Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

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willoneill
Joined: Wed Mar 18, 2009 10:10 am
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#351 Post by willoneill » Fri Dec 11, 2020 1:32 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Fri Dec 11, 2020 1:10 pm
Well, let’s be real, he just made sure it dies by writing this open letter...
Nah, WB had already killed the sequel when they announced day and date, because now there's no way Dune will generate enough revenue to break even just on international and ancillary sales. Therefore, no sequels were going to be greenlit anyway.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#352 Post by Monterey Jack » Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:21 am

Why they didn't pursue Dune as a high-end TV series in the first place is beyond me. In a post-Game Of Thrones world, the place for a sprawling, convoluted 1,000-page sci-fi novel is on the small screen, not presented piecemeal in theaters.

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colinr0380
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#353 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:17 am

That reminds me that I would like to see the 2000 SyFy Channel mini-series at some point, especially since that managed to get to a second series combining Dune Messiah and Children of Dune too.

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whaleallright
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#354 Post by whaleallright » Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:34 am

Monterey Jack wrote:
Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:21 am
Why they didn't pursue Dune as a high-end TV series in the first place is beyond me. In a post-Game Of Thrones world, the place for a sprawling, convoluted 1,000-page sci-fi novel is on the small screen, not presented piecemeal in theaters.
Especially since Villeneuve likes to make movies where even the simplest exposition takes up as much screen time as a Warner Bros programmer from 1934.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#355 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:09 pm

Audio of Tom Cruise exploding at MI:7 crew on set for violating Covid protocols is floating around (you can listen here) and it's the first time one of these leaks has made the screamer look great and totally in the right. Well worth a listen, and a reminder why I love Tom Cruise (and proof against the doubters of his empathy).

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#356 Post by Rayon Vert » Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:44 pm

It sounds like he's screaming through a mask! :D I love him too.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#357 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:46 pm

Oh yeah, that was the first thing I noticed. I imagine that's (at least part of) what he's yelling at people for not doing

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swo17
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#358 Post by swo17 » Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:59 pm

The article says the people were just not standing far enough apart

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#359 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:14 pm

I see that now, though the audio made it sound like this was not the first time safety etiquette had been addressed on set

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#360 Post by Monterey Jack » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:27 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:14 pm
I see that now, though the audio made it sound like this was not the first time safety etiquette had been addressed on set
Yeah, Cruise's outburst had a "Last Straw" edge to it. When there's THIS much money and effort on the line -- especially in an industry as beleaguered as Hollywood is at the moment -- a screaming fit like this is entirely justified. I know that I'd be infuriated if I were on that production's crew, and learned that filming was shutting down and I was out a paycheck because of some idiot not following protocols. Cruise is speaking for everyone involved.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#361 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:34 pm

He's also gone above and beyond to support the crew (the article mentions shelling out a ton of personal money for a ship to house the crew on) so I'm sure it's personal as well, but this is a sobering reminder that with power comes responsibility and even if Cruise is the face of certain institutions people scoff at, he takes on this kind of responsibility with empathy and clearly internalizes its weight. I've come around to believe that sometimes the most confident people can see peripherally and truly focus on others while the rest of us get stuck with some handicapped self-pity, and I genuinely believe Tom Cruise is a good person who came from a rough spot and has certain abilities to access compassionate external attention I can only dream of attaining.

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domino harvey
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#362 Post by domino harvey » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:37 pm

His name is already Tom Crews, what more do they want from him

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colinr0380
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#363 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:04 am

I forgot who said it now (I think it might have been a comment on the Guardian site) but back when Tom Cruise made that unannounced visit to a London cinema to watch Tenet with an audience at the end of the first lockdown and put the video of the visit up online it was mentioned that of course Cruise would be the first person back in cinemas and celebrating their re-opening because they are absolutely vital to the kind of film (the Mission: Impossible films particularly) that he makes: big action spectacles that work to their fullest extent on a giant (preferably IMAX) screen with a big audience. If cinema-going disappears that is kind of the end of a certain kind of spectacle-driven cinema and maybe even Cruise's career as one of the last non-comic book film 'old Blockbuster' megastars (one who headlines their own material rather than 'just' being an, albeit important star name, ensemble contract player under Marvel or DC), or at least it would be difficult to imagine him taking a deal with Netflix for a mini-series, no matter how lavishly budgeted.

So while it was probably wrong to have that kind of outburst at people who, wearing a mask or not and too close together looking at a monitor, probably didn't deserve quite so much of a haranguing, I can kind of see where Cruise was coming from in being at that snapping point due to having a lot riding on his current production and a lot of things completely out of his control, such as the virus itself, which likely only makes a reaction to those moments where you feel like you can control things more extreme. Its probably telling that in that provided transcript (as with the Christian Bale rant, I couldn't listen to much of Cruise's one. I still do occasionally watch that David O. Russell I Heart Huckabees one just to marvel at the way that even in full flow he still blocks out the space, leaving the room by one door, still ranting, only to in perfect timing burst back in through another one!) that he's talking so much about the big corporations and needing to prove to them that production, let alone eventual theatrical distribution, is still a viable thing to do. Which perhaps shows that some of these issues are weighing heavily on him, more than the crew goofing off regarding masks.

I must admit that I don't envy being a crewmember on any film right now, hearing about all of the mandatory daily swabbings and things like that which have to go on. And for people in the crew who are presumably in the most precarious economic positions of all I do think it was a bit bad of Cruise to casually threaten people with getting fired, especially at this current time. But then I am only hearing a tape of someone ranting and a transcript so who knows if the couple of people were actually involved in a passionate, intimate embrace at the monitor or something and that's why they had their masks down in a completely unprofessional manner.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#364 Post by Rayon Vert » Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:37 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:04 am
And for people in the crew who are presumably in the most precarious economic positions of all I do think it was a bit bad of Cruise to casually threaten people with getting fired, especially at this current time.
But by their actions those two crew members were jeopardizing the jobs of many of their colleagues and beyond.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#365 Post by Monterey Jack » Wed Dec 16, 2020 1:08 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Wed Dec 16, 2020 10:37 am
colinr0380 wrote:
Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:04 am
And for people in the crew who are presumably in the most precarious economic positions of all I do think it was a bit bad of Cruise to casually threaten people with getting fired, especially at this current time.
But by their actions those two crew members were jeopardizing the jobs of many of their colleagues and beyond.
^ This. It only takes one distracted/careless employee to potentially cripple an entire movie production. It's a lesser-of-two-evils moment where you sometimes have to bawl out and threaten to let go one or two employees to ensure that hundreds of others will still have a job.


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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#367 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 16, 2020 5:00 pm

I can see an argument for a bit of hypocrisy to Cruise's rant, since by insisting on doing his own stunts, he puts everyone's jobs in jeopardy more than a star who may let the stunt man do more of that legwork, for if/when he fucks up, there's no replacement for Tom Cruise. Still, that doesn't minimize that, right now, the industry is in a very fragile place and this virus has humbled many of us in shifting our perspectives to realize what we often took for granted before are gifts to be grateful for. My guess is that Cruise has been feeling extra pressure lately, and given how much of a leader he is on both these films and, now, in this Covid-safety manager role, I can't imagine he hasn't had multiple check-in meetings with the crew already, beyond whatever in-the-moment reminders were said. This is probably a speech he's given countless times at this point, just proactively, and now it comes out retroactively with fury. Everyone has their own triggers, but not being listened to and feeling like you're wasting your breath repetitively with invalidation, especially when that carelessness affects others' health, livelihood, and micro and macro futures, seems like a pretty fair and universal one in its roots.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#368 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Dec 16, 2020 5:31 pm

I never would have guessed there were 6 Mission Impossible films in existence.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#369 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Dec 16, 2020 5:39 pm

That sounds like an impossible mission

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#370 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 16, 2020 5:55 pm

They keep getting better too (well, the last one wasn't as good as 4 or 5, but better than the first trio) so I have high hopes for the franchise. Seems like Bond where anything is possible.

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knives
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#371 Post by knives » Wed Dec 16, 2020 6:07 pm

I actually thought the most recent one was the best since the original. It’s entertaining with layers.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#372 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:02 pm

I can appreciate that opinion, it's certainly close enough, though I find the others to be plenty layered. I've come around to really not liking the first De Palma installment though. The second one is worse, for sure, but barely- and I think I enjoy III more than most, so it's all uphill from there.

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knives
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#373 Post by knives » Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:08 pm

I really adore III which I find to be the best in the series on a pure entertainment level. The first just uses DePalma’s ticks in all the right ways for me that I can’t help but grin in delight. I think it also effectively takes up Goldeneye’s challenge of what to do with the spy genre in a world without the Soviets.

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senseabove
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#374 Post by senseabove » Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:09 pm

I still love the first one, but that's probably because it's one of the first "adult" (i.e. PG-13) movies I was allowed to watch and I watched it repeatedly as an adolescent. I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with puberty or Tom Cruise in tight black t-shirts then. But it still gives me the warm fuzzies, and I was surprised how many frames and bits were still seared in my brain when I watched it for the first time in decades last year. I've been working through the rest since then, and I'd agree that 3 probably had the most embrace-the-ridiculousness enjoyment factor for me, but they're all fun in different ways. I found 5 to be a bit weaker, but it also felt like McQuarrie was playing the hits, with lots of echoes of the first movie, and dumping some baggage in preparation for taking it somewhere new, so it oddly made me anticipate 6 more, which I still need to get around to. I'll never be able to get over the scriptwriters not making Hunt/Cruise say "I came for the waters" when a woman named Ilsa asks him why he came to Casablanca, though.
Last edited by senseabove on Wed Dec 23, 2020 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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knives
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Re: Coronavirus' Effect on the Entertainment Industry

#375 Post by knives » Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:26 pm

Number 6 continues to play with the idea of a Mission:Impossible movie, but entirely through tone. It starts DePalma and ends Bird.

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