Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

There has been a lot going on in the movie industry as of late and it is no surprise that things are getting more complicated as time seems to keep ticking on. The movie industry has been abuzz quite a bit lately, especially with more news coming out constantly these past few weeks which confirms some 2021 plans for certain movies. As far as this year goes, we are rounding it out and things aren’t necessarily going to get better before the year ends. Meaning that we will still have very few movies actually releasing to the public before the year is rounded out and this is solely because of the movie theater situation. While it may have been going on for quite a while at this point the situation with movie theaters is finally starting to come to a head before the new year begins.

Movie theaters were easily shut down by governments everywhere the moment the pandemic began and new movies were not going to be released any time soon after that. Movies that were in theaters had to end up being released digitally to the public regardless of how long those movies ended up being shown on the big screen. What we saw was a lengthy period of time which followed where no one knew exactly what was going to happen within the industry, or the world for that matter. In the end there was just a long period of nothingness happening where people were just sitting around waiting for any kind of news as to what may be happening in the near future. Needless to say, there was a long wait of at least a couple of months before public places were able to start opening once again.

When the pandemic first got its start in March of earlier this year, no one was sure of what was going to end up happening with the businesses that they would often frequent as many were shut down. To be a bit more specific, no one knew what was going to end up happening with businesses that were deemed to be non-essential at the start of the pandemic. Grocery stores and other stores which sold household necessities were among the stores that were deemed essential and therefore they were able to remain open to the public. Most other types of businesses were not deemed as such, and therefore, they could not open up once again until the government deemed it an appropriate time to reopen. Even before businesses were able to once again start reopening, there were a lot of rules which made it harder for stores to open.

When the pandemic began, emergency protocols were put into place as a means of allowing essential businesses to stay open because people still needed everyday supplies. As a result, the constantly seen social distancing, face masks, and hand washing became a huge part of stores being able to once again open to the public. At the time, this meant essential businesses would be able to reopen without any real kind of issues getting in their way but they would have to deal with limited capacity. Obviously this wasn’t much of an issue because people were staying home and not taking any chances by going out anywhere. Eventually though, people started getting tired of sitting around in the house and they wanted to go out again.

The issue with people wanting to once again go out to different places was based solely upon the fact that there was nowhere to go and stores had to make sure they were still adhering to the lowered capacity rule. This rule is a direct impact from the social distancing rule because a minimum amount of space needs to be given between people otherwise the rule would be violated. This rule has easily become one of the most important rules that people have had to follow over the past almost 9 months and there are plenty of times where it has been violated. However, most businesses have been pretty good about listening to the rules and they have still managed to keep going despite all of the new rules in place they have had to follow.

It is because of people not following the rules that we have now reached the point that a second wave of the virus has started to reek havoc on the world. Fortunately, there is a vaccine that is going to be distributed to various nations within the next few weeks and this may be the answer that many people have been hoping for. Unfortunately however, there are still far too many unknown variables with the distribution of the vaccine which include a number of issues we could see playing out in the near future. This is uncharted territory with a novel virus and so it is unknown just how effective the vaccine will be or if it will even end up working at all for most people. The best that the world can possibly hope for right now is that this is the answer and that the vaccine works the same way for everyone, but this is highly unlikely to happen.

People are naturally very different from one another which is how we end up with so many arguments, and this means that the vaccine could have a different effect in some people as opposed to others. Since this is obviously a bad thing, because it can cause even more issues down the line, we will still be waiting a while before things can properly start to function again. In the meantime, we have the limitations that are in place which allow many businesses to even be open at all and people should continue to follow these rules as we move forward even if there is a vaccine. At least, they should keep following the rules until we are confirmed to no longer be in a pandemic. Considering that this is the first pandemic of the modern age, it is no surprise that things would continue to be hectic as time goes on and it will no doubt affect everyone differently moving forward.

The effects of the pandemic could be seen almost as quickly as the pandemic began in the way that non-essential businesses were handled and how they could reopen. Over the course of the first couple of months after the pandemic began, people started to get anxious for a number of reasons and the main reason for this stemmed from being stuck inside all of the time with little to do. Since this became a huge point of contention for some people, and governments realized that their economies were taking a massive cliff dive, they started planning the reopening of some businesses. The way that these reopenings would go on to work was that they would slowly start reopening certain businesses that had been deemed non-essential early on. After they opened these businesses where people would have little contact with others, they would begin working on opening bigger businesses.

The plans to reopen the various businesses over time was not just limited to businesses but all public places as a whole and this helped assuage peoples’ anxiety. Knowing that they had at least some kind of opportunity to get out of the house, people started going out more while still listening to the rules they had been given. In order for businesses to open and stay open, they had to follow the same rules that were given out at the start of the pandemic. To no one’s surprise this would be the case permanently for all businesses as more and more of them began opening to the public once again. Then, the complaints started rolling in and people stopped listening to the rules properly, which led to a large surge in new virus cases which once again threatened to shut down various businesses.

Although many businesses did not end up shutting down, they still ended up being affected by this surge in cases in some way, shape, or form. Many businesses that were deemed higher risk were not seeing the same number of customers they had seen after reopening and they had to do their best to get people to come back in. High risk locations ended up being the focal point for a lot of scrutiny from the public as most people believed that they should not have opened to begin with. As previously noted, businesses were reopened by order of which ones were the lowest risk to those with the highest risk. Obviously the ones that were higher risk for causing the infection to spread were the ones that ended up opening the latest, if at all. In some places like California there were businesses that were not able to reopen at all due to the risk they posed.

The biggest example of a business that was trying to open in July but wasn’t able to was Disneyland in Anaheim, California because of the heavy restrictions in place. This was pretty warranted though as California was one of the states with some of the worst numbers in terms of how many new cases they ended up getting on a regular basis. The far reaching effects of not being able to open are now being seen by the public because Disney has revealed that they have had to lay off over 28,000 employees from their Parks, Experiences, and Products divisions. Just a couple of months later they announced that they are going to be laying off 4,000 more for a total of 32,000 people within the first few months of next year. This was just one industry that had been affected in one place which has managed to create such a huge effect in the end.

The film industry has easily been among one of the more interesting ones to follow as of late because of everything that is currently going on right now. First of all, movies theaters were listed as being one of the types of business that is high risk for causing the rate of infection to start going through the roof. As such, they were easily among the last businesses to even be allowed to open their doors up once again and this definitely took some time before it was possible. Even if certain places allowed theaters to reopen , movie theater chains did not want to open if they could not do so everywhere simultaneously. Since they did not want to open their locations, studios did not want to send out their films to be shown and kept shuffling around their release dates.

When the pandemic first began, studios immediately shifted all of their release dates for the following few months into either late this year, or some time next year. After that move was made, many studios eagerly awaited the moment where things would calm down enough for movie theaters to once again open in as many locations as possible. Eventually, pretty much every location was eventually allowed to reopen and knowing that people really wanted to go out and do things made them hopeful that they would be able to draw people in. Unfortunately, they did not want to open without movies and studios did not want to send movies out unless theaters were open, so this dance became an issue that needed to be overcome somehow. AMC theaters actually stepped up and announced their official reopening in as many locations as possible for the middle of August and other theaters followed suit.

After theaters were finally able to open their doors up once again they ran into yet another problem which was the fact that they could not actually get anyone to come out to see any movies. There were a couple of films which launched just after theaters reopened with very little success, but theaters knew that a blockbuster would be just the thing they needed to try and draw people back. Luckily for them, they had just the movie with the upcoming movie ‘Tenet‘ which was set to release just a couple of weeks after they reopened by Warner Bros.. The movie was an absolute enigma of a film which was directed by acclaimed director Christopher Nolan who wanted his film to get out there as soon as possible. So Warner decided to humor him and also test the market by releasing the film at the end of August internationally and the beginning of September domestically.

What would follow this is nothing short of a tragedy for the film industry as, although the movie did fairly well on its opening weekends, it started tanking after just a few weeks. It wasn’t really the movie’s fault because it was just the fact that the number of people who really wanted to see the film died down after the initial weeks. Normally people would go to the movies to hang out and waste some time seeing new films, but over the months theaters were closed, streaming and digital releases became extremely convenient for people. This convenience led many to the path of least resistance which involved no risk and they would rather wait for films to release digitally rather than put their health at risk. Needless to say, studios saw this and, realizing that the market for theaters is in a terrible state at the moment, they pushed back most of their upcoming releases into some time next year.

The decision to push back films into next year isn’t exactly the best choice, but it is likely to be the one that ends up helping both studios and theaters, if theaters can last that long. This push to make most of their biggest films available some time next year rather than trying to make them work in theaters now caused Christopher Nolan to say that studios are making the wrong decisions based on what happened to ‘Tenet.’ He recognized the fact that ‘Tenet’ did not do well do to the way the world is right now and that it would not be easy to get theaters back up on their feet. Nolan is known for advocating hard that movies should be shown in theaters as it is the best possible way for someone to watch a new movie and he is passionate about the movie-going experience in general. He believes that studios should be looking for solutions rather than trying to wait out the pandemic so they can make the most money possible.

It would appear, as of late, that Warner Bros. is not really willing to take many chances anymore though as they have already dealt with a loss caused by the fact that ‘Tenet’ needed to make a fortune just to break even before tallying marketing costs. In an effort to try and combat the loss of money since they released ‘Tenet,’ they have been trying to come up with a proper way of actually releasing their movies going into the next year. Obviously the pandemic will affect theaters both during and after it is over and this is a fact that has been taken into account by many studios at this point. They are hoping that theaters will start being successful again in the not too distant future with the vaccine rolling out, but there are no guarantees and they aren’t willing to take the risk. Warner recently announced that they will be releasing all of their 2021 films simultaneously on both their streaming service HBO Max and in theaters.

Needless to say, people were shocked once they found out about this plan and many were left wondering exactly how that will end up playing out. It isn’t a surprise to any one anymore that movies can release straight to digital as it has been a means for companies to get revenue during the pandemic while possibly losing out on potential future revenue from theaters. In an effort to help theaters, a couple of movies lately have been releasing to theaters to try and drive some kind of traffic their way and they aren’t really losing out on anything this way either. They have been given the opportunity to make some extra money in and for theaters and then they can just release their films digitally 17 days later. This comes from a landmark deal offered by AMC since they were kind of in a bad situation anyway so that they could at least try to make some money. The way it goes is that theaters would get new movies for 17 days exclusively and then after the 17 days anyone would be able to purchase the film from a digital platform.

Warner, having their own streaming service, works a bit differently as they already have a platform set up for them to be able to launch new releases. They have been trying to drive traffic to their streaming service for quite some time since its launch in late May earlier this year and so new blockbusters being available on their service seemed like the best way to get more subscribers. This did not sit well with some people, namely Christopher Nolan who works regularly for the studio because he thinks that this method of releasing movies is going to completely degrade the industry as a whole. We have already heard of his passion for the theatrical experience so it is no surprise that he would want theaters to have the best chance of staying open in the future the way they always have been. This seems to be a sentiment that is shared by others as well, and that has apparently been the case with James Gunn.

Gunn is known for a number of his works over the years with his most notable ones of late being the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movies for the MCU. When he was temporarily fired as the director of the film, he was scooped up by Warner to direct a sort of sequel for ‘Suicide Squad’ which is now known as ‘The Suicide Squad.’ Although it is a sequel, it is actually meant to be more of a spiritual reboot of the original film and Gunn has made it clear that this version of the film is his wholeheartedly and the studio did not interfere. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, the studio has been accused of interfering with a lot of the previous film, as well as a few other films that have released over the past few years. To no one’s surprise based on seeing his previously mentioned works, people immediately became excited after the first trailer for ‘The Suicide Squad’ dropped a little while back. Ever since then, it has become a big deal for people that the movie has a release date set for summer next year.

Gunn has confirmed recently that the final cut of the movie that is ready to be shown theatrically has officially been finished and it is ready over 8 months before release. Of course this has been very exciting news for people, but it is now being overshadowed by the fact that some people are not taking too kindly to WB releasing movies the way they are going to next year. After all, many directors and crew put a lot of time into making movies be the best that they can possibly be and they know that the only real way to have the movie launch is in theaters. With Warner Bros. plan in place, ‘The Suicide Squad’ will actually release in both theaters and on HBO Max as it is a Warner property. Reportedly, Gunn is non-too happy about the fact that Warner is doing this with his film that he put so much time into and it isn’t any better that they have apparently not fairly compensated him for the move.

For the studio it is easy to see where the positives lie in releasing the movies the way that they are since they will be drawing more people in for their streaming service. On top of this, they would actually end up saving some money as a portion of what is earned from the theatrical release goes towards the theaters themselves as well as some of it going straight to the director, cast and crew if they have contracts like that. The more money they can make from the HBO Max releases means that they don’t really need to give a portion to them and they can just keep everything they get to themselves. By allowing people to do things this way, they are openly saying that they would prefer this over people going to the movie theaters to see their films since it could end up benefiting them more in the end. Needless to say, Gunn is dissatisfied by this turn of events and wants them to fairly compensate him for the loss of income that will occur with this move of theirs.