Dont Tell NetflixDont Tell Netflix

By George Robbins

Soon, we may just end up having the opportunity to see the pandemic end and things can begin sliding back into normality in some way, shape, or form. There is almost no guarantee that this will end up being the case though as the world is pretty much reeling at the fact that things are still ongoing right now, though nothing can be done about this. Many people just want this pandemic to be over, but there is no way of just making a pandemic end all of a sudden. If this were a pandemic in the past, it would be on-going for countless years, but we are now in a an age in the world where scientists can work day-in and day-out for a “cure” to a brand new (novel) virus. This means that the way that this pandemic situation can be handled is completely different from how it would be years ago and this is something that can overall be appreciated by the general public.

Unfortunately, the general public does not care about the fact that an almost magical improvement in the medical field has been seen within recent history and they just want things back the way they were. They want this so much in fact, that they are willing to completely disregard health and safety rules so that they can try and live they way they always have been. In the meantime, scientists have actually been fighting the ever-present clock to produce the miraculous vaccine that will allow people to go back to their lives the way they were living them before the pandemic began. They are already trying to do that anyway, but with a vaccine out there, the risks are much more likely to decrease over time and things can go back to how they were without any added tension or fears arising.

The unfortunate fact remains that there is just no idea of knowing how things will turn out until enough time has passed to allow us the opportunity to see a change in the vast world as a whole. On top of the issue with the pandemic, or rather adding to the whole pandemic issue, are the usual world and economic politics that must be dealt with going into the next year. Getting into world politics is pretty much pointless because things have not really changed all that much in that regard and the pandemic really had no affect on the world politics level, at least not to the same degree as everything else that happens on that level. What really ended up being affected by the whole pandemic was the world economy and more specifically, the individual economies of each worldwide country. Nothing can really be done to help these economies, at least on an individual person level, except to contribute in some way but this is obviously an issue as well.

In the end, a vast majority of businesses were forced to shut down for the following months until new safety rules and regulations were put in place which would keep people safe while they were out. Therefore, only businesses that provided things like food, toiletries, everyday household objects, and other maintenance items to keep homes and vehicles from falling to pieces were able to remain open. This ended up being a surprising number of businesses in the end and it would only really be things like restaurant, malls, theaters, etc. that would remain shut down for the following months. To no one’s real surprise, those businesses started losing a lot of money because they still had to try and maintain some semblance of actually existing in the world therefore they had to put themselves out there with building maintenance or advertising.

Further unsurprising, those non-essential businesses which were forced to stay closed soon started complaining when they could not open to the public. Therefore, some places started allowing them to reopen to the public in waves based upon what their overall danger to society would be if they opened up again. This basically meant how dangerous it would be to the public at large if they allowed people to go back to those businesses and how likely people were to spread the virus in that environment. In the end, places that were overall less populated could reopen first and those that could house larger populations were allowed to reopen later. Among those that had to wait to reopen until a much later date were places like theaters which are enclosed spaces that sit a lot of people for hours on end. This ended up angering theater owners because they felt like they were not being given a fair chance in the economy.

What would then follow the reopening of theaters was a series of events that no one should ever really forget because it proved that there was really no point to reopening them at all. Most theaters opened, not just nationwide, but worldwide some time in August earlier this year and they were having a difficult time before they even got into full swing. This had to do with the fact that they had no new content to show off to anyone when they first reopened their doors to the public at large and therefore they had no way of drawing in customers. Without any real way of drawing in customers, they were pretty much doomed from the start, but they persisted and that is all that really matters. They stayed open and this gave them an opportunity that they had not seen in months which eventually allowed on studio in particular, Warner Bros., to release a new Christopher Nolan blockbuster which would reshape the way the theater industry would work from that moment on.

The movie pretty much ended up failing in theaters and the studio pretty much took a huge hit in the end because they lost a lot of money that they are still trying to get back in some way. When they released the new movie, things started off strong for both Warner and theaters in general, until things immediately started going downhill and we saw a very quick decline in attendance to movie theaters. In truth, the unthinkable, happened; though it was actually very thinkable because of the way a pandemic works, people were afraid to go out to the movies. They took a shot in the dark by releasing their film in both the domestic and international markets, and it failed in the domestic where most of the money is usually made anyway. When you have a blockbuster where you need to bring in $500 million before marketing costs to break even and you don’t touch that mark in a theatrical run, things usually don’t look so hot moving forward.

Following that failure at the box office, another issue became apparent and that was that this was probably going to be the case with any movies that tried releasing from that point onward. It was at that moment that pretty much every production studio turned around and said that they were going to try and outlast the pandemic by pushing back all of their upcoming release dates for films. This was an action which would pretty much end up clearing out the entire calendar year of any new blockbusters that people were looking forward to. What would follow would essentially be news that some theaters were going to once again shut down until such time where they had a reason to reopen, such as actually having new films to show that people want to want i.e. blockbusters. Without these blockbuster releases, movie theaters which actually decided to remain open would begin losing money hand-over-fist until they inevitably reach the point where bankruptcy is the best option available to them.

Unfortunately for movie theaters, things appear to only really be getting worse for them as time goes on because it seems that studios are really just intent on messing with them at this point. Not that it is necessarily the studios’ fault at this point since it is their job to make money on new movie releases, but they are mostly reneging on their prior deals with movie theaters which is gutting theaters. Movie theaters rely heavily on having new movies to show to the public, but this is sort of an issue when those studios are holding out for people to feel comfortable to return to theaters. Theaters are just desperate for revenue at this point and this is none more apparent than when they actually agreed to a n unheard of plan to allow movies to release digitally after just 17 days in theaters because they are pretty much in a situation where they no longer have any say. Though it now seems that one studio is going that extra step forward to mess with theaters and that studio is Warner Bros. who, as previously mentioned, have already incurred huge losses this year.

Warner’s plan is to release every single one of their films for the next year in theaters and on their HBO Max streaming service simultaneously rather than an exclusivity period with just theaters then a digital release. This is something that has driven a huge rift in-between the movie-making community at the moment because of the implications this has had on it. It is actually so bad at this point, that directors working under Warner are threatening to boycott the studio, though this is only because their money is being tampered with. Directors and actors working with the studio on their upcoming films were not informed of this release plans ahead of time and therefore were not able to negotiate for compensation for the move ahead of time which resulted in a lot of annoyed actors and directors. On top of this, it would now appear that movie theaters aren’t just going to take this lying down either.

Movie theaters are desperate to try and get as much business as possible and new movie releases are the only thing they are hopeful for, but they hate being messed with even more. Movie theaters rely on getting an even split on the movie tickets they sell to patrons where they will then give the rest to the studio, but with Warner’s plan, they would be taking customers directly away from theaters which would only further ruin their attempts at getting back on their feet. Because of Warner Brothers’ plan to release all 2021 films on HBO Max the same day as their theatrical premieres, theaters may cut ticket prices to get back at them. Of course this will really end up hurting theaters in the end as well, this is about sending a message at this point and they are going into bankruptcy anyway at this point, so why would they care how much they are losing. It is certainly going to be an interesting year ahead of us and definitely an interesting one for Warner since it was already predicted that they could end up losing over $1.2 billion next year even without the new retaliation plan from theaters.