With Christopher Nolan’s Tenet doornail dead at the box office, a number of other big movies have just lost their nerve and scurried to next year or much later this year, which means 2020 is a total washout, a lost year for the movies. Something that has never before happened in this country. Not during world wars or previous pandemics.
What a disaster.
What an unnecessary disaster.
Disney-Marvel’s Black Widow jumped from November 6 of this year to May 7, 2021.
Marvel’s Eternals jumped from February 12, 2021 to November 5, 2021.
20th Century Studios’ just bumped Death on the Nile from October 23 to December 18; the studio also moved Deep Water from November 13, 2020 to August 13, 2021.
Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story ran screaming from December 18 of this year to December 10, 2021. That is a huge move, a piece of pure Oscar bait giving up entirely on the 2020 Oscar race.
Looks like the only Disney title sticking to 2020 is Pixar’s Soul, which is still scheduled for November 20, but that might be a title Disney thinks it can sell big on pay-per-view.
This means the next blockbuster scheduled for release is nearly two months away on November 20 — the James Bond feature No Time to Die.
After that, it’s The Croods: New Age on November 25; Death on the Nile, Coming to America 2, and Dune on December 18; and Wonder Woman 1984 on December 25.
That’s it as far as big movies — seven over three months. If you add Tenet to that, you are basically talking about eight major releases over the last nine months. And that’s only if those titles don’t decide to move again into 2021.
Does No Time to Die really want to be the next canary in the coronavirus coalmine? Especially after Tenet completely collapsed with just $36 million in domestic sales over four weekends. And anyone who tells you Warner Bros. is happy with $251 million worldwide haul for Tenet is lying. Tenet probably needed $450 to $500 million just to break even. So that is what you call a total wipeout.
How stupid and unnecessary was all this?
Young people go to the movies.
Young people have very little to fear from the coronavirus. There are studies that show it’s about as fatal for those under 50 as the common flu.
But everyone had to freak out and overreact, even though this country has gone through pandemics before without quarantining the healthy and forcing us all into masks, without destroying so much for no valid reason.
Honestly, who wants to sit through a two-plus hour movie in a friggin’ mask?
The question then becomes what if people discover they don’t really miss going to the movies? Which so far seems to be the case.
What if people pick up other habits? What if people realize crowds are kinda germy and scuzzy even without the China Virus?
Regardless, 2020 is dead, a lost year at the box office with only $1.9 billion in domestic receipts so far this year, compared to $8.3 billion at this same time last year and $8.8 billion in 2018.
I’m finding I don’t miss going to the movies at all, and there is plenty of stuff from the past I don’t mind returning to again and again.
There’s a bit of karma in the fact Hollywood supports Democrats and Democrats killed the movies. We’ve only had about 50 cases in my county and no deaths, and our Democrat governor still hasn’t opened the movie theater.
So LOL, Hollywood. You get what you vote for.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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