Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Bleeding Fool

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China is Finally Beginning to Turn Its Fangs on Hollywood

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 04:30 PM PDT

 

Hollywood’s share of the Chinese box office is reportedly plummeting to less than 10% as Beijing seeks to boost its homegrown film industry while continuing to prohibit major Hollywood productions from appearing in Chinese theaters. As a result, Hollywood, which has embarrassed itself in all the ways it is willing to appease China’s Communist dictators in the hopes of retaining access to the rich Chinese market, faces an existential crisis.

 

According to figures from consultancy Artisan Gateway, as reported by Variety, Hollywood’s share of the China box office industry has dropped to just 9.5 percent so far this year. The sharp drop coincides with homegrown releases edging out Hollywood imports. It looks like the Chinese have finally cut off the money spigot after more than a decade of Hollywood sucking up to China’s communist Nazis and their slave state.

 

 

According to a report from MSN:

 

There hasn't been a single significant Hollywood release in China since "A Quiet Place Part II" on May 28 and "Luca" on Aug. 20. Meanwhile, Disney-Marvel titles haven't been released in China since "Avengers: Endgame" in April 2019. In fact, "Black Widow" still remains without a release permit in China.

 

This could be a harbinger for the next run of Disney and Marvel films:

 

Movies that may be at risk include "The Eternals," directed by Chloé Zhao, who was branded a traitor for her past comments; "Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," where Disney may not have done enough to diffuse charges of racism; "Space Jam: A New Legacy," because American basketball continues to be a sensitive subject following an NBA official's 2019 comments on Hong Kong; and "Top Gun," which is seen as promoting the U.S. military.

The political standoff between China and the U.S. has already gummed up film industry negotiations. Now there's the possibility that, in a tit-for-tat move following U.S. moves against ZTE, TikTok and Huawei, China may be deliberately hobbling one of America's biggest export industries. Several seemingly uncontroversial Hollywood titles are without release approvals or dates, including "Jungle Cruise" and "The Suicide Squad." Sci-fi spectacular "Dune" has the advantage of being backed by the Wanda-owned Legendary Entertainment, but some online commentators are still cool about its prospects.

 

 

Any fan of the GI Joe franchise recognized that the latest GI Joe film ‘Snake Eyes’, which failed at the box office and cost at least a $100 million, was implicitly made with China in mind. And Disney surely expected Black Widow to make bank in China. In fact, Marvel has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in upcoming movies like The Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, two films with no notable lead stars that each of them are suddenly looking unlikely to be released in China. Do you think Marvel expected that?

See Also: Could China & Hollywood's Love Affair be Coming to an End?

 

Despite China’s appalling human rights record, despite millions of slaves, millions murdered, and a total lack of intellectual and artistic freedoms in China, despite China’s brutality and concentration camps, Hollywood not only sought to win China’s affection, but even lionized these slavers, turning that wicked government into heroes. And while Hollywood has bent over backwards to appease China’s government, it has grotesquely twisted its own creativity and vision in order to placate their government censors. Many moviegoers would probably be shocked at how many major films have ben specifically edited to appease China.

 

Meanwhile Hollywood's decline in China comes as the Communist country has overtaken the United States to become the world's largest movie market.

 

Beijing also appears to be exercising tighter controls over its Hollywood import quotas. Disney hasn't seen a Marvel superhero movie released in China since Avengers: Endgame in 2019. Marvel Studios' Black Widow still doesn't have a China release date.

Disney's Jungle Cruise and Warner Bros.' The Suicide Squad have also failed to score a China release so far.

 

After Hollywood has chased away half their domestic moviegoers because they hate the people from “flyover country,” who is going to save them by attending their tedious remakes, reboots and preachy movies now? Certainly not China.

The post China is Finally Beginning to Turn Its Fangs on Hollywood appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad Tops All DC Films on HBO Max

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 02:45 PM PDT

 

In an interesting report, Deadline is looking at the numbers provided by Samba TV, which measures streaming viewership in 3 million U.S. smart TV households, and saying that The Suicide Squad has the best 17-day numbers of the new DC movies this year. The James Gunn directed film has been viewed in 4.7 million households, which beats out the3.9 million for Wonder Woman 1984 and the 3.2 million for Zack Snyder's Justice League.

 

What may be even more interesting though is that the film falls behind both Godzilla vs. Kong, which had 5.1 million viewers in the same amount of time and the overall winner with 5.5 million viewers, Mortal Kombat, which is the most viewed day-and-date released title on HBO Max. Though we have to keep in mind that these numbers aren't from HBO Max, which doesn't release there viewership numbers, but from Samba TV who doesn't track mobile devices and only counts views of over 5 minutes.

The post James Gunn's The Suicide Squad Tops All DC Films on HBO Max appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

What If Edward Norton Returned to Bruce Banner Role in Marvel’s What If…?

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 01:15 PM PDT

 

One of the most interesting things in the latest episode of Marvel's What If was casting of Bruce Banner aka the Hulk in the episode. While Mark Ruffalo has been playing the character since The Avengers in 2012, the newest episode of the animated series focuses on Iron Man 2, Thor and the Incredible Hulk films which featured previous Hulk actor Edward Norton playing the Gamma irradiated scientist turned monster.

 

When the episode was in production, head writer A.C. Bradley told Discussing Film that she joked that if Ruffalo passed on doing the voice, then maybe they should call Norton. She said: “I’ve seen The Incredible Hulk probably three or four times. We wanted to make sure that with all three movies we pulled iconic moments that people would recognize. So for The Incredible Hulk, it was the Culver University fight scene.”

 

 

As for approaching Norton, it never really became an issue as Ruffalo had already agreed to lend his voice to the series before production of the episode had begun. I have to admit though, it was a little weird to see the character look and sound like Ruffalo when you're used to Norton.

The post What If Edward Norton Returned to Bruce Banner Role in Marvel’s What If…? appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

James Bond’s ‘No Time to Die’ Marks a First at Zurich Film Festival

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 11:00 AM PDT

 

The 17th Zurich Film Festival will host the Swiss premiere of No Time to Die, the 25th James Bond film, on September 28. This will be the first time a Bond movie has been in the official selection of a festival, its artistic director, Christian Jungen, said. The festival will also stage a retrospective of the other Bond movies starring Daniel Craig.

 

YouTube Video

 

"We are extremely pleased to be one of the first in the world to show our audience the most recent Bond adventure," Jungen said. "We fought for months to get this premiere and had to negotiate every last detail with the distribution company Universal. Never before has James Bond been in the official selection of a film festival. I am further pleased that the ZFF has succeeded in this coup as it sends out a powerful signal that highlights the importance of cinema. The industry has waited more eagerly for this movie than any other."

 

Related: Expect Daniel Craig's Final James Bond Outing to Be Woke & Preachy

 

 

The movie's world premiere will take place on Sept. 28 at London's Royal Albert Hall. It will release in the U.K. and Ireland from Sept. 30 through Universal Pictures International, and in the U.S on Oct. 8 through MGM via its United Artists Releasing banner.

 

 

Related: Latasha Lynch Confirms Her Character Replaces '007' in No Time to Die

 

In No Time to Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

 

via Variety

 

The post James Bond’s 'No Time to Die' Marks a First at Zurich Film Festival appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Piracy Is Crushing the Theater Biz & Hollywood Has Itself to Blame

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:15 AM PDT

The piracy problem has grown exponentially, and Hollywood is feeling the brunt of it. But it’s their own fault, for without questioning the science narratives, the uber-leftist entertainment industry accepted all anti-science edicts issued by local, Democrat-controlled governments, including all the penalizing and absurd lockdowns that wrecked small business across America, including their theaters.

In response, the studios decided to release their theatrical films directly to pay-per-view or their own streaming services, believing they could benefit from the pandemic and break the control of theater owners over their release options. Then, on the same day, those blockbuster movies were released in theaters. What better strategy for them to beef-up their subscription base?

 

A bold strategy. How’s that working out, Hollywood?

 

Millions of people are watching high-quality, pirated online versions of Hollywood's top movies sooner than ever after their releases, undermining potential ticket sales and subscriber growth as the industry embraces streaming.

Earlier this year, the high volume of global piracy of "Godzilla vs. Kong" surprised executives at its studio, Warner Bros., according to people familiar with the matter. People illegally streamed the movie over 34 million times, according to Muso.

When Disney released "Jungle Cruise," starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, on Disney+, a community of tens of thousands of people were both "seeding"—meaning sharing an illegal copy—and "leeching"—downloading the film free—within less than a day of its release, according to piracy tracking sites. Disney, which charged Disney+ users an extra $30 to watch the movie on the platform, said it grossed $30 million from subscribers on the film's opening weekend.

 

Would the tens of millions of people who download pirated stuff pay for it if it wasn’t pirated? And, if so, how many people would do so? Is the increase in subscribers that comes with a same-day title release worth the loss in piracy that comes with that same-day release?

 

Read More: Same Day Streaming Releases Made Movie Piracy Explode

The post Piracy Is Crushing the Theater Biz & Hollywood Has Itself to Blame appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Marvel & DC’s Rivalry May Be Over… but their Contempt for Fandom Isn’t

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:15 AM PDT

 

In this sugarcoated Newsarama op-ed, they babble about the onetime, unnecessary rivalries between Marvel and DC, which seem to have vanished in the past years without anybody noticing:

 

What’s striking is that even while the publishers are still dipping their toes in having a little meta-fun with one another’s characters, what was once a storied, high-profile, sometimes good-natured, sometimes not rivalry is for all intents and purposes dead… kaput … an anachronistic remnant of a now bygone comic book era.

 

What difference does it make if rivalries are seemingly gone now? What remains from the past 2 decades, ever since Bill Jemas took it all to a whole new level with hostilities, is terrible writing, and art to match. Something these phony news sites, in all their apologia, usually won’t dwell on, if at all. Where’s the fun in that?

 

And it wasn’t just comic book shop (and then message board and social media) talk about who had the better heroes or villains. The publishers themselves engaged in the rivalry … egged it on … which of course set things up for huge sales successes like 1996’s DC versus and Amalgam and 2003-2004’s JLA/Avengers when they could find their way to working with one another.

 

Well that’s actually the problem. In fact, what’s the point of this whole article if they won’t talk about story merit? The aforementioned Jemas led to a situation where for at least a decade, there were no more crossover publications between the two publishers, and again, it doesn’t constitute merit alone just to do a joint project together.

 

 

But, here’s an interesting point for something they lack these past few years:

 

The time of death for the Marvel-DC rivalry was 2020. What was the cause?

A lack of oxygen.

There are a few specific factors, including geography, the now-lack of a centralized print distributor serving both publishers, the comatose state of the in-person comic book convention, and the practical implications of both publishers being owned by corporate giants and serving as some of their respective parent company’s most valuable intellectual property farms.

But most of all both publishers simply no longer have public spokespeople engaging in just about any (much less spontaneous) public dialogue other than carefully planned and approved promotion of its comic books and characters.

In 2021 when a badly-worded tweet can cause an immediate backlash, Marvel and DC have seemingly made the decision that they’ll rarely risk having an executive, editor, or marketing spokesperson making anything that could even be considered a wave, and have also seemingly asked creators to mostly refrain from doing the same.

 

Hmmm… I’m afraid they’re not entirely correct here, if Dan Slott’s recent boomerang back to harassing fans is any suggestion.

 

Related: It's Not Comicsgate Actively Harassing Comic Fans, It's Dan Slott

 

But apart from that, they’re getting someplace: neither C.B. Cebulski nor Marie Javins make many public announcements or appearances now, if at all. But if their identity politics pandering (turning Robin 3 bisexual and keeping Iceman homosexual, for example) says anything, they’re not really worried about backlash at all. Pandering to leftist ideologies, for them, is today considered safe territory. It’s certainly different from years before, where they actually were worried about losing family audiences for their merchandise prospects, even more so than for the comics themselves. Today, if the recent retcon of Tim Drake is any indication, they’re no longer concerned at all. Mainly because they did more than enough over the past 2 decades to drive away family audiences along with casual readers of their books, and the audience they pander to these days are leftist ideologues.

 

See Also: DC Queering Superman Next? Why All DC Comics Superheroes Are Gay

 

And maybe that’s precisely why the rivalries of the past, which were ill-advised as it was, have since disappeared: because ever since, they’ve found common ground in new causes: modern leftist identity politics, not to mention insulting the fanbases when they object to their steps. The company wide crossovers they remain stuck on are another letdown.

 

Originally published here.

The post Marvel & DC’s Rivalry May Be Over… but their Contempt for Fandom Isn’t appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

John Cleese’s “Cancel Me’ Series will Confront‘ Woke Generation’

Posted: 30 Aug 2021 04:45 AM PDT

 

Best known for his roles in hit comedy classics like Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, John Cleese will investigate the phenomenon of 'cancelling' people or companies for their behavior. In John Cleese: Cancel Me, the 81-year-old actor will meet with the people who are doing the cancelling to uncover what is driving them, as well as some of the famous faces who have fallen victim to cancel culture.

 

 

According to the Guardian, John Cleese: Cancel Me will premiere later this year on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, where the comedian will interview “cancelled” subjects as well as campaigners who have led opposition to various public figures.

 

"I'm delighted to have a chance to find out, on camera, about all the aspects of so-called political correctness," Cleese explained. “There's so much I really don't understand, like: how the impeccable idea of 'Let's all be kind to people' has been developed in some cases ad absurdum," the comedian said of the bizarre new "cancel culture" trends that are plaguing the West lately.

"I want to bring the various reasonings right out in the open so that people can be clearer in their minds what they agree with, what they don't agree with, and what they still can't make their mind up about," Cleese added.

 

Cleese personally experienced cancel culture in November 2020, when social justice warriors accused him of "transphobia" for supporting author J.K. Rowling. The comedic actor explained to Reuters, "Everything humorous is critical. If you have someone who is perfectly kind and intelligent and flexible and who always behaves appropriately, they're not funny.  Cleese also said that the political correctness is forcing comedians "to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable and fragile and least stoic people in the country."

 

See Also: Kevin Hart Tells the Cancel Culture Mob to 'Shut the F**K Up!'

 

Cleese is the second Monty Python icon to refuse to bow to political correctness and awakened identity politics. Terry Gilliam stated earlier this year that the culture unfairly vilifies white men, who are blamed for the world’s issues. "That’s wrong. "I’m don’t like mob mentality," the filmmaker stated.

 

In the past, the Cleese has been open about his thoughts on Political Correctness, having previously said there is no such thing as a 'woke joke' and creating a fuss when BBC-owned UKTV removed an episode of Fawlty Towers for its use of 'racial slurs'.

 

 

Related:PC or Die! David Spade Warns that "Wokeness" Is Killing Comedy

 

Most comedians are generally not big fans of cancel culture. David Spade says it’s killing comedy.  Chris Rock warned that cancel culture leads to boring entertainment. Billy Crystal said canceling people over their words has made comedy a "minefield." Dave Chappelle reminded everyone that "no one can be woke enough." Comedian Jon Lovitz likened cancel culture to McCarthyism. Stand-up comedian Bill Burr joked that the outrage mob has run out of people to cancel and has resorted to canceling dead people.

The post John Cleese's "Cancel Me' Series will Confront' Woke Generation' appeared first on Bleeding Fool.
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