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Foreign.
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Welcome back to the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. My name is Sonny Bunch, I'm culture editor at the Bulwark and I'm very pleased to be rejoined today by Scott Mendelsohn. I love having Scott on Scott, Scott, plug your newsletter. You're on substack. Big, big, big time film and TV substack newsletter. What, what's, what's it called? Tell the people.
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It's called the Outside Scoop. It was established in late December of 2023 and is basically an attempt to go back to my early Forbes Mendelssohn's memos roots where I was still writing a lot, but I wasn't like writing six posts a day about, you know, daily updates. I tried to like concentrate on the stuff that I actually have an opinion about and sometimes I don't have an opinion or at least not an opinion that I didn't already write 10,000 times in the 2010s which is part of my struggle, frankly, because like Hollywood sort of, I will argue, forgot a lot of the lessons, the good lessons and bad from the 2010s after the pandemic and the strike, the push to streaming, streaming, contraction, yada, yada, yada. So it's like, you know, how many times do I have to explain why no, no, Terminator is never going to
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work, for example, again. You'll have to do it again. Don't worry. You know what, let's jump into this right now because this is topic number one, right? We've got the summer season coming up. We can do a quick summer preview. But the, there are two, there are two things that are kind of happening simultaneously in the world of the box office right now. One, things are like objectively looking up over, certainly over the last couple of years, maybe even for the first time since the pandemic. I think, you know, we're going to get close to a $10 billion year at the domestic box office, I think, I think that's certainly in the cards, which would be the best since, best since COVID etc. The other, on the other hand though, there are a couple of kind of interesting looking bombs. The, the, the biggest of which will almost certainly be the movie I'm about to mention here, which is right in your hobby horse of stop remaking things for older generations, make things that younger generations care about. I speak of course of the forthcoming Masters of the Universe film from MGM Amazon Studios that looks like they probably spent about $200 million on it and could not possibly be less interesting for literally anybody anywhere. There's nobody is like, I needed a new he man movie. What. What's the deal with this thing?
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He man was the first property that I ever became a fan of. I was psyched in 1987 for the Masters of the Universe movie. And while I acknowledge the flaws, even as a kid, I still enjoyed watching it. It was interesting to see something I liked at that age being turned into a serious big deal movie. However, that was 40 years ago. I don't have much hair left. Hollywood should not be making these kinds of movies aimed at people my age. And that's not a new. That's not a new problem. You know, Tron was the obvious example from last year where you had. Why weren't kids interested in Tron starring 52 year old Jared Leto? I don't know. It could be good. I mean, Jared, excuse me, Travis Knight, he runs Leica. Leica. I could never pronounce them, even though I love them. He's directed two movies, Kubo the Two Strings and Bumblebee, both of which were very degrees of very good. It could be a pretty good movie. But unless we're all wrong, I think worst case scenario is going to. Best case scenario is going to be a situation like varying quality notwithstanding Transformers 1, the Power Rangers reboot from nine years ago, Furiosa, frankly, where it's like all the sides are pointing in a good direction, but general audiences are like, well, this looks like a very good version of something I have no interest in. And to use a food analogy, I don't particularly love cheesecake. If you tell me this is the best cheesecake ever made, I'm only going to care so much. And the film as sold, it looks like what Hollywood did a lot in the 2010s while trying to capitalize on or rip off the MCU, which they would take other action or non action characters and plug them into a very formulaic prequel, origin story, Hero's Journey, Batman Begins kind of formula. And audiences were like, well, why should I settle for this imitation RC Cola when I can get Coca Cola? Which, because it knows that it's Coca Cola is often adding other fun stuff like cherry or strawberry flavored or root beer float. So you know, with the Marvel and DC films, it wasn't. It wasn't just a superhero movie. It was a crime thriller or it was a rom com or it was a high film. We can debate how much of that was marketing versus, you know, actually being genre pictures. But those films were offering. Yes. And it was superhero movies that were selling themselves as Both being good superhero movies and selling all the ways in which it was different from just a superhero movie. Well, conversely, the likes of King Arthur and the Legend of the Sword Pan, Robin Hood and Robin Hood again were basically selling themselves as this is not a comic book superhero movie, but it kind of looks and feels like one. So hopefully you will go see it because you love superheroes, right? And spoiler. The success of Marvel and to a certain extent DC did not mean that people liked superheroes in the abstract. Did not mean that people wanted cinematic universes in the abstract. It just meant that people liked the specific, the specific elements present movies, marquee characters, known actors as those marquee characters. A certain expectation of at least three star meat and potatoes quality that was present specifically in the MCU brand and to a lesser extent, DC films. That's a more complicated conversation. But yeah, I mean, on paper this looks like this was a bad idea in 2014. Why are we still doing this?
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Yeah, I'll say. Look, one of the things that's been kind of heartening about this year is Super Mario Galaxy notwithstanding, you have a lot of originals or like pseudo originals. Project Hail Mary, not technically an original. It's adapted from a pretty popular book, but not, not a cinematic franchise.
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I call those a new to you adaptation where most people seeing the black vote have not read the short story.
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Exactly, exactly. Or you know, Michael, which again, you know, we can talk about it based on a person, you know, without getting, without getting into any of that drama, you know, based on a person. But like original. That's an original thing. Hoppers original goat original. I'm just, I'm just going through the top 10 movies released this year so far. There are a lot of originals or original ish sort of things. Again, Wuthering Heights, not technically an original, but you know, like it's not. Not a cinematic franchise. Send help. You know, a new horror film, reminders of him. An adaptation of a book. Again, I, I do I. One of the things that does keep jumping out is these. You've got these literary adaptations that are, that are kind of popping off that, that are doing, that are doing even just as well as expected. But our, you know, audiences are coming to them. Are we hitting a new. Is, is this, are we, are we getting back to like the good old days of like, hey, you remember that John Grisham book you liked? We got a movie about it coming out here. You remember that Michael Crichton book you liked? We got a movie coming out about that which I, you know, God, you know, in the 90s we didn't realize how good we had it, but now we look back and we're like, hey, this is not so bad.
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Yeah, no, no, no, I absolutely agree with you. And the obvious example is the Housemaid, which by the way the house made R rated 35 million dollar erotic thriller that made more globally than the last Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, and I think part of this is that Hollywood finally realizes that at least some of the adult skewing, not a fantasy franchise type films that they basically stopped making in the 2010s allegedly to chase the overseas market, are also the kind of films that always over indexed outside of North America. Basic Instinct, Fatal attraction, you know, 50 shades of gray. And so it's not a shock that Withering Heights did a lot better overseas than it did in North America. Didn't bomb in North America, but wasn't a breakout and or even you know, movies like, you know, Hamnet and Marty supreme, these are films that are doing varying degrees of okay in North America but they are doing very well in overseas markets that still have an audience that will show up to these adult skewing just movies. And whether or not that's varying theatrical windows, whether it's just the audience was always there but Hollywood stopped giving it to them. I can't say. The one aspiration, really aspirational thing that's coming to mind right now is that as should have been predicted back in the day, the, the kids are going to the movies and to a certain extent they never stopped. And when you give them a, you know, give them a Five Nights at Freddy's, you give them a, you know, the electronic forgive me I'm butcher this even like backrooms, which is coming out in a few weeks, that's based on a creepypasta. I have no idea what that's about and that's exciting to me. My favorite part of the Sony presentation at Cinemacon was when they announced adaptations of video games I've never heard of because again I'm 46 years old and yes, this is a year we're going to add Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Mario Brothers with Zelda next year. So there's, it's not a zero sum game. But if the more Hollywood puts money and time into novels that were published recently, properties that, you know, comic books that came about recently, video games that are somewhat recent, that are played by my kids and other people's kids or grandkids, the more likely we are going to have people going to the movies of that age because they want to. I think Donna Langley said this and it's absolutely correct, which is that today's kids are format agnostic. They don't like, oh boy, the theatrical experience that must be protected at all costs like nerds like us are. But they're not going to go ew, a movie theater. I don't want to do that. If there's something they want to see in theaters, even if it's something like K Pop Demon Hunters or the Stranger Things finale that is either already available on streaming or, or will be within like 10 seconds. If they want to see it enough to see it in theaters, they will. And as for why, I think partially because this is the first generation that's grown up with phones are not special and unique and not a treat. If anything, they are a necessity. And being able to put your phone away for three hours is actually a feature and not a bug of the theatrical movie going experience to today's kids. And the other thing is this is the first generation, if not now, then, you know, whatever the new post Generation Z is going to be called. Where to them the idea of a movie that looked like something that you otherwise would have seen in theaters being available at home is no longer special to them. It never was to them. It's Tuesday. And so the one thing that sort of sticks out in their theatrical ecosystem is the movie theater. Because that's the only one that you can actually go out and do a thing and meet with your friends.
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Yeah, yeah. So now that, yeah, that. I think that is, I think it's interesting. It is interesting to like, of course the big, the big movies that are. The biggest movies coming out this summer are going to be long time franchise stuff. You know, Toy Story 5, Spider Man. Brave, Brave new.
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Brand new day.
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Brand new day. Thank you. Brand new day. I should know that one.
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The.
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It just feels, it feels like, you know, and that's. And look, and I don't want to be a naysayer here because that's good. That's a healthy part of an ecosystem. You got the big blockbusters that, that people want to go to. But that is, that's def. We should not, we should not understate the, the importance of these franchises.
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Yeah. And in a healthy ecosystem, you know, I'm old enough to remember, you know, the Flintstones was a huge. It. I'm not going to sit here and say the Flintstones was a particularly good movie. And even when I was a kid it was like, okay, I'm being patronized too. Whatever but there was still room for everything else. It's like in 1994 when Quiz show bombed, it was like, oh, well, that's unfortunate. But it wasn't like Hollywood will never make adult dramas again because Quid show bombed. And Lisa Lehman on my podcast mentioned this a while back and it stood out to me, which is that most genres that we think of as theatrical Westerns, rom coms, musicals, etc are like, always being like, on the precipice of being declared extinct if one of them bombs. Except for comic book superhero movies, which no matter how many of them underwhelm, Hollywood will still keep pretending that 2017 is just around the corner.
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And
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when I talk about movies for kids, by the way, I'm not just talking about things like Mario and Goat and Hoppers. I'm talking about like cool films aimed at, you know, that could be appealing to cool kids like Sinners or Weapons or the Housemaid, Wuthering Heights. Technically those are R rated pictures. But how old were you when you first saw scream? Were you 17 years old or made sure to bring a PR or guardian with you? Probably not. You know, we all have, you know, I'm older, so I have memories of like seeing Total Recall when I was 10 or 11, wasn't in the theater, but it was like on Showtime when my parents were out of town and I was out of the house. And I was very careful to make sure they didn't come in before it ended. So those are, you know, important moviegoing experiences as well. Seeing stuff that's a little bit too mature for you, but for you, that's, you know. When sitters opened with 48 million last April, 2% of the audience was under 18, which isn't huge. That under 18 crowd gave it an A from Cinema Score. That means to those who showed up, it was probably the coolest thing they've ever seen. Just like kids who saw Terminator Core Memory. Exactly. It will be. It is because the kids that saw Tornador 2 when they were like 9, oh, they thought it was the coolest thing they've ever seen.
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Yeah, no, that's, that's for sure. All right, let's, let's shift slightly here to, to discuss a another movie theater thing that has happened and is, is kind of interesting. It's out of summer now. We're done. We're done in the summer. Summer's going to be great, everybody. There's so many good movies and there will probably be some bad movies that are also very successful and good movies that fail. You know, this Happens every summer. But the, but let's, let's move to, to next year because there was a really interesting thing that happened last week. It was announced that the Narnia movie the Magician's Nephew, directed by Greta Gerwig, that is being produced by Netflix, which had been penciled in for a Thanksgiving area, Thanksgiving time zone release for Netflix on IMAX screens, on, you know, the 500 or a thousand IMAX screens or whatever there are in the country
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that
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has moved from, from being released in Thanksgiving and then getting a December Christmas Netflix debut to next year. It's going to instead be in theaters in February and it's going to get a full 4000 screen release. The Netflix has all of the major chains on board, including Regal, which had been kind of holding out on the, on the, the Narnia thing. And it's going to get a 49 day window. This is why they were able to get everybody explain to folks what this means and why it happened. Because I feel like this is, this is either, this is, I mean, I will say a thing here that is true of all things. This is either a sea change or it doesn't actually matter that much. But it feels like, it feels like a pretty big deal for Netflix to actually say, okay, we're going to do this and we're going to do a real theatrical release and we're going to have an exclusivity in theaters for 49 days and that's going to matter a lot.
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I, I agree with you in that I don't know how big of a deal this is. I mean, I remember panicking in late 2014 when there was word that the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel that we've all forgotten about was going to play like in IMAX and Netflix concurrently. It was like, imax, how could you. Blah, blah, blah. And of course nobody cared and it just made no difference whatsoever. I would prefer, you know, in terms of the window, yes, it's great. That's getting a 45 day window. I'd rather get like a 45 day window and then post theatrical PVOD EST, whatever, and then go on the Netflix. Because I think 45 days from, from theaters to free streaming is very different than 45 days until, you know, paid viewing and then eventually free streaming. But whatever. As for why, I mean, the simplest reason is that allegedly one of the cast members had an injury and the film was going to get delayed anyway. And they, to be fair, as much as I hate saying anything nice about, well, any giant corporation, but whatever, Netflix putting This on super bowl weekend is good because that is a weekend that can be lucrative, but it is one that has not been lucrative in a very long time because Hollywood stopped trying. I'm old enough to remember when like Taken and Miley Cyrus, Best of both worlds, pulled 25 to $30 million opening weekends on super bowl weekend. A Dear John did 30 million on Super bowl weekend. The the audience can be there. So unlike what they did with Glass Onion, which I'm still mad about, which is that first of all they paid a half a billion dollars to take that film out of the theatrical ecosystem. And you'll never convince me otherwise. They did give it like a pithy week long 600 screen release on Thanksgiving weekend, which was the one weekend in late 2022 that was actually crowded. So this was, I will argue, doing more harm to theaters, certainly doing more harm to theatrically specific studios because it sure as hell didn't help the Fablemans or Strange World or Devotion. Conversely, releasing this with a window allegedly in wide release. And I'll be honest, I don't know what wide release means. It could just be 600 theaters here, there. I don't think so. But trust and verify more so doing it on a weekend where will actually help theaters just by having a big movie on that slate. That is thing good. As for why, I mean, it could just be that, you know, the subscriptions, subscription ceiling window has been reached. I'm sorry, the subscription ceiling has been reached. You can only make so much more money from ads and subscriptions and video games aren't exactly changing the world for Netflix. And you have a Wall street that expects, you know, growth, growth, growth at all costs. So this is like, okay, maybe we can make more money putting this film in theaters than we would have not putting in theaters. And as obvious as that seems, that is an obvious thing that Hollywood was very slow to catch up upon because I mean, we knew late 2020 at best or at worst that, you know, movies that play in theaters do better on streaming than films that skip theaters. The exception of some high profile, you know, a hocus pocus 2 or what have you, pretty much every streaming platform other than Netflix, the films that do best there are theatrical first titles. You know, we realized this in pretty early on and David Zaslav, whether or not he's the devil himself, was the first to say, hey, we are wasting time, money and blood and treasure on these director streaming movies. We're going to stop doing them and we're going to put the stuff that we care about in Theaters. And come what may, he did put Magic Mike xl, Blue Beetle, Evil Dead Rise, which now you have a franchise thanks to that and the House Party revamp in theaters in 2023. So being optimistic and assuming there's no three dimensional chess being played here, they realize, hey, Narnia is still going to kick ass on streaming, even if we give it something of a theatrical window and putting it in theaters will give it the attention, prestige, and all that, that a theatrical marketing campaign and a theatrical release gets it. And since this is a kind of a safe film that will probably do well in theaters, even if it, you know, whether it would have done well in terms of. If it was expected to make all of its money back in theatrical, I don't know. Again, you're dealing with new math. Where Amazon can release a $90 million crime picture like Crime 101, that makes wedding, forgive me, 80 million worldwide. But it's okay because it's gonna do great on Prime Video. And I have very mixed feelings about that because it was the ability to play by different rules that allowed streaming platforms to kneecap theatrical studios and theaters, specifically in the 2010s. That being said, even if all of the motivations are good and positive and there's no shenanigans, there is a part of me that's a little angry that Netflix only did this now. You know, they did this not when it could have really helped theaters in the earlier 2000s during the days of COVID not when they were trying. When they were trying to buy Warner Brothers. And whatever mixed feelings I had on that, that will probably be better, I will argue, than the end result of if Paramount Skydance gets its hands on Warner Brothers and lays off thousands of people, and if we're lucky, we get 25, 30 movies from one studio, that again, there's 100 horror stories that could nightmare scenarios from that. I will shut up now because I'm rambling.
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No, well, no, I think the Netflix, I mean, the, the idea that they have realized they have been chastened by the Warner Brothers experience into, like, being kind of forced to commit to theatrical. I actually, I don't know that I buy that. There's a part of me that thinks that Ted Sarandos would much prefer to just double down and be like, fine, no theaters ever. At the same time. It is, it's an interesting shift. And I am, I am hopeful that they realize something that again, you and I and everybody else has been saying for years now, which is that it makes no Sense to spend $200 million on a movie and put it directly on streaming or give it like a token weekend release for Red Notice or the Gray man or whatever. Like, it makes no sense. It makes no sense financially, especially because, you know, I don't know, the, the money, the money that you give up by, by not putting things in theaters is a lot. Now look, and again, their business model is different. Their business model is, their business model is we, we have people who pay us 25 bucks a month or 30 bucks a month or whatever it costs to buy Netflix. Now I don't even look at my bills anymore. I'm just like, just charge me whatever. I write it off at the end of the year on my taxes. Anyway, the, the, the issue here is that they have a different business model and one that does not actually really make necessarily a lot of sense for, for theaters. But if they want to be in that business of blockbuster filmmaking, I don't see. There's just no, there's no, I don't understand the math on it. Without a theatrical component.
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Agreed. And unfortunately, in the late 2000 and tens, especially in the early 2000 and twenties, Wall street was so prior, you know, and again, I do blame, I think Richard Richfield said this and it was very succinct, which is that Wall street forced Hollywood off a cliff and then said, why'd you fall down a cliff? Get yourself back up. Yeah, in that they basically pressured, slash, forced all the studios to make these spend billions and billions of dollars on these, you know, first party streaming platforms, you know, mostly billions and billions on, you know, content. And then in early 2022, they said, oh, whoops, we changed our mind. We want profit and revenues now, which these shows and these movies and these services were not going to deliver as they existed. And so yes, it was unfortunate that in the late 2010s and especially the early 2020s, that studios were basically getting full credit for the mere existence of a movie that people my age have heard of or a franchise that we've heard of, regardless of whether that movie was any good or got anything resembling viewership on Netflix or elsewhere. So it was like, wow, Disney is doing it right because they're making Star Wars TV shows or Paramount is so awesome because they're spending a gajillion dollars on a Halo show where it did not matter if that show was well liked or well received or got viewership comparable to the tentpole size money that they were being encouraged to spend. And unfortunately, I will argue that the priority, the prioritization of these kind of IP specific shows and movies, often headlined and made by not a white guy, filmmakers turn the entire ecosystem into a glass cliff. But that's a longer rant. Basically it was the equivalent of that joke in south park where you know, who gets sent to the front lines first. But anyway. And yes, there is a part of me that is mad at Netflix. Again, these are all giant companies, they don't love you back, yada, yada, yada. In that I will argue, and other people have said this, that one reason they were going after Warner Brothers is, is that they wanted the TV shows. They wanted the 10 season long character focused binge friendly dramas and comedies that the streaming model has basically made financially impossible to make. Just like the streaming model has now made it much, much harder for just a movie movies to be theatrically profitable in theaters. When I say just a movie movies, you know, non franchise, star driven, sometimes adult, skewing, high concept, you know, again, just a movie studio programmer, call it whatever you want. And so now they are trying to take advantage of the past and spoils and past and successes of the very distribution model that they, whether, you know, either tried to put out of business
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or
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because their business model made much, much harder to exist in the present tense, future tense, the yay, everybody loves suits on Netflix. But because of the Netflix model, it is now impossible to make the next suits or the new suits.
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Yeah, but I think we are seeing a little bit of pushback on this, right? In, in the success of the Pit, for instance, or you know, the.
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Sorry, what was the show you mentioned?
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Slowing. What's that?
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What was the show you mentioned?
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The Pit.
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The Pit, yes.
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The Pit, yes. Right. So the Pit. The Pit is doing the weekly thing and it's growing in audience season after season. And by contrast, you look at things like the night agent on Netflix, which was a huge very, which is still doing very good numbers. It should be pointed out like it's a very successful show, but it is, it's declining season after season. You know, it had that like kind of big surge with the kind of binge model and, and audiences aren't necessarily showing up for season after season, which is again, I think it's, it's pretty, it is it. I feel like we are seeing a, you know, return to that weekly model. This is of course the Sheridan verse. Everything over there is, you know, coming out on a weekly basis and those shows are all killing it and it's,
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and we should have been, you know, frankly, Hollywood politics notwithstanding. Although some of those shows are less overtly political than others. Whatever. Entertainment is entertainment. Those shows were absolutely an example of how to do a quote unquote, connected universe. And I know they're not all connected, but humor me for a second. Connected universe, right, in which those shows were so different from each other, even though specifically the Yellowstone spin offs, that you can watch all five of them that are airing in a given week and feel like you watch five different shows as opposed to quality notwithstanding, if you watch all five Star wars shows at a given week, they're gonna be pretty similar. Like you watch five episodes of the same show. And I wish that model was more noticed. And as far as the decline in streaming ratings for bin stuff, I am not angry, but sort of like annoyed that, like, now everybody's talking that yes, streaming shows drop like a stone in their second season. How have I known that for five or six years? Because so many high profile shows get canceled after two years. And I think what happens is the show comes out, it is given a king's welcome, a queen's welcome, in terms of publicity, media coverage and promotion. We all talk about it, we all review it, it is seen, and then the second scene comes out and it's almost dropped to the COVID of night. There's far less promotion, there's far less media coverage, and thus it is far less of a big deal unless you're looking for it. And you know, you've. You've seen this happen a thousand times where the first season of Poker Face was this giant event. The second season of Poker Face, I didn't realize it had dropped until three or four weeks into its run. And I work here, so I should notice, you know, I should know that, yeah, it helped.
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It. It helped that it was not as good the second season. My wife and I stopped watching halfway through. And we almost never bail on a show at the mid midway point. Like, we, we are real completists.
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I'll be honest. I have. I finished the second season. No, but I liked what I saw. And I think it's a matter of just because it's so standalone, I can catch it when I feel like it and I, you know, I'll enjoy it for when it is. I will say that the first season premiere of Poker Face is one of Rian Johnson's best movies. And the second season premiere of Poker Face is one of Rian Johnson's best movies. I think the premieres, respectively, are awesome, but whatever.
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Yeah. All right, let's. Let's hop back to, to theaters because there was a There was some, some controversy or maybe a non controversy about the, the, the news that regal. So Dune 3 is coming out in December and toward the end of December,
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or maybe this is why Narnia got delayed because they saw. It's like this is so good and it's going to be so popular that we have to wait until we can properly format it for Infinity Vision.
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Exactly, exactly. Well, we're gonna. Oh, we're gonna get, we're gonna get to Infinity Vision in a second. I wanna, I wanna call. We're gonna. So Dune, Dune 3 is coming out in December. Regal put tickets for their 70 millimeter IMAX screen in New York City on sale for $70. $70. Or I'm not, I'm not. $70. $50. $50, you know, plus fees and taxes. Maybe it gets to 70, I don't know. But $50 for the 70 millimeter IMAX screens for Doom 3. And they sold out in minutes. Okay. So, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're kind of two competing strains of thought here. One is that this is very simple supply and demand. People, people want to see these movies and they want to see these movies in the biggest and best possible format. And there's like eight of these screens in the country. They can see it. I happen to live near one here in Dallas. It's great. But the, but most people can't see it and they will travel to come see it. It's an event. We are charging more because these tickets were winding up on Craigslist or whatever and getting sold on the resale market. All right, so you've got that. But then the other argument here is, and I think this is not an unreasonable one, you hear this from studios and you hear this from, from some of the theater owners too, is that charging that much money for a single movie ticket for a non special event for not. It's not a premiere. It's not. There's no director or actor there. This is just a showing of the movie is going to end up hurting the business in the long run because it makes it unsustainable. So folks, folks are like, this is too rich for my blood. I guess I could see it in a shitty theater or I could just wait to see it at home. And then they just say, well, you might as well just wait to see it at home. And I'm pretty sympathetic to that argument as well. Where do you come down on this?
- [33:06]
A
Well, I agree with you, except I'm less concerned about this because again, it's specifically for people that want to see Dune in a very specific format right away. That is a rare thing. I mean, I remember when it was one of the first years I lived in California and I saw Dreamgirls during its limited release. It was like platform for a week and then I went wide and I went to the Arc Light and I paid $25 a ticket. This was 20 years ago, so inflation for it was the opening night. People were dressed in suits, there were celebrities there. You got like a program, I think you've got some concessions and for what you got, you know, I called it. It was like a four star experience of a three, three to half star movie. And I knew I was paying for more than just I'm gonna see this movie and it costs 25 bucks to do it. I don't know, as you said. And I should have looked this up. Mea culpa, you know, do you get a snack? Do you get a program? Do you get whatever. Because you know, you go to the El Capitan at opening weekend and they have upcharged ticket prices for their new releases that come with stuff, whether it's, you know, upgraded soda or whatever. And you add that up and it's not going to say it's a value, but it's not quite highway robbery. Now I do think there is a danger that the mere idea of look out, it's a $50 ticket is, you know, risks making regular people that don't obsess over this stuff think that oh shit, movie tickets cost 50 bucks. Now that's a problem. But I do think that goes into what I think theaters really need to do. And to a certain extent they have been doing this, which is that they need to make sure that audiences know that because of the 2 to 3 billion they've been spending on upkeep and what have you that you go to see any movie worth seeing in a theater, at any theater at any time, it's probably going to look, assuming everyone is doing their job, all due respect, it's still going to look much better and bigger and more immersive than it will look at home. And I tell people that it was awesome seeing Project Hail Mary at the brand new IMAX at the LA Live Regal Theater. But it was just as cool seeing Slanted, which is not that good of a movie that played for like 10 seconds in theaters at a random Saturday matinee at my local multiplex in a giant auditorium with a, with a floor to ceiling screen that felt freaking huge. And I think audiences need to Know that, yes, IMAX is awesome. Dolby is great. I saw the Devil Wears Prada in HDR Barco down at the Regal Sherman Oaks specifically to check out the newer format. And it looked and sounded spectacular. I mean, if the online trailers looked that good, you would not have had six months of discourse of, why does this movie look so much worse than the original? But that's a different conversation. But we also need to know that when you go to see just a movie, like when you saw, you know, I went to see the Silence of the Lambs, first time I ever saw it in a theater. It was a random Sunday afternoon last week or two weeks ago. It was a random AMC theater at a random, you know, small auditorium. And it still looked bigger and bolder than I had ever seen or heard it before. I saw, I saw visual details that I had never noticed before. And I was attentive to the score, which ironically is considered one of the great invisible scores by Howard Shore in a way that I had never been before. Is like, oh, wow, this film, this score really plays up the notion of this film being a, you know, an epic fairy tale, which is one of the things that I've always felt set Silence of the Lambs apart from the movies that came before and after that genre. So even in this, you know, fathom re release at a random multiplex, it still felt like seeing it. Maybe not for the first time, but for the second time. And I think the more audiences get that, yes, Sinners looks awesome in imax, but it will also look awesome in Weekend five at a regular multiplex. The better theaters will be. And you want to, you want to respond.
- [37:20]
B
Yeah, because I, like, I totally agree with it. Look, I agree with this and I agree with this on, even, even set aside the, the issue of screen quality and image quality and all that, I am. I just believe that people should go see movies in theaters because it's the thing that lets you unplug from the world. But yada, yada, yada, neither here nor there. But I, I, my, my fear on this. And, and this is, this is where the Infinity Vision comes in. So Marvel at CinemaCon debuted Disney. Disney, Marvel, whatever. They debuted this new standard. So you've got imax, right? And you've got, you've got Dolby Vision and you've got, you know, the XL screens at AMC and you've got the, I know, 4DX, whatever. Like, you have all these different competing formats. And Disney comes along and says, okay, well, we don't have the imax Screens for Avengers Doomsday in December. So we have created a new standard and we're calling it Infinity Vision. And there will be an upcharge and it will be one of the, will be one of the better screens in the house. My, my concern with this kind of increased segmenting, this saying like this is you got IMAX and you got Dolby and that's the cream of the crop. And then you got these kind of like slightly lesser ones. And then you got slightly lesser is that you just end up devaluing the theaters without branding, you know, at all. Just the laser at IMAX or whatever it is, you know, whatever, whatever they want to. Or laser, I'm sorry, laser at amc, whatever that, whatever they're calling their like standard auditorium. And folks are going to be like, well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna waste my time with that. I'm not gonna buy if I can't see it in the good one. I'm just gonna wait for, to watch it at home on my 70 inch TV at home, which is very nice and which I like a lot and I can pause and go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah. I just think I, I really worry that this, this emphasis on screen quality and these, these increasingly segmented weird divisions between like the best screens and the medium screens and the worst screens is ultimately going to push more people just not to go see anything at all on the screens that don't have the branding which would, which would cut the legs out of the whole industry. I mean, that's a disaster.
- [39:32]
A
I absolutely agree. That is, that has been my fear for a while. Just because we see so much emphasis on, you know, imax, Dolby, whatever and you know, that's good. I like seeing movies like in those formats as well and without getting into good and evil because I don't think this is a good and evil thing. I would have much preferred if Disney had just come out and said, look, Dune was here first. We moved it to Chris Avengers to Christmas for reasons we know because of the performances of Jurassic World, Rebirth, Barbie and now the Devil Piranha too. And any, you know, going back to the Hunger Games, Mockingjay Part one, which did, you know, which had to fight for PLF scraps in 2014 because Interstellar had all the IMAX screens. It was still Interstellar. I'm sorry, mockingjay1 was still one of the very biggest grossing movies of the year. We know that this film will work in any properly maintained and operated multiplex screen. We know that the success of Barbie, Jurassic World 4 etc. Etc. Etc. Means that we don't need PLF to have best case scenario box office. We know that. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. But yes, they could have just said yes, we would rather have IMAX than not. But we're still going to have some PLFs because we're going to have some BLF's and we are going to make sure that to the best of our abilities, the regular screens that this film is playing on are big and bold and awesome because that is enough. And we know that even films that over index in PLF on the opening weekend or two, like Dune, like Avatar, like sitters, like F1, they don't drop dead when they lose PLF screens.
- [41:25]
B
Right?
- [41:26]
A
And again without good and evil here, I think Paramount did a major SkipService in summer 2023 to by crafting the narrative that the reason Dead Reckoning underwhelmed in theaters is that they only had the IMAX screens for a half a week or so or a week and change and that narrative almost single handedly got everybody afraid that oh no, if we don't have PLFs we will not be able to compete. And that was not true in 2014, it was not true in 2024 and unless things change it will not be true in 2034. So I absolutely agree with you. That being said, if you know, if this is merely a way for Disney to go around the country or go around the world and you know, look at the gajillion PLF screens that aren't part of a brand that we've heard of and make sure that they aren't just a regular giant screen, you know, a regular screen made bigger that it's not going to look like you know, playing a DVD on a giant screen, metaphorically speaking and I think most of them don't frankly that was an issue in frankly 201420 because I, I, I did see a couple not an IMAX PLF showings that I was not happy about but even as recently as the early 2015 or I remember seeing Nightcrawler on opening weekend at a know a random Sid Mark, Sid Mark big screen and it looked and sounded spectacular. So they could have done that. But if they're just going to go around and make sure that all of the PLFs are at least this good, great, awesome especially and I don't know especially if they are going to be the ones to put up the extra money if metaphorically speaking those machines need to get, you know, fail their Smog check. Yeah, yeah, but what I don't want to happen.
- [43:20]
B
Yeah.
- [43:20]
A
Is small indie theaters having to pay money. They don't have to make sure that their random PLF or equivalent thereof or up to stuff or else they're not getting the Avengers movie.
- [43:31]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, this is, this is the, this is the, the, the real rub is like, what is it even actually? Like, I don't know. I, I, I, I have little faith in consumers to like, really suss this out properly. But like, I, but the, but for me, the issue is I will get. Okay, well, what you say this is Infinity Vision. What does that mean? Have you gone in and upgraded the, the projector? Have you, like, changed the bulb? Like, are you making sure it's projecting at the right number of lumens? Like, what is the, what is the, you know, the, the. What does it actually mean? What is it? What is it actually? If anybody from Disney is listening and wants to come on the show and walk me through Infinity Vision, I'll happily have you to do that.
- [44:15]
A
But it's assuming, you know, assuming the best. I am under the impression that the simply simplistically speaking, Infinity Vision is a standard like THX was back in the day, that your screen has to do X, Y and Z and you'll get a happy sticker saying it's Infinity Vision. And again, that's fine. That might be thing good overall. But again, I don't want it to be a situation where general audiences feel that if a movie is not available to see on a PLF screen that they've heard of, it is not worth seeing in theaters at all. Because that is a danger. Because, you know, again, I saw Stranger Things series finale in a regular theater on, you know, opening, whatever night, and it looked and sounded spectacular, to the point where I genuinely enjoyed the finale a lot more than I would have had I just watched it at home on my television. And, you know, I'd like to think that was like a weird Come to Jesus moment for Ted Sarandos, where, like, he was sitting in a packed IMAX theater watching everybody go nuts and like a single tear dripped down his face. It's like, you know, I get it. Wow.
- [45:22]
B
I understand Cinema Paradiso, you know.
- [45:25]
A
Yes. And even. And this was. Jeremy Fuster said this on my podcast, so I don't want to steal his words. But to a certain extent, the last Knives out movie kind of works as a parable for Netflix coming to Jesus on theaters. Because that movie is about an atheist who comes to understand that Even if it doesn't mean the same for him. Religion and faith and spirituality can do good for others, other believers. So, you know, that's kind of a metaphor. It's like, even if I don't like theaters, theaters can still be of value to other people. And there can be a way for me to respect that.
- [46:05]
B
Yeah. All right. As you know, I always like to close by asking if there's anything I should have asked if there's anything we should have discussed about the state of the industry or business or whatever the world. What did we not discuss that we should have?
- [46:18]
A
Well, I don't think we didn't not discuss anything. But I think this is the first time since COVID that studios, more studios are releasing more movies in volume and variety, in terms of genres, in terms of different demographic targeting. And I think films like Wuthering Heights and the Housemaid and the Devil Wears Product two gives me hope that whatever, to whatever extent Hollywood forgot the lessons of the 2010s in terms of films being aimed at for from by not a white guy. Filmmakers and audiences, I think they have relearned that lesson in that we are seeing more movies like Withering Heights, the Housemaid, Devil Wars, Prada 2 on the regular that are being treated as big event films for women, but also being treated as big event films and not just counter programming. So those and the fact that young people are showing up with bells on, not just to stuff like Goat, but also to stuff like Mighty supreme and the Housemaid and the Drama and Sinners and Project Hail Mary, that gives me great hope that not only might theatrical come back from the COVID peril, but they might come back to where we were, relatively speaking, before the streaming. The streaming world began and started turning, you know, the studio programmer into commercially perilous thing. And of course, this is my stump speech is that 10 years ago you had a large segment of general moviegoers that started using streaming or VOD for their general entertainment consumption. And then that basically cut the knees out of pretty much any and all non event movies. I am optimistic that if this continues, we might see not just a return to like 2018, but a return to 2014 or 2013 when more movies in more genres of more shapes and sizes can exist, do exist, and can succeed at the theatrical level. And my only reason that I am not incredibly optimistic is that what if Skydance buys Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers and Paramount become one studio that puts out 15 to 20 GI Joes? Because that's what David Ellison allegedly thinks is the Only thing that can succeed. And again, allegedly. I don't want to get sued for libel, but, you know, I, I, we need a, an ecosystem that understands that regretting you made more money on a third of the budget than the Running Man. And that is the one danger, the one very, very dark cloud over what otherwise would have me very, very, very, very, very optimistic about the state of the article movie going. And I don't, you know, I'm not going to assume that the worst will come to pass for Skydance any more than I would hope that the best will come to pass in terms of Netflix dropping a dozen films and in wide theatrical release every year just because they can, and making up a lot of the difference in terms of, you know, the lost Warner Brothers, because again, I will argue that long term, Fox getting bought by Disney and being turned into, all due respect, a boutique did more damage to theatrical than the pandemic. Long term, all due respect to the lost lives and lost, you know, finances of, you know, humans, you know, regular people, I think in terms of theatrical ecosystem, losing an independent 20th Century Fox that gave us 15 to 25 films of all shapes and sizes did more harm than anything else in the last five, six, seven years.
- [50:13]
B
Yeah.
- [50:13]
A
And if Amazon can continue and spoiler, the Sheep Detective might be the best major studio movie of the year so far. Um, and obviously Project Hail Mary did the thing and, like, I'm like, one of the least positive people of the movie because I really thought it was very good. So that will tell you on the, you know, the reception for that, if everybody can do their part to sort of replace Fox, and then if they have to do a little bit more to replace Warner Brothers, I think we'll be okay.
- [50:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, I. Look, if Netflix hops in there and is doing four to six tent poles a year and maybe two to three, you know, award season movies a year, that's a huge chunk of that of what was Lost. But we'll see. I don't know, maybe Narnia comes out and they, you know, they kind of sandbag it and they don't promote it enough. And it does, you know, 20 million bucks, and everybody's like, oh, see, we told you we can't put these things in theaters.
- [51:08]
A
And that's the other thing I'm concerned about. And again, I have not seen Narnia. Greta Gerwig is basically batting 1000 at this point. Quality wise, whether you think their movies are good or great, it's still, you know, positive. Again, she's three for Three on the tomato meter. Which does not mean that everybody thinks it's an A. It just means that everybody thinks at least. It's at least a 6 out of 10. There is a concern that Narnia is not good and it is merely an IP for the sake of IP, which, as we saw 20 years ago. 15. 20 years ago, the Narnia franchise was only viable with the first book, which is the one that everybody read in school. And after you move past the Chronicles of Wynne and the Witch, the Wardrobe, you are dealing with far less commercially viable books. And that this comes out and this plays basically the way that the fourth one, Forgive me, I don't know the name of it. Is it the fourth chair, or is it.
- [52:04]
B
There's Voyage of the Dawn Treader and
- [52:05]
A
then Magician's Nephew, maybe. I don't know.
- [52:09]
B
This is. This is. The Magician's Nephew is the one that she is doing okay.
- [52:12]
A
Yes.
- [52:13]
B
Which I believe is Magician Nephew second to last. It's like the. It's like the prequel basically, too.
- [52:17]
A
I think it's like the fourth book, but it's like the first in chronological order. So it's like if you did Tokyo Drift first. Yeah, that makes sense. If that comes out and only is as well received and well regarded and commercially successful as had that movie come out in, like, 2014 after the voyage of the Dawn Treader, which means, you know, it basically bombs because the interest in Narnia isn't there. And instead of being seen as a. Well, this would have bombed in the 2010s. Like running a man like Tron. Whatever. It's like, oh, no. Theatrical is doomed. Netflix was right. Yada, yada, yada. When it's like, more often than not then and now. It's the movie.
- [52:57]
B
Yeah, it's the movie. It's the movie, stupid. All right, Scott, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.
- [53:05]
A
You're very welcome. It's always a pleasure. Thank you for letting me ramble. If you, you know, if you severely edit down my ramblings, I will not hold it against you.
- [53:13]
B
No, no, it's okay. We love rambling here. I am a rambler myself, and my name is Sonny Bunch. I'm culture editor at the Bulwark. And we'll be back next week with another episode of the Bulwark Goes in Hollywood. See you guys.