason-kilar-hbo-max-deal-blindside-unacceptable-to-caa-clients-1234654147/#comments

His reply is


Will WME send a similar reply to WarnerMedia?


Just wondering - after 2021, where will HBO-MAX get its fresh new content ??


Jo

[jo]

Denis Villeneuve makes a public statement - a reaction to what WarnerMedia and WarnerBros have done!

Dec 10, 2020 5:00pm PT
‘Dune’ Director Denis Villeneuve Blasts HBO Max Deal (EXCLUSIVE)

By Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve Fights Back HBO Max


I learned in the news that Warner Bros. has decided to release “Dune” on HBO Max at the same time as our theatrical release, using prominent images from our movie to promote their streaming service. With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history. There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion. Therefore, even though “Dune” is about cinema and audiences, AT&T is about its own survival on Wall Street. With HBO Max’s launch a failure thus far, AT&T decided to sacrifice Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate in a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.


Warner Bros.’ sudden reversal from being a legacy home for filmmakers to the new era of complete disregard draws a clear line for me. Filmmaking is a collaboration, reliant on the mutual trust of team work and Warner Bros. has declared they are no longer on the same team.


Streaming services are a positive and powerful addition to the movie and TV ecosystems. But I want the audience to understand that streaming alone can’t sustain the film industry as we knew it before COVID. Streaming can produce great content, but not movies of “Dune’s” scope and scale. Warner Bros.’ decision means “Dune” won’t have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph. Warner Bros. might just have killed the “Dune” franchise. This one is for the fans. AT&T’s John Stankey said that the streaming horse left the barn. In truth, the horse left the barn for the slaughterhouse.

Public safety comes first. Nobody argues with that. Which is why when it became apparent the winter would bring a second wave of the pandemic, I understood and supported the decision to delay “Dune’s” opening by almost a year. The plan was that “Dune” would open in theaters in October 2021, when vaccinations will be advanced and, hopefully, the virus behind us. Science tells us that everything should be back to a new normal next fall.

“Dune” is by far the best movie I’ve ever made. My team and I devoted more than three years of our lives to make it a unique big screen experience. Our movie’s image and sound were meticulously designed to be seen in theaters.

I’m speaking on my own behalf, though I stand in solidarity with the sixteen other filmmakers who now face the same fate. Please know I am with you and that together we are strong. The artists are the ones who create movies and series.

I strongly believe the future of cinema will be on the big screen, no matter what any Wall Street dilettante says. Since the dawn of time, humans have deeply needed communal storytelling experiences. Cinema on the big screen is more than a business, it is an art form that brings people together, celebrating humanity, enhancing our empathy for one another — it’s one of the very last artistic, in-person collective experiences we share as human beings.


Once the pandemic is over, theaters will be filled again with film lovers.

That is my strong belief. Not because the movie industry needs it, but because we humans need cinema, as a collective experience.

So, just as I have both a fiduciary and creative responsibility to fulfill as the filmmaker, I call on AT&T to act swiftly with the same responsibility, respect and regard to protect this vital cultural medium. Economic impact to stakeholders is only one aspect of corporate social responsibility. Finding ways to enhance culture is another. The moviegoing experience is like no other. In those darkened theaters films capture our history, educate us, fuel our imagination and lift and inspire our collective spirit. It is our legacy.

Long live theatrical cinema!

— Denis Villeneuve

[jo]

deadline.com/2020/12/wme-patrick-whitesell-warnermedia-hbo-max-move-blatant-attempt-to-self-deal-use-our-clients-work-to-build-their-hbo-max-streaming-service-1234655268/

Endeavor’s Patrick Whitesell On WarnerMedia: ‘Blatant Attempt To Self-Deal And Use Our Clients Work To Build Their HBO Max Streaming Service’

By Mike Fleming Jr

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


December 11, 2020 1:23pm


EXCLUSIVE: Endeavor Executive Chairman Patrick Whitesell today updated the agents at WME on how egregious he felt last week’s blindside by WarnerMedia was, when the studio announced that Warner Bros’ entire 2021 slate would play HBO Max as the films open in theaters. Here is the note Whitesell sent to staff. The agency is heavily invested in the 2021 WB slate. Aside from repping Tenet’s Christopher Nolan, WME reps Gal Gadot on Wonder Woman 1984, The Little Things‘ stars Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto, Reminiscence‘s Hugh Jackman and Lisa Joy, as well as Millie Bobby Brown in Godzilla Vs Kong, and Lin-Manuel Miranda on In The Heights, among others. This adds to the chorus of ire between talent advocates and the studio/streamer.

From: Patrick Whitesell
Date: Friday, December 11, 2020 at 12:56 PM
To: WME Agents
Subject: Important Update Regarding Warner Bros./HBO Max Negotiations


I’m writing to everyone today to provide an update on where we are with our negotiations with Warner Bros. As I made clear to the Motion Picture group last week and will reiterate now: WME rejects their unilateral decision out of hand.

When Warner Bros. called us to inform us that they were going to announce their decision to simultaneously release movies in theaters and on HBO Max last Thursday, we immediately told them that we are disappointed with this decision, and quickly gathered the Motion Picture group for a call. Since then, we have engaged in follow up discussions with the highest levels at Warner Bros. and we are setting up a meeting today to work toward reaching a solution that protects the creative and economic interests of our clients.

We have already been at work on the movie “The Little Things” – the first film on Warner Bros. release schedule and one that includes multiple WME clients. We have the most business with Warner Bros. out of any of the agencies and we are aggressively working to ensure that our clients are protected.

As I stated last week and will reiterate here:

Warner Bros. announced a strategy across an entire slate of 2021 movies without consulting with their partners (our clients), not only disregarding our clients’ feelings about the strategy but in many cases constituting a contractual violation.

This is a blatant attempt to self-deal and use our clients work to build their HBO Max streaming service, which our clients have no financial interest in.

The simultaneous release on HBO Max will cannibalize the domestic box office and torpedo the traditional waterfall of economics that make movies profitable in the near and long-term for the studio and for our clients (a point our client Chris Nolan very articulately made this week: “Long-term, I think all of the studios know that the movie theater experience will bounce back and be a very important part of the ecosystem long-term. What you have right now in our business is a lot of the use of the pandemic as an excuse for sort of grappling for short-term advantage. And it’s really unfortunate. It’s not the way to do business and it’s not the best thing for the health of our industry”).

In the current environment with COVID, studios by and large have been delaying releases, or with clients’ consent and inclusion in the process, selling the movies to streaming platforms. But what Warner Bros. has decided to do is push forward with a theatrical release in the darkest days of COVID. At a time where our own government leaders are telling us to stay home and away from loved ones, Warner Bros. is doubling down on ensuring box office failure and even worse, putting movie-goers who want to see a movie in a theater at risk.


This decision is even more baffling and egregious knowing that a vaccine is here, eventually putting an end to the incredibly challenging storm we have all been living through the past nine months.

Moreover, we don’t see this decision as a lifeline to the exhibitors or a way of supporting the existing business. Rather, we see this as a purely opportunistic attempt to re-write the rules of windowing to WarnerMedia’s favor, while the theater owners themselves have been brought to their knees due to COVID.

Given that every movie is unique in how it is financially put together for our artists, and given that inside each movie there are unique characteristics from artist to artist, we will not accept a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Lastly, we take seriously the notion that moving our clients’ work to the HBO Max platform is effectively a free advertisement for HBO Max and we expect and will negotiate that consideration for our clients.
Again, these are all the points that we made last week and have been reinforcing since then. Going forward, we will engage with Warner Bros. on a movie by movie basis, and we will not stop until our clients’ creative and financial needs are satisfied.

Obviously, there is a lot of press attention around this—especially with public statements from other agencies and prominent artists—but we have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients to do our negotiating work in the confidential manner we always do to protect our clients’ privacy and interests.

We will continue to keep you informed as our negotiations progress. Please feel free to share this letter or use the content as talking points with your clients.

Thanks,

Patrick