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"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."
Would be more than happy to pay for early release similar to Mulan on Disney+ in order to maintain financial sustainability of the industry. Even before Covid I just didn't want to go to the theater anymore just like I don't want to go to the arcade to play video games.
Recent story: apparently, 80% of musicians earn less than $200 a month from streaming. That’s pretty brutal for almost everyone but a few at the top
Denis is right, releasing this on streaming at the same time as the theater release will probably kill it and any chance of the 2nd half happening.
Just in case someone doesn't read the full article, before you respond saying "wow, expects people to go to theatres in the middle of a pandemic":
> 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.
I've been looking forward to the movie and would have watched it in theatres once it was safe. I still intend to try even if it's streamed (I don't want to subscribe to another streaming service anyway), plus the experience of watching it in theatres is worth it for me.
Certainly empathetic to how he feels about this.
“ Science tells us that everything should be back to a new normal next fall.”
Science has a hard time predicting the weather. Trying to predict what the world will look like next fall is ambitious at best.
That's not a fair comparison...
Perhaps it could have been phrased better, but I think all he's trying to say is something to the tune of:
"by current estimates, scientists think the pandemic will be largely dealt with by next fall due to the efficacy + distribution of the vaccine, so the thing stopping us all from being together outside will probably go away, so we can finally go to the movies again"
I don't think it's an entirely unreasonable claim, but at the same time... I think he's just venting since he's (understandably) frustrated.
The new normal won't be normal. Sure we have a vaccine bug everyone will be afraid for the next pandemic which could be even worse than covid. The danger of pandemic will permanently alter how we operate as humans.
I sincerely doubt this. Behavior has hardly changed even in the middle of the pandemic. I expect it to revert back for the most part.
(It may have changed a lot for some demographics, or in some parts of the world, but I don't think the average has changed much... when cities opened up in the summer it was bustling and business as usual, even before a vaccine).
> The danger of pandemic will permanently alter how we operate as humans.
It never has before. It won't this time either.
The Black Death drastically altered how European society worked, playing a large part in the death of serfdom.
The other large scale pandemic that comes to mind was the Spanish flu, but that was during WW1 so it's hard to separate out any changes caused by it vs. WW1, and WW1 also did a lot to hide pandemic specific death rates reducing likely flu specific impact on society.
That said the relative brevity of the covid pandemic makes me doubt that there will be any large scale changes to society - I suspect it's mostly going to be the normalization of a lot remote work type things. There was already one article about snow days being replaced with remote learning, which was clearly possible years ago but needed the pandemic to become a plausible replacement, etc.