This isn’t just a Disney issue, it is happening across the board (The Flash.) A report was released in March stating that the attendance was 35% down from pre-pandemic levels and falling. The studios don’t want to face the issue, or highlight it in the media, that people aren’t going to the theaters, at least enough to make it profitable for both studios and theaters.
Tom Cruise is out there now (recent media blitz) to try and get butts in seats. Good luck. I think Covid opened the door, much like working at home did for workers, to watching movies via streaming…at home.
@rodneyck @echoplex21 It’s a serious problem, and the studios aren’t doing themselves any favors by thinking that it’s superhero movies that are keeping the audiences out of the theaters:
https://fanfare.pub/its-the-end-of-movie-theaters-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine-a57302aa3f94
Indiana Jones cost almost $300 million?! Where did they spend all that money?
Apparently a lot of the movie was filmed during Covid and added safety protections greatly increased the cost. Also Ford got hurt a couple times rehearsing and performing fights. The man’s 80 years old so it’s no surprise they were trying to be extra careful with him.
The (admittedly really well done) de-aging for the opening sequence also could not have been cheap.
Unlike how The Irishman did it, they filmed the scenes with a young Ford lookalike, then CGI’d young Ford’s face on him.
Tbf the CGI Harrison Ford is crazy impressive
But yeah most of that budget got sunk into tooooo many action sequences. Dragged like crazy. I bet you could cut like 30 minutes of action footage and end up with a better paced movie.
Kathleen Kennedy had an incredibly respectable career but clearly needs to go. She worked better with Spielberg and Lucas.
Alan Horn should have stepped down 5 years earlier. Bergman is not off to a great start. He needs some big wins in the next couple of years or he needs to go too.
Even Feige is fading.
They desperately need some fresh innovative thinking at the top.
Feige probably wants Bergman’s job but I’d move him over to Kennedy’s job for 5 years and make him prove himself over there first. That’d give him a fresh challenge. Lucasfilm and he both need the reboot.
For Marvel, Disney had James Gunn but they botched it with the termination which lead him to DC. He was the perfect person to build up the next phase of the MCU and GOTG3 is by far the best movie released since Endgame (as much as I enjoyed No Way Home).
I think they were hoping for Taika to be the next one up but Love & Thunder may have put a damper on things.
It’s hard to know whether L&T was Taika’s flub or the studio’s. Either way, you’re right, it’s bad for his prospects.
Then again, I’m not sure I see him as having the needed business acumen/savvy. Seems like Favreau and Johnson are maybe better equipped leaders in that way. Whedon would have worked too, if he hadn’t have tuned out to be such a turd.
@MrDetermination @echoplex21 Sometimes I think Taiki was born in the wrong era. Movie studios used to be more supportive of iconoclastic filmmakers than there are now. Then again, when the budgets for movies keep escalating, corporate bean counters like Zaslav get nervous.
I think everyone is tired of the rehashing of move characters. I would rather see something completely new than just another remake or reboot of a movie or TV show I seen tons of times.
This times a million. Disney isn’t putting out anything interesting. They play it too safe
They have nothing new, and have tortured the old standby’s to death. My god, that Indy movie is just a fucking mess. Kennedy keeps shooting these properties in the fucking head with her politics. Nobody wants to listen to the preaching anymore.
@ikidd @echoplex21 The politics aren’t the problem. Across the Spider-Verse is “woke” as hell and its on the fast track to be the most successful movie ever made. What happened to Indiana Jones is the same thing that happened to the James Bond franchise. What was innovative back then is the same old same old now. Bond got left behind by contemporary spys like Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt and The Gentlemen. Indy got left behind by action thrillers like The Fast and The Furious and John Wick.
What does politics have to do with it? Wth?
It’s just shitty filmmaking.
