f13.net

May 2020.

Teaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxAtuMu_ph4

Looks pretty cool.  I’m in.

I got a bit of a Winter Soldier vibe and it has Taskmaster. I'm in.

I hope this makes like 10 trillion dollars and Disney is like "Huh, maybe we shouldn't have killed her off and waited so long to give her a solo movie..."

I guess? Didn't really grab me. I've never thought she was all that interesting a character in the comics either simply because they could never go beyond recycling her core story: "Maybe she will betray the male character she is presently being friendly to! Maybe she has a secret she is not telling!" Like, when they dropped the bomb that the Black Panther had been spying on the Avengers, that was surprising and interesting. With Black Widow, the question is really: when is she not spying/double-crossing/etc. Which is a great question of characters in a spy millieu, but when they cross into a non-spy story, at some point, it makes them one-note.

It is only a few seconds but the action seemed punchier than usual for marvel.

I'm a little disappointed they don't seem to want to vary the formula even a little for a character like this who could have an obvious low risk James-Bond-but-a-girl approach instead. OTOH the trailer screams 'but hey look we're really good at doing this exact thing' so sure why fuck around with what works.

She only died its not like she can't get better.

Too little to tell... the small sample seemed a bit random.  It gave me the vibe of a sitcom spinoff where a character you've seen for 8 years suddenly reveals they have a bunch of friends in another city that you've never seen before, but that they consider family...

The trailer didn't excite me enough to get over the major MCU fatigue I have right now.

I don't think you guys are giving the gal who was the Asian Black Panther enough credit.

never ever going to happen

If anything being a prequel for a dead character is going to lower interest.

Yeah this movie should struggle in theory, probably depends on the excitement level just to see something MCU related that may build up if this is the first MCU film of 2020? But again prequels are fucking lame as hell. Super disappointing that this is the Widow solo flick we get.

In the scheme of the MCU this doesn't matter, but this looks like what I would want out of a black widow movie.

It could eventually matter in the MCU if they have Florence Pugh go on to be the new Black Widow in future movies (which still isn't likely to increase the box office grosses on this of course).

I'm betting this does matter for the MCU ... I bet we hear the word Thunderbolts will likely begin in this film and carry forward for Phase 4 and 5.

You know, that's not a bad thought--imagine Red Guardian as the first Thunderbolt, Zemo from Civil War, Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, etc.--not so much "the villains are heroes, whoops it's a trick" as "covert ops team that could turn on the good guys at any moment". I bet they're waiting to see what Suicide Squad directed by Gunn looks like so they can go with a different tone to whatever he does.

I've had this since before the second Avengers. I just don't care about any of these anymore.

Switched to watching on TV around then. They are still good, but TV good.

What is your best guess on th new release date? I'm going with July 2, 2020 - and the release will be a digital home release, not theaters.

No idea. Even working for a theater chain, Black Widow's release date is the least of my concerns.

...but it is still a concern.

Focusing on the virus for too much of your day is unhealthy.

That is... not a great job to be in right now. My block of homes has 2 affordable housing units with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, owned by the city, haven't been filled for the 3 years they own them.

So it seems to me you could... just stop doing work.

I mean even in specific regards to movies, it's not really an immediate concern. There's going to be a lag time regardless between when there's a clear date when theaters (and everything else will reopen) and when studios start releasing new movies. Studios are going to have to ramp up marketing and such, and reorganize all their release calendars. Mulan was supposed to come out a few days ago, so that would probably be Disney's first priority.

Is it possible they'd just release Black Widow on VOD? Sure, but it'll get pirated like fuck within 2 hours of releasing. I don't think Disney really needs to rush it out to release.

Honestly the bigger concern is that if things go on too long, some (most, all?) theater chains might not survive long enough to reopen. You can see that AMC furloughed everyone including the CEO. Cinemark already laid off all the theater staff and announced deeper cuts today along with the CEO and board of directors giving up their pay. Regal laid off all their theater staff. Not sure where they're at with their corporate people. So yeah, Black Widow release date not really the priority at the moment.

Alamo set aside $2m to pay all their employees through this. They're willing to set aside more.

$2,000,000 across the entire staff (and 80% of their corporate people who are also out of work) isn't going to last all that long.

The existing owners might go bust but the theatre itself would be an asset that doesn't go away even if the company folds.

The real question is what happens if people are unwilling to go to theatres on account of them being dingy enclosed spaces where other people with dubious hygenie standards gather.

Once this shit is over, I'm going to be really happy to go to a movie theater where I can have someone else bring me food and drinks while I watch a movie on a screen that's bigger than my house.  Which reminds me, I need to buy a Drafthouse gift certificate.

She didn't just die.  She got older.  That is something Hollywood rarely, if ever, overlooks in a female actress.

If it was going to get a home release they wouldn't have changed the date.

They had to change the date while they figured out what to do. Just taking it off the schedule gave them time to plan.  The question is what can they do?  They can either delay the entire MCU (including Disney plus, which is pushing Marvel new products as a way to pull in new subscribers), present this out of order with the Marvel films (there is evidence BW sets up F&WS), or release it a bit later on home release.  If you look at the Sony release changes and what the Chinese basketball leagues are doing as indicators, I do not think Disney will have a movie in theatres until the holidays.

So - push everything 8 months, sacrifice the Widow movie to PPV to keep things on track for an only slightly delayed Disney+ Schedule (yes, we all know it is already delayed some), or allow the interconnectivity of the Disney+ and movies to potentially cause issues, incuding F&WS potentially spoiling events of BW.

So push everything seems to be the answer so far - Black Widow is now taking the original Eternals slot in November - 6 months later, and all the other films are being pushed one slot, it seems.

I'm betting we get Winter Soldier in October.

But that's still in the Fall.

We will be in the "second wave' lockdown in the fall/winter so they should  just release this shit on PPV and take the loss.

A lot of people are gambling a lot of money on there not being a second wave shut down.  The NFL, big movies, etc... 

However, as we have a vaccine in human trial, and you can bet that some people are going to get the vaccine before it completes human trials, the gambles the rich are willing to push for may get more agressive as time goes by....

July 9th:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp9pNPdNwjI

20 minutes in, my overriding thought is...

'You liked the Bourne movies huh?'

I liked it overall, was bugged by some of the shit she survived but the action was good. Florence Pugh and the rest of her family were all great.

Action is really good. Like almost all marvel films the last third felt weird and disconnected and lost some of the threat and physicality that rest of the film had.

It is a real shame this movie wasn't made earlier. Not least as it might have helped avoid the shoddy way she was treated in the avengers movies.

This movie is oof.

I'm a huge Pugh fan and this is just like, somewhere above Thor 2 and somewhere below like infinity war

It's not great

Theater I watched it at was maybe 30% full, and they had the same person selling popcorn and checking tickets.

Movie was pointless, not sure why it was made. Curious.

It's the intro / origin story for one of the Young Avengers (Yelena).

Thinking Thunderbolts for her more likely than Young Avengers.

Please tell me you're not saying this movie is filled with shitty Bourne-style shakey-cam. I want to see this, not least because I want to support female super hero movies but if it has action I can't follow because the camera man is having seizures I'll give it a pass.


Do you think it's because of this movie? Or has Covid just really put the nail in the coffin for theater attendance? Especially when people can pay $30 and just watch it at home? I'm genuinely curious. I personally am thinking I might never go to a movie theater again unless it's a big event movie I am dying to see. (Basically Avengers or something akin to the Lord of the Rings movies.)

First half has a lot of shaky cam. Not quite Bourne levels but it is the look they are going for.

Later on it switches to the standard marvel look.

It was fun. The point of all Marvel movies is fun.

The later, if anything could bring people back to theaters it should have been an MCU movie. I'm a big GI Joe fan and now I think the Snake Eyes movie coming out next month is going to bomb hard, and that might kill the entire franchise unlike Black Widow.

I suspect it hasn't helped that Black Widow has been positioned as a second tier character over the course of a decade, and that her primary defining characteristic in avengers 1 and 2 was her love interests.

This movie needed to be made after avengers 1.

The post credits scene confirms this as explicitly as it possibly could.

Why not both? I.e, manipulated at the start by Zemo and switches to the Young Avengers when she learns the full picture of what happened / what’s going on?

Mostly because an assassin trained from childhood doesn't fit as well into the Young Avengers who are generally a naïve group just coming into their powers/abilities. Yelena fits in much better with people like U.S.Agent or Zemo.

Yeah, I'm thinking Yelena is not for Young Avengers at all, unless maybe as a late-show mentor. That post-credits scene definitely confirms Thunderbolts in some fashion.

I dug this. It wasn't perfect, the final third had a whole lot of crazy shit that they all survived that they really shouldn't have. Ray Winstone's villain was ok, but I couldn't help but be distracted by his accent/manner of speech switching from Bad Boris to a Sopranos cast member and all points in between, sometimes within the same line of dialogue. I like him, but this was barely "look offscreen to see if the check is here yet" level of acting.

The opening sequence was better when Matthew Rhys and Kerri Russel did it. The last third was disjointed.

It was still a not-horrible ride.

I thought it was fine with a few scenes of really good character work/humor. Mid-tier MCU fare that should have been slotted in before Infinity.

Heh, I actually thought when The Americans did it, it was morose and badly done. The previous 5 seasons or so made up for it.

So Black Widow = rich as fuck but Falcon = broke ass?

It was fine? I enjoyed the middle of the film the most--the character work was best in that part.

I was very disappointed in Taskmaster--that might be the worst comic-to-screen adaptation they've done in the MCU so far. Totally missed the fun and point of that character. A serious, serious waste.

I'm really unclear at this point about the super-spy/great powers landscape of the MCU between the 1980s-whenever it is that Captain America woke up and shit started happening (seemingly).

I also am seriously seriously disliking Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character, who is definitely not the super-sexy Contessa who was Nick Fury's main squeeze for a long time in the comics. She's just damn annoying. Seems obvious at any rate that she's the Thunderbolts' version of Nick Fury circa Iron Man 1 or so. Fine. She's just kinda annoying.

Assuming Alexei wasn't just crazy or exaggerating about fighting Cap, it's possible there were additional attempts at a replacement Cap, or the Steve Rogers that went back in time to stay with Peggy Carter managed to stay in the same timeline, and was occasionally active in secret. Winter Soldier was activated when needed. SHIELD (and by extension Hydra) were around. I assume T'Chaka would have been the active Black Panther at the time. The Red Room would have been around as Melina said she had been cycled through multiple times, presumably starting as a child. Magicians would have been around, and the whole 10 Rings thing sounds like it's been around for a bit.

Until Tony Stark came along it just seems like everyone was better at keeping their shit out of the public eye.

I thought they were just riffing on how there are so many various timelines of shit in the movies and comics that no one can keep it all straight any more.

Alexi didn't fight cap. He was already in jail when Cap defrosted. They said that explicty. He was making stuff up to fit his delusions  and the other prison inmates called him on it.

He was presumably created as a soviet answer to Cap's activity in the 1940s. Hence the obsession.

It's very noticeable that nobody is a super sexy anything now.

Pugh's introduction is miles away from the 'how can we make Scarlet Johansson bend over a lot and get a lingerie shot' approach of IM2.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has never been allowed to look her age in anything since Seinfeld.

Ultimately her character is going to live or die by how competent she appears in the movies she is an actual character in. I can't say I have any strong feelings based on the three scenes she has had so far.

IM2? there was constant blatant lingering ass shots of SJ in THIS movie.

I would imagine the explanation is that Sam got all his money either from his parents or from being in the military, while Natasha got her money from some SHIELD/Fury slush fund.

Anyway I liked the movie. I guess we won't be seeing Ursa Major in any upcoming movie.  :ye_gods: :why_so_serious:

Relevant

(http://static8.bytecolumn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/avengers_backpose.jpg)

this is the third worst marvel movie

-

sir t, what's the point of posting that

it's not actually relevant given the amount of beefcake in the mcu

also, that's america's ass tyvm

(oh i see, lots of comments about scarletts ass - ugh, whatever, she's not a very good actress / don't cast her if you ain't doing that - I'm not willing to pretend the first rule of the MCU isn't "be attractive, look how much work they put into professor hulk, like damn)

Given the source material of comic book movies, I'd like to think both the MCU and the DCEU movies have been positively restrained when it comes to overt and ridiculous over-sexualization of female characters. I'm more troubled by the rape-y bits of the body-swapping in Wonder Woman 1984.

Early MCU was no better or worse than wider society at the time.

Post Disney MCU has done a bit better.

Anyway, this was a B+ movie. But if I think about it too hard some of the enjoyment of just letting the action scenes and character moments wash over you is lost. Which means any real complaints about the movie feels like nitpicks more than actual "wtf marvel moments." It also helps that this laps Captain Marvel by a lot and I'm not sure its because they learned something from that exploding fart canister or Scarlet Joe/Black Widow is infinitely more interesting to watch than Brie Larson/Captain Marvel.

But fuck it I do have some complaints, and its mostly due to Black Widow being a rated R character stuck in a pg-13 world.

Suggesting ScarJo is more interesting to watch than Brie Larson is fucking insane.

Issues with Captain Marvel is just that is so damn slow. I think they spent too long on shots intended to make it look and feel like an early 90s movie and not enough time asking if the shot was any good.

They tried to make 4 different types of movies instead of committing to one. And as a result its none of those and worse for it. I cannot tell if this makes it bad or if its bad because, had it committed to one of those four directions(Action, Family, ABOUT THINGS, spy), it could have been very good. In the end i enjoyed it even though i didn't have a lot of expectations.

Though i will say that I haven't watched endgame so i might not have the same baggage everyone else had going in.

My biggest complaint about Captain Marvel is simply the character herself. She's female Superman but as far as I can tell she not only doesn't have a Kryptonite but she shoots laser beams from her fists. I think that makes her a hard character to bring into movies and maintain any drama and I suspect it's why she is barely in Endgame because she took a headbutt from Thanos and just smirked. I think the best thing for the character would be for her to encounter a Rogue-style character who would siphon off her powers.

I'm pretty sure Brie Larson is a better actor. But she didn't play the more compelling character. Is there an actual difference between Captain Marvel and a flying brick?

Captain Marvel so far is fine--I mean, folks have been ok with generations of male power fantasy superheroes who don't offer much complexity otherwise in motivational terms, and maybe that's because they can't--at a certain scale of power, the only interesting story to tell in motivational terms is "why don't I kill every modestly bad person the moment they do something bad?" which is a story that probably shouldn't end with the conventional superheroic "because it's wrong!" but also can't end with "because I'd have to kill half the planet!" in an entertaining action movie.

Black Widow? I mean, it wanted to edge around "child sex assassin trafficking is super bad" as a kind of metaphorical structure but that's not exactly a complicated premise that anyone feels like debating later. It might have been more complicated if Natasha and Yelena had to reckon with "we are very good at what we do but what made us is very very very bad and there should never be anybody like us again and actually we want to die" because that would have connected up to Endgame more powerfully. But ScarJo is 100% not up for portraying a damaged person of that kind and Pugh, bless her, was playing someone who was both more matter-of-fact about the damage she's suffered and having more fun in an odd way with being a highly-trained assassin.

I thought the villain was the weakest part, mainly because Winstone didn't even try with that accent and the director didn't seem to care. I didn't MIND Taskmaster - the look was fantastic. I do regret that it's basically a one-off when they could have easily created a Loki-level witty character they could reuse in many movies (based on the version from the comics).

I don't think this really stops them using taskmaster again if they want.

Did they even use the name?

"Blah blah I found her outfit and the tech that let her copy people blah blah".

They did say "activate the Taskmaster protocol."

It certainly doesn't stop them using a different person as Taskmaster, with the same tech. Maybe Valentina will use one as part of Thunderbolts.

I mean, sure, they can even have some comic-booky thing where someone else wears the suit and somehow the suit impresses itself onto their brain and they don't need the suit any longer.

The part of comic-book Taskmaster that doesn't work in the MCU (but was hilariously great in the comics) was "I train goons for supervillains and I'm really only interested in profit, not fighting super-heroes".

The basic idea of Taskmaster as someone who is not really looking for a fight but just the money, but who if it comes to it can take out a bunch of adversaries, that's fun and it would take a new version to get that. Probably there's some version of "I train disposable goons" that makes MCU sense, even.

Thinking of taskmaster in that regard the MCU has largely avoided doing the whole "evil organization with millions of dollars and hundreds of goons pose a threat to world stability" arc type. There isn't a persistent group of bad guys who "just get away" or "above the law". The closest we've come to that is maybe Hydra getting two movies to exist as an organization before getting rofl stomped by the combine might of a literal thundergod and a giant green rage monster who finds bullets annoying in the opening act.

It would be kinda hard for people to take comic task master seriously when his goons get their face melted by a casual iron man elbow.

He could care less about the goons, they're rent-a-goons for guys who want to conquer the world. He'd generally rather not fight super-heroes either because there's no money in it. But if he's gotta, he's pretty capable of beating most of them except maybe the guys at the upper tier power spectrum, but he'd never be dumb enough to go in against them anyway if he could avoid it.

The taskmaster should stay a niche comedy show on YouTube.

Goddamned Brie Larson.

K

It is interesting to see all the pearl-clutching about the film only performing as well as IM2 or whatever. Like, come on, the particulars of this environment are pretty PARTICULAR if you know what I mean, and the fact is that it's a decent movie but nothing to jabber excitedly at friends about either. But that's why you don't overread it as a sign of things to come. Nobody should come to conclusions about what tomorrow night's dinner is like based on some crackers and cheese you found while scrounging for something to eat.

Nobody prognosticating on the movie business should take ANY reading from numbers for 2020-2021 at least. There's just way too much preventing people from doing their normal theater routines. I would have GLADLY gone to see this in the theater sans Covid, but as it was, I paid the $30 to see it at home despite my friends (all of whom are vaxxed I think) buying out a row of seats at the theater.

Saw this over the weekend. Toward the lower end of MCU movies in my opinion, but it was still fun. Yelena and the Red Guardian were high points, Taskmaster and Dracon (or whatever his name is) were lows. My other big complaint is simply that this movie should have come out when it was chronologically relevant (so after Civil War and before Infinity War). Knowing how ScarJo's story ended really took a lot out of this movie, while not knowing her backstory made her death less meaningful than it could have been. Maybe it will all feel better if I ever get around to an MCU rewatch.

This movie will definitely be better if you watch it chronologically. I just did a rewatch a few months ago and after going through everything, watching Endgame + the Disney+ shows going back to pre-IW just felt underwhelming.

The Life support system for the featured ass is suing Disney. The basics is, as I understand it, is that her contract featured a percentage of the profits from theatre sales, and Disney released it simultaneously on Streaming, meaning Scar Jo got less money.

https://www.snopes.com/ap/2021/07/29/scarlett-johansson-sues-disney-over-%E2%80%98black-widow%E2%80%99-release/

Hollywood Accounting is always full of bullshit, but not including "theatrical window premium streaming" in "box office" is particularly bullshit. ScarJo is at her sell-by date, and this is probably the last big movie she's going to have. No bridges left to burn.

--Dave

We got any more stellar examples of sexism we want to put on display in this thread?

What? Movies are what they are, you want me to pretend otherwise? Scarlet Johansen is at the upper end of the age range where she can be cast for these kind of roles. Call me an asshole for pointing it out, I'm not the one making the casting decisions.

--Dave

Uh ya, Scar jo is at the age where she gets cast as someones Mother, and roles fade away. Not everyone can be Sigourney Weaver. Is that sexist? Yep. Welcome to Hollywood.

Don't forget:

 - evil witch
 - sassy old lady

Also:

Aunt May keeps getting sexier, so on the next Spider-Man reboot, ScarJo may be in the running. If they reboot soon.

ScarJo would be a downgrade from Marisa Tomei.

I'm not sure if the human exists who can complete the Rosemary Harris -> Sally Field -> Marisa Tomei -> ? trajectory.  Margot Robbie maybe?

If Disney broke the terms of the contract, and it's sounds pretty cut and dry that they did, then Johansson is making the right move here.

In regards to the future of her career, regardless of what people think about her acting abilities she's largely made pretty smart career choices particularly in the past decade or so (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/scarlett_johansson). She tends to work for respected directors (the Coens, Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze,
Noah Baumbach, Favreau, Taika, etc...) has been in a number of critically successful films, and also been in what by most metrics the most successful film franchise of all time. Yes, women's opportunities dry up a bit in Hollywood as they get older, but I don't think her opportunities were just going to vanish in the next year or two.

Anywhere I've seen a reputable news site report on the likely contract wording, they've said it will reference a 'theatrical release' or 'wide theatrical release' rather than an exclusive one.

And scarjo is arguing that must mean exclusive.

If it specifically says exclusive theatrical release I seriously doubt things would have got this far.

But the case seems to be based on perceived understanding of what words probably meant rather than what they actually say.

Ars Technica (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/scarlett-johansson-sues-disney-says-disney-release-of-black-widow-broke-contract/) has a pretty good writeup on it, but yeah, it does look very heavily like it comes down to 1/2 semantics and 1/2 "industry standard gentleman's agreement" as far as the definition of "wide theatrical release".

On one hand, her contract doesn't explicitly state "no simultaneous releases to other formats", but on the other hand, "wide theatrical release" is pretty commonly understood to mean "exclusive theater run for first X months" in the industry, so she probably does have a decent case there.  I mean, if Disney actually wins this one, you can pretty much expect that every contract going forward will EXPLICITLY in no uncertain terms attempt to clarify that currently existing "gentleman's agreement" just to prove a point.

So I ended up renting it on Disney+. I had a few friends over and we drank beer and ate take out.

Not a bad movie all in all and it was worth the 30 dollars. I so feel like Scarlett Johansson will probably end up winning at get at least part of the money. Hollywood is moving to streaming and the contracts with the talent are going to have to keep up. The people that are getting caught in the middle of the transition are getting screwed over and my guess is this is the tip of the iceberg for what is going to come.

They want $30 for it on top of the subscription? JFC

I didn't mind the cost for two reasons.

Firstly it is pay once watch as much as you want. Second they were completely upfront about how long you need to wait if you don't pay.

Neither of these things make it better value. They just made it feel like making a grown up decision to buy a thing from a company that wasn't playing silly games.

I'm also not sure if she is saying she gets a smaller % from streaming than she does from theatres and the strategy transferred sales from theatre to streams, or if she is saying that the strategy reduced overall gross on the film.

The former is easily fixed in new contracts, the latter would seem a hard argument to make.

None of the contracts that were written on these movies was done with the pandemic in mind. So I'm sure streaming royalties were built in, but at a much lower rate, probably around the same as DVD sales or showings on HBO/Showtime/etc. I don't imagine that the difference is $50 million worth, but one thing jury duty has taught me is that the lawyer for the plaintiff always puts his ask much higher than he expects to get because it's likely to get reduced if you go all the way to trial. This won't go to trial. It'll be settled for some smaller, undisclosed amount. And every contract going forward (as well as negotiations with SAG and SWG) will try to get some more explicit clauses in there involving emergency/non-exclusive situations like this one.

I paid the $30 for the streaming and didn't feel bad about it. There are very few movies I would do that for, but considering how consistently good the MCU movies have been, even the bad ones, I felt it was a decent risk. I likely would have paid half that to see it in the theater but for the benefit of not having to subject myself to plague monkeys and spreadnecks, or having to wait a few months for it, I was ok with the premium. It should probably be less, but it's Disney.

I waited until I had a few friends over to pay the 30 bucks so it was pretty much a wash as far as what it would have cost going to the theatre. Also we had the advantage of actually being able to drink beer. We are not one of the lucky people that have a theatre around that does serve.

And In October Disney is releasing it to the general Disney+ subscribers so its looking like around a 90 day window.

I still feel that's high, but I do appreciate they are being transparent about the service options. And eventually I should see it on my subscription, which isn't going anywhere any time soon. I just wish I could get the Tom Spider-Mans and Into the Spider-Verse. If only Marvel could being all the kids home (esp playing Marvel's Avengers and having to listen to nonsense about Inhumans when it really should be mutants...).

We were talking about the fragmentation and monetization of all these companies last night (thanks Olympics, btw NBC sucks balls at presentation...use the app but it still sucks to navigate). The one I have been very happy with is Disney+. Not sure how long they can keep this content train rolling, but it's been actual quality 1st party content, vs the wasteland of shitty Netflix shit.

Netflix's "fund for 2 years then dump a series" policy means thy can produce content cheap, but is not conductive of fostering talent.

Is spiderman and spiderverse not on US Netflix?

It may be, but I'd prefer not to pay a Netflix subscription for Marvel stuff :)

I'm trying to get out of Netflix entirely, because it's a shallow bucket of shit at this point, but the old lady keeps asking me to keep it. I'm about to have her get her own goddamned account after trying for the hundredth time to find something worth watching on it. I guess I could've watched Spider-Man again, but we're looping back around on that line of reasoning.

Marvel has been showing people how to do things and, at least with Mando, Disney is ready to play ball. Watching the Loki making-of, it was shocking to see that much blue and green screen after seeing so much done in the Volume. They need to scale that up and share it with Marvel imo.

edited to add: oops, almost forgot 'fuck Fox' as well

Her case is pretty tight. The contract specifies a "wide theatrical release like the other films in the MCU"

And the other films in the MCU had theater exclusive releases.

And the standard is generally what "words meant at the time of the signing".

And Disney, instead of saying the boilerplate things that you normally do when you're in the right. Attacked her for "not respecting the people who died in the Pandemic" or other some such tripe. They know they're in the wrong and have decided that PR was the better weapon.

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell” -- Carl Sandburg

It's kind of weird--they're already in bad odor because of trying to cheat a bunch of authors with some utter fucking nonsense about how when they bought other companies that had royalty contracts with those authors, the royalties became voided because that was the old company and now the new one owns the shit the authors wrote but not the contracts under which they wrote it.

I mean, jeebus fuck guys, how much more money do you need? Is the Donald Trump model of "sign a contract, refuse to pay, make people settle for pennies on the dollar" really all that appealing in terms of outcomes?

Are you surprised this is coming from the same company that has copyrighted Mickey Mouse in perpetuity? They really want ALL of the money.

That. I'm happy with Disney's overall treatment of Marvel and Star Wars, but at the end of the day it's Disney. The people who would lock children's movies in a vault for an indeterminate amount of time to pressure parents into buying more crap. We had a shelf of Disney stuff in the back of the library so if something was stolen or damaged, we could replace it despite it not being sold by Disney because it was 'in the vault'.

Disney pretty much tried to Bury "Beauty and the Beast" for a long time, and only brought it out again when their god awful "Live Version" was made.

Or she didn't actually burn her bridges, Disney would settle, and she'll get to continue to work on big movies with them. (https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1196328-disneys-tower-of-terror-film-moves-forward-with-scarlett-johansson) Not that I'm expecting much out of Tower of Terror, mind you.