Sat on the end of Llandudno pier with a pint in the sun. There’s a pile of trawlers fishing here too.
The Dune part 2 release date is being put back to next year. Apparently the Hollywood strikes would mean that the actors would be unavailable to promote it. I’m assuming that would affect quite a few other releases?
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Watched Jesus Revolution (2023) on Netflix last night. Stars Kelsey Grammer and others. Subject is the Christian revival among hippies in the late 1960s. Was dubious going in but became captivated by it. Captures the spirit of the moment without proselytizing.
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The Ninja Turtles move did ok, but they claim the inability to have Rogan promoting it cost them about 10% at the box office as it prevented them marketing to what they thought was a sizeable audience of people with no interest in a Turtles movie but would have seen a generic Rogan and Goldburg film.
There are going to be a lot of films that get moved now
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Hidden Strike - Another one of those incredibly daft yet enjoyable films with the 2 leads buddying up to take down a common enemy.
Hold the Dark - Didn’t have a scooby doo what was going on, shit ending, too slow from the get go. Only realised after it was based off some novel….didn’t care much, it was shit.
Knock at the Cabin - intriguing concept that revealed its concept way too early and then did nothing more with it for the remaining hour. Just utterly pointless
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I’ve been seeing multiple stories about film companies deleting and writing off finished films against tax which has left me a bit perplexed as to the economics of it.
I can see that if you had an incomplete film project it may cost more to complete than you would ever recover in gross and profits and it would make economic sense to bin that rather than follow a sunk cost fallacy.
However there have been reports of finished projects simply being binned and even one (Disney’s Willow series) that was removed after release so that it could be written off against tax.
What are the accounting rules for films? Presumably even a very old film that is still being streamed or broadcast has a residual value but how is the original production cost set against tax?
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It is a mark for how fictional hollywood book keeping is. There are loads of stories of different movies that have taken in a billion over the various platforms yet due to the way the studio accounts for it the film can still be marked on their books as a loss.
I think the reason we’re seeing it more now is because the business model of most streaming platforms means that you cannot attribute revenue against any specific piece of content. So any item in a streamer’s library accounts for only a cost on their books (residuals to actors, writers etc). That makes them a lot more viable for these sort of accounting tricks than under previous business models.
This is also happening in the context of streamers losing billions a year in the rush to acquire subscribers (Wall st’s preferred metric in 2021) and then wall st flipping the script on them almost overnight to demanding real profitability. What you now see are several large companies with billions already spent on stuff they know cannot generate any accounting revenue, so they shelf it to take the big one time tax benefit to help make their books look better in the short term.
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I think the bigger point is that the streaming model worked when it was just Netflix existing in an environment of traditional (cable/satellite) linear TV and cinemas. In an environment where everyone is jumping in to distribute their content via streaming, the Netflix model doesn’t work for anyone anymore. Not even Netflix (hence the password crackdown and ad tier). I imagine the streaming landscape will look very different in 5 years than it did in 2021 before everyone woke up to this reality
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the reality of everything else that happens when it comes to web2.0. introduce gradually, create familiarity and usability at first (at the cost of profitability). Then, create dependence. Followed by a revenue stream. Finally once you have them hooked… you jack the price.
Refer to any street manual on drug dealing… it’s really not much different.
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This is a different issue though. This is not a bait and switch, or a hook and trap. It is companies responding to the medium in which they make their money dying a rapid death and not having
been able to find a business model that works in the new era.
Up until recently the concept of “streaming” has conveyed the idea of it being an on demand alternative to linear tv that does not require you to pay a bundled price for stuff you don’t want and allows you to avoid ads. That worked when streaming was the alternative and there were few real competitors to Netflix. Now it’s the default the equations have changed and the only way these legacy companies will make it work is to turn streaming into something that looks very much like linear TV, just without the hardware.
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but that was a simple switch for all of them. They all have streaming platforms now, and converted much of their programming into an on-demand catalogue
example, peacock.tv is NBC’s streaming platform.
Paramount has gone digital, sub service through Amazon I think?
It is anything but simple. Yes they all have streaming platforms now and have been pushed into that because their legacy business is dying. But they have lost billions trying to figure out how to make streaming a viable business for them. Disney Plus and Peacock were losing half to 3/4 of a billion a QUARTER through 2021 and there is no real expectation of being able to address that without shifting drastically away from the Netflix model they all launched with.
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awww… breaks my heart. meanwhile there’s multiple movie strikes going on. awwwww.
“Our results this quarter are reflective of what we’ve accomplished through the unprecedented transformation we’re undertaking at Disney to restructure the company, improve efficiencies, and restore creativity to the center of our business,” said Robert A. Iger, Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company. “In the eight months since my return, these important changes are creating a more cost-effective, coordinated, and streamlined approach to our operations that has put us on track to exceed our initial goal of $5.5 billion in savings as well as improved our direct-to-consumer operating income by roughly $1 billion in just three quarters. While there is still more to do, I’m incredibly confident in Disney’s long-term trajectory because of the work we’ve done, the team we now have in place, and because of Disney’s core foundation of creative excellence and popular brands and franchises
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I’m watching The Dark Knight for the first time since it was in the cinemas.
What the fuck were they thinking with the stupid voice they gave Batman? I looked it up online and it’s supposed to sound more “demonic” but it just sounds like some old twat In Wetherspoons who has been smoking sixty a day and been on the shorts for the last forty years.
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Christian Bale can only do two voices.
Surprisingly l one of the best movies I have seen this year
Don’t watch the trailer (it gives away too much). Good blend of action, humour and heart.
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The first one recieved a lot of praise so i am really surprised the second hasnt had much fanfare yet.
For me its a far better movie than the first !
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The second one recieved quite a bit of praise as well. I liked the first one more though mainly because the animation was truly ground breaking. A love message to comic book fans all the way through
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