Christopher Nolan Rips HBO Max as "Worst Streaming Service," Denounces Warner Bros.' Plan
To many insiders, WarnerMedia's blindsiding of talent and their reps with news that it would send 17 films directly to HBO Max in 2021 felt like an insult.
For many in the movie business â producers, directors, stars and their representatives â Dec. 3, 2020, is a day that will live in infamy.
âSome of our industryâs biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,â filmmaker Christopher Nolan, whose relationship with Warners dates back to Insomnia in 2002, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Added Nolan: âWarner Bros. had an incredible machine for getting a filmmakerâs work out everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak. They donât even understand what theyâre losing. Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction.â
On that now-infamous morning, Ann Sarnoff â whose ungainly title is chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group â and Warner Bros. film studio chairman Toby Emmerich called the heads of the major agencies to drop a bombshell: Warners was about to smash the theatrical window, sweeping its entire 17-picture 2021 film slate onto its faltering HBO Max streaming service, debuting them on the same day they would open in whatever theaters could admit customers.
Surprisingly to some in the industry, sources say the idea was the brainchild of Warner Bros. COO Carolyn Blackwood who, looking at a relatively weak 2021 slate, saw an opportunity to avoid the humiliation of potentially bad grosses while currying favor with streamer-obsessed higher-ups.
The instant response in Hollywood was outrage and a massive girding for battle. âWarners has made a grave mistake,â says one top talent agent. âNever have this many people been this upset with one entity.â Like others, he had spent much of the day dealing with calls from stunned and angry clients. And that swooshing sound you hear? Itâs the lawyers, stropping their blades as they prepare for battle: that Warners was self-dealing in shifting these movies to its own streamer, perhaps, or that the company acted in bad faith. Some talent reps say the decision affects not only profit participants but others who have worked on films as the move might affect residual payments. They expect and hope that the guilds will get involved. (The Writers Guild of America declined to comment.)
The Warners move poses big, maybe even existential questions: How do theaters survive this supposedly onetime, excused-by-the-pandemic move? Genies are hard to put back in the bottle â and no one believes Warners intended this to be temporary, anyway. What damage will be done to exhibitors by training customers that if they sit on their sofas, the biggest movies will come? And will Warners face serious backlash from important producers, filmmakers, guilds and onscreen talent? âWarners was the quintessentially talent-friendly, filmmaker-friendly studio,â says one agent. âNow Warners isnât the first place, second place or third place you want to go.â
Many in Hollywood think WarnerMedia opted for this drastic move to play to streaming-infatuated Wall Street and redo the botched launch of HBO Max, which has netted a dismal 8.6 million "activated" subscribers so far. But one prominent agent notes that the top executives at WarnerMedia and its parent â AT&T CEO John Stankey, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar and, of course, Sarnoff â âdonât understand the movie business, and they donât understand talent relations.â
While Kilar pays what is seen as lip service to movies, industry veterans say Warners is sacrificing the huge profit that comes from selling movies in multiple formats and on multiple platforms around the world.
Even before Warners made its play, there was grumbling among agents that Sarnoff, who has been on the job for more than a year, had yet to get acquainted with key players on the film side or make much of an impression at all. Thatâs why many are focusing their wrath on Emmerich. âTobyâs passion is only about managing up,â says one agent who represents major Warners talent.
By the weekend following the announcement, Emmerich was calling important filmmakers with projects set for 2022 to assure them that their movies wouldnât be dropped on the streaming service without warning. âAs if anyone would believe he had any control over the situation,â says one producer with a major Warner property. âToby probably had a really bad weekend, not that I feel bad for him,â says one agent.
According to a source, Emmerich tried to soothe In the Heights director Jon M. Chu by pointing out that the movie was still getting a âglobal theatrical release.â But industry insiders say the studio is pretending that pirates wonât pounce as soon as these films are streaming on HBO Max. As soon as one does, there's an âexcellent version of the movie everywhere immediately,â notes one industry veteran.
WarnerMediaâs decision to attack without warning may be understandable given the blowback that was foreseeable. But to many insiders, blindsiding talent and their reps seemed like an insult. Sources say studio president Courtenay Valenti was the only Warner exec who dared to speak up about the need to reach out to key creative partners, but she was quickly hushed.
Much of this outrage will surely be mitigated if WarnerMedia is prepared to write big checks to all the profit participants in the films that have been moved. âItâs a critical time for them, at the highest level, to make this right with the talent,â says one rep. But agents say the guidance thatâs been provided so far suggests that the company isnât planning to offer what is now called "Wonder Woman money," in honor of the rich deal the studio gave profit participants in Wonder Woman 1984 when that film was moved to HBO Max.
WarnerMedia had to shovel tens of millions at Gal Godot and the other key players because the company wants a third in the series. But that sets the bar high. Sources say even Suicide Squad director James Gunn, who is platform-agnostic, was not pleased when the studio followed its shocking announcement by floating a lackluster formula for compensating him and other profit participants in the film.
At minimum, WarnerMedia has opened the door to arduous negotiations with the major agencies over compensation for multiple profit participants in 17 movies. Did the Warners numbers crunchers, in projecting the cost of premiering its entire 2021 slate on HBO Max, factor in the cost of widely anticipated legal challenges? Industry insiders believe WarnerMedia may have opened itself up to those, especially as it is selling the movies to its own streaming platform when none of the profit participants has had a chance to figure out what Apple or Netflix might have paid for the opportunity to stream their projects day-and-date. Allegations of self-dealing are almost sure to follow.
Many think Legendary will be the first to file a legal challenge. The company fired off a previous lawyer letter after Netflix offered something north of $225 million for the rights to Godzilla vs. Kong, which has seen its release date moved from March 2020 to November to May 2021. Though Legendary financed 75 percent of the movie, Warners had the power to block the sale and did. Legendary asked whether the studio would then give it a deal to stream the movie on HBO Max â and got no clear answer until its executives woke up one December morning to find that the movie was going day-and-date on the service without the benefit of a negotiation. Legendaryâs even more expensive picture, Dune, is getting the same treatment. The other companies that finance Warners movies, Village Roadshow and Bron, are also said to be aggrieved parties that might end up going to court.
And then thereâs the talent. Dune director Denis Villeneuve is said to be among those who felt most strongly that a traditional big-screen release was essential for his film. Chu, who along with Lin-Manuel Miranda went through an intense courtship with multiple suitors for In the Heights and who had turned down a huge Netflix offer for Crazy Rich Asians because he cherishes the communal theatrical experience, told an associate he was âshell-shockedâ after being informed of the Warners decision.
Sources say WarnerMedia insiders have been hoping that Disney will follow its lead and shift its slate to streaming. But Disney, which had seven billion-dollar-grossing movies last year, isnât about to do that. Instead, it is moving some films to streaming, as it did with Hamilton and Artemis Fowl â likely Cruella and more â but an agent notes that the way Disney has handled the shift stands in stark contrast to what Warners has done. âThey didnât do a unilateral thing,â he says, adding that studio executives made pre-emptive calls to talent and their reps that helped smooth the process.
Itâs also worth noting that Disney+, which has dwarfed HBO Max in terms of subscribers, has gotten a lot of mileage out of one original hit, The Mandalorian, which is based on an iconic movie property. âThereâs never been a full-fledged franchise blockbuster launched on a streaming service,â observes an executive at a Warners competitor. âIt starts with theaters and it starts with opening weekend.â And so far, those blockbusters have been the ones that generated merchandise sales and theme-park attractions.
Warners doesnât have theme parks but it has reaped big benefits from movies that almost certainly would have been dropped onto HBO Max had the option been available at the time. Consider last yearâs megahit Joker. Film studio chief Emmerich was not a fan of the project; it was defended by worldwide marketing president Blair Rich, who was recently pushed out. Emmerich lowballed on the budget to discourage director Todd Phillips from making it, and when the filmmaker persisted, sold off half the movie. Joker then became a cultural phenomenon that grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide, was honored with 11 Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Would any of that have happened had Joker been dropped onto HBO Max?
Despite their assertions to the contrary, many industry insiders believe that neither AT&T chairman Stankey nor Kilar has much interest in the legacy movie business. Kilar has said this move was made for the fans and told CNBC, âIf we start our days and end our days focused on the customer, weâre going to lead the industry.â
That brings to mind a line in the new Netflix movie, Mank â a warning delivered to the upstart Orson Welles by grizzled veteran Herman Mankiewicz: âYou, my friend, are an outsider, a self-anointed savior-hyphenate. Theyâre just waiting to loathe you.â
It also leaves out a long-standing Hollywood maxim: Content is king. And content comes from artists who arenât always motivated purely by money. Says an agent who represents extremely important talent with business at Warners: âYou had a decades-long legacy as being known as the most talent-friendly studio. Now youâve gone from that to a studio that in starburst colors lit up a sign that says, 'We donât give a fuck about talent.ââ
Of course, any millionaire would protect their future worth. I'd do the same.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Anyway, I'm still watching new movies in the cinema. Its just a better eperience imo.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
Anyway, I'm still watching new movies in the cinema. Its just a better eperience imo.
Until you try Virtual Desktop in quest 2 VR
I tried it on my Odyssey plus. Its not quite there yet.
edit: Plus the cinema is usually a social experience since I'm usually going with a couple of friends, eating before the movie etc.
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment."
But the serious error in his argument is that the studio itself is dismantling an existing âincredible machineâ for bringing its filmmakersâ work to an audience â first in cinemas, and then later at homes. Itâs true that the machine is being dismantled, but the culprit is the pandemic. Ticket sales in the United States and Canada have fallen by three quarters since this time last year, and the annual global box office take is expected to be around a third of the 2019 figure.
What Warner Bros has done is made the first coherent, multi-film attempt to navigate the most brutal operational conditions the industry has faced in a century, and while it might be bad news for cinemas, itâs significantly less bad than any of the alternatives. One is to do a Disney, and simply divert the films to streaming outright, leaving those cinemas that can open with nothing to play until theyâve sorted out the problem for themselves.
Another is to do a Bond and keep postponing until the market can deliver the kind of audience turnout that would make the film a success by pre-Covid measures. The third is to do a Tenet â as Warner Bros did with, erm, Tenet in August. The result was a healthy enough global result under the direst imaginable circumstances, which Nolan should rightly take pride in â especially as the film, with its knotty, time-inverting plot, was an ambitious, polarising project. To date, Tenet has made $360 million worldwide: an extraordinary result, whatever anyone might claim.
But to do so, it had to effectively forego a meaningful release in the United States, where cinemas in major cities remain closed. And while that strategy might work for one or two films, for 17 it simply isnât sustainable. Purism is admirable, but a cold sharp dose of pragmatism is what's needed at this moment.
Anyway, I'm still watching new movies in the cinema. Its just a better eperience imo.
Used to be here. I prefer my own sound setup now. Every time I go to the theater (before covid hit) it's not even tuned right. It's just BLAST EVERYONE WITH ALL THE dB WE CAN MUSTER BEFORE BLOWING EARDRUMS LOUDNOISES!
So damn loud you can't even tell it's surround sound.
I've got a Dolby Atmos setup in my livingroom so unelsss it's a movie I wanna see on a massive screen, I'll just wait to watch it at home and save my hearing.
Would agree with that, but I also just dont feel they put much effort into 5.1+ in general. I can't remember the last time i've heard surround good enough to want it at home. I just go with high quality stereo headphones or speakers where i feel you get more value.
Ironically, Nolan films have great surround positioning. Batmans, Inception, Interstellarâexquisite details (except dialog in Interstellar). Also the Mission Impossible movies are well positioned.
Yeh fuck all the dilation of these services. It's all going to come crashing down imo. They're distaste for us pirates will grow in the next few years, I can't wait!
I do pay for Netflix and happy to do so for the ease of access to childrens content, but other than that fuck all that shite.
Yeh fuck all the dilation of these services. It's all going to come crashing down imo. They're distaste for us pirates will grow in the next few years, I can't wait!
I do pay for Netflix and happy to do so for the ease of access to childrens content, but other than that fuck all that shite.
Youtube vanced, smartube, smartube kids for youtube without ads on both mobile and firestick, any other Android based device.
Better quality children content on YouTube.
Badanamu
Super simple songs
Cocomelon etc etc etc.
Set up plex for cartoons and shit and you're set.
Youtube buys content from youtube creators to fill the kid content. But mostly its trash. They even have some public access kids content from some small town in butt fuck Georgia.
Your great grandkids will enjoy a single service streaming platform. One govt, one internet, one platform. We will never see it in our lifetime. But they will. Use plex before it becomes illegal.
I am a little surprised home entertainment systems haven't gone crazy over the last year similar to PC and consoles. Streaming services have enough good content to compliment even a basic sound bar and beyond at this point.
I finished setting up some acoustic panels in our media room the other day and we had the ending scene of Back to the Future 3 on as the train approaches the screen and my wife said holy shit that sounded good. It doesn't take much to setup a decent system anymore especially if you understand acoustics and room setup.
Yeh fuck all the dilation of these services. It's all going to come crashing down imo. They're distaste for us pirates will grow in the next few years, I can't wait!
I do pay for Netflix and happy to do so for the ease of access to childrens content, but other than that fuck all that shite.
Youtube vanced, smartube, smartube kids for youtube without ads on both mobile and firestick, any other Android based device.
Better quality children content on YouTube.
Badanamu
Super simple songs
Cocomelon etc etc etc.
Set up plex for cartoons and shit and you're set.
Youtube buys content from youtube creators to fill the kid content. But mostly its trash. They even have some public access kids content from some small town in butt fuck Georgia.
Your great grandkids will enjoy a single service streaming platform. One govt, one internet, one platform. We will never see it in our lifetime. But they will. Use plex before it becomes illegal.
Smart tube kids? Interesting. Going to try that out now thanks.
Yeh he's got Plex set up and plenty of shows there, but you know how kids like to watch other kids playing video games etc etc (if you don't, you will!)
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all the way
