The Warner Bros. Thread | Will NOT merge with Paramount...capitalism is still terrible

[Ryan Reynolds]

isn't there still an Oscar rule that movies have to play in theaters first?

[DeeCee]

HBO Max won’t come to Australia for around 5 years. All HBO content is on FOXTEL here. 

[lorddemaxus]

I don't see WB really going with this for the whole year. Maybe for the first half of the year where they have no big releases. But I believe we'll see Suicide Squad, Dune, and Matrix 4 get proper theatrical releases.

[filmlover]

Aside from The Batman, does WB have anything else being made right now that hasn't essentially been turned into a pandemic-impacted throwaway?

[lorddemaxus]

8 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Aside from The Batman, does WB have anything else being made right now that hasn't essentially been turned into a pandemic-impacted throwaway?

FB 3 lol.

[TMP]

45 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Aside from The Batman, does WB have anything else being made right now that hasn't essentially been turned into a pandemic-impacted throwaway?

Flash: Into the Batverse

[antovolk]

1 hour ago, DeeCee said:

HBO Max won’t come to Australia for around 5 years. All HBO content is on FOXTEL here. 

And everyone needs to remember that sorting out HBO MAX in country X is only half the battle. (And hell will it matter anyway as they can always go PVOD or already have partners like Foxtel whom they can take the films to if they want SVOD)

 

They need to actually convince (or have the balls to do what they did last night in the US) the chains to go along with this.

 

In the UK, they seemingly managed to negotiate a shortening of the window to 1 month as a "COVID Emergency Window" for WW84...

[lorddemaxus]

1 hour ago, DeeCee said:

HBO Max won’t come to Australia for around 5 years. All HBO content is on FOXTEL here. 

If they reach the goals they're expecting, they'll likely just buy out most international deals. They'll have a lot more leverage to do so.

Edited December 4, 2020 by lorddemaxus

[TLK]

I'm certain they are doing this to boost HBO MAX in the short term and they'll revisit this decision in 6 months. It makes no sense to leave so much revenue on the table permanently.

[ThomasNicole]

Honestly i don´t see they changing this,, they could easily announced this model just for the first six months of the year, but they announced for the whole year very aware of what this means and it´s probably the biggest news of the year in Hollywood, they can´t just give up now.

 

What they can do is change for specific movies, the biggest ones (Dune, TSS and The Matrix). But aside from those, they will do exactly what they announced.

 

And exhibitors won´t have the final word anymore, it´s a fact, the old release model is dead. They can decide to put a big movie like TSS to debut exclusively on theaters, but maybe just for 4-6 weeks before release it on HBO Max.

 

Let´s wait WW84 results, if turns out to be a success, we can only wait because other studios will do something similar for some movies on the first half of 2021, but probably with more caution than promisse their entire year for streaming.

[lorddemaxus]

It's so odd that the idiots at AT&T and Warner didn't wait just two more weeks to see how WW84 is doing. Putting my personal vendetta against this decision aside, they're making a very risky decision without any data point to prove that it would be a success. What if the very odd release timeline for each movie doesn't work? What if no one watches these big movies because they can't tell the difference between HBO and HBO Max? What if this means alienating OS audiences (who might not care when sequels to these movies release)?

 

As others have said, it seems like they did this so that get ahead of Disney's announcements next week. 

Edited December 4, 2020 by lorddemaxus

[filmlover]

This doesn't seem any less insane today than it did yesterday lol. It was one thing renegotiating backend deals for Patty and Gal for Wonder Woman, but the fact they'll now likely have to do that for like 20 movies? And they'll have to do that unless their goal is to guarantee no one in the industry will ever work for them again.

[excel1]

All of these releases were going to flop due to their terrible release dates

[Maggie]

1 hour ago, filmlover said:

 unless their goal is to guarantee no one in the industry will ever work for them again.

I'm afraid streaming will be the standard, so talent will have no problem working with WB.

 

I knew something was wrong when even DiCaprio went to Netflix

[Avatree]

1 hour ago, filmlover said:

This doesn't seem any less insane today than it did yesterday lol. It was one thing renegotiating backend deals for Patty and Gal for Wonder Woman, but the fact they'll now likely have to do that for like 20 movies? And they'll have to do that unless their goal is to guarantee no one in the industry will ever work for them again.

Why would actors/directors not work for a studio because of this?

 

Netflix does not get box office backend but they manage to make good enough deals with "talent" to get some serious A-listers.

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Avatree

[YM!]

1 hour ago, excel1 said:

All of these releases were going to flop due to their terrible release dates

Not really, most were pretty solid (Matrix 4 for Christmas, ITH for late June, TSS for August, most of their films), the only one with a not good release date was arguably Space Jam 2. If they flop it’s due to other circumstances or the streaming hybrid.

Edited December 4, 2020 by YourMother the Edgelord

[WittyUsername]

Just now, YourMother the Edgelord said:

Not really, most were pretty solid (Matrix 4 for Christmas, ITH for late June, TSS for August, most of their films), the only one with a not good release date was arguably Space Jam 2. If they flop it’s due to other circumstances.

@excel1 wanted The Batman to be released in December. 

[filmlover]

29 minutes ago, Avatree said:

Why would actors/directors not work for a studio because of this?

 

Netflix does not get box office backend but they manage to make good enough deals with "talent" to get some serious A-listers.

 

WB and Netflix are two very different studios that operate differently. When you sign up for a Netflix project, there's a backend deal that makes up for the fact that it won't be a traditional release. With WB, the expectation is that the movie will be a big theatrical release with box office numbers reported and are expected to get a portion of that money. Any changes in those plans would require contract renegotiations most of the time, and given that it's reported that the people involved in these 16 movies that have now had their release plans altered didn't know what would happen until yesterday, it's safe to say they will have to.

Edited December 4, 2020 by filmlover

[Hangman]

3 hours ago, lorddemaxus said:

It's so odd that the idiots at AT&T and Warner didn't wait just two more weeks to see how WW84 is doing. Putting my personal vendetta against this decision aside, they're making a very risky decision without any data point to prove that it would be a success. What if the very odd release timeline for each movie doesn't work? What if no one watches these big movies because they can't tell the difference between HBO and HBO Max? What if this means alienating OS audiences (who might not care when sequels to these movies release)?

 

As others have said, it seems like they did this so that get ahead of Disney's announcements next week. 

 

Maybe they already know how its doing.  When they announced WW84 was going to HBO Max, they probably saw a massive amount of new subscriptions.

[HouseOfTheSun]

Disney has a worldwide service. Not every country ofc but the major ones have been covered. They can realistically pull it off. And now they don’t get the negative PR of being the first to “kill theaters”. 
 

business wise I think it’s the right move. PR wise they just played into the hand of their rival I think.