Hello everyone,
Although there is no breaking news like there was last week, there was a few news items from the final week of August.
- According to reports, last Sunday on National Cinema Day there was quite a few fights outside of movie theaters. Including one in Southern California (Torrance), Northern California (Emeryville), Boston MA, Cicero Ill, Tukwila WA, Albany NY, and other places. Some people were thinking the fights had something to do with social media because some of the fights were shown on Tik Tok and other social media.
- For the first time EVER (I believe), “Oppenheimer” is AHEAD of “Barbie” in one area. It’s because “Oppenheimer” JUST OPENED in China this week (“Barbie” opened weeks ago) and made $5.4 million on its opening day. With the China box office, “Oppenheimer” may be the leading movie at the international box office this weekend.
- Movie theaters now have something to be happy about in October. This morning advance tickets for the Taylor Swift concert tour movie “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” went on sale and box office estimates $10 MILLION of advance tickets have ALREADY sold in the first few hours. The movie will open Oct 13 in all premium formats including IMAX, Dolby Vision, etc. So, if you know a Taylor Swift fan you should order tickets ASAP.
- No new meetings between the WGA and/or actors and the studios happened this week but some news sites are reporting that the studios are scrambling. The studio heads had a meeting this week to discuss what their next steps should be to resolve the strikes. They supposedly blamed each other about all the bad press they were getting. According to reports, they’ve hired a new PR firm to put a positive spin on the strikes but this week there was a Gallup poll said that most Americans think studios are the bad guys vs the writers (72% for writers) and the actors (67% for actors).
People are starting to get concerned that the strikes will last MONTHS longer. One website spoke to anonymous studio people who said that the strikes could end as soon as October or AS LATE AS 2024. They say if nothing is resolved by mid-November then it probably won’t be resolved until 2024 because not much gets done from Thanksgiving to Jan 2024 since a lot of studios executives are on holiday vacation. However, if nothing gets resolved until 2024, then there will be more 2023 4th quarter movies that movie to 2024 and spring 2024 movies will come out in summer 2024 because the summer movies haven’t finished filming yet. So, it will be a bleak holiday for everyone this year.
Another story was saying that studios should think about separating the movie studios with the streaming companies, although that will be very tough since the studios OWN the streaming services except for Netflix.
- One of the stupidest lawsuits in movie history is now done. A few people sued Universal because the preview for the movie “Yesterday” briefly showed actress Ana de Armas. The people suing claimed false advertising because she never appeared in the final movie. The lawsuit SHOULD have been thrown out earlier because previous trials dismissed the lawsuit, but they allowed the people suing to amend their complaints. This time, the judge said there is no more amending. The case is over.
- Although the movies have been pushed back the promotions for the movies are still being released because the magazine covers/interviews/etc are planned months in advance. First, there were some interviews with “The Marvels” director (the movie was originally scheduled for a July 28 release but now will be out in November). Now, there’s early promotion for “Dune Part 2” including an interview with the director – who mentioned there could be a part 3 – and cover photos/interviews with Florence Pugh and Austin Butler who are both in the movie. The movie was scheduled for early November but now it seems like an awful lot of promotion for a movie that doesn’t come out for over 6 months (March 15, 2024).
- There is a historic movie theater in Hollywood finally re-opening soon. Sorry, it’s NOT the Cinerama Dome. Netflix has spent several months remodeling the historic Egyptian Theater to make it the way it looked when it originally opened 101 years ago (in 1922) – except they added speakers of course. Now, the theater is set to reopen soon. When it opens the schedule will be the American Cinematheque (the non-profit that ran the theater before Netflix bought it in 2020) screenings on Friday – Sunday and Netflix will show their movies on Monday – Thursday.
Little bit of humor:
First there was the writers strike, then the actors strike, then it was recently announced that the VFX workers at Disney want to unionize, and then earlier today (August 31) at around 5pm PST ALL DISNEY/FX/ESPN CHANNELS WERE REMOVED FROM CHARTER/SPECTRUM CABLE because they haven’t come to an agreement yet. So, it really looks like DISNEY IS TRYING TO MAKE EVERYONE MAD.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 