AMC Says ‘Almost All’ U.S. Theaters Will Reopen in July

Paul F said:
Regarding bone structure, take a look at photos from the 1930's or earlier. People were rail thin compared to today...
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Here's a tidbit I discovered a while back. If one looks at proportions, a WWII era GI Joe doll had 12" biceps. A modern GI Joe has 16" biceps. (for reference, an actual average is a tad over 13", Arnold was 22" in his prime, Markus Rühl was 24" when he was competing)

As to the stench. It depended on the type of warfare and theater. The Germans were pretty good in adminstering the individual burials and there are over 800 WWII Wehrmacht cemeteries around Europe, North Africa and even the US (POW camps). The Soviets had mass grave sites but a lot of the dead bodies were just left there to rot. Americans had burial companies, as could be witnessed around the Normandy beaches (Spielberg can be far too sentimental but that opening scene in SPR was pretty powerful).
 
It's not clear from his memoirs which dead bodies they were; German or Allies. [edit] From his memoirs it's clear bodies remained for quite some time as he mentions the stench returning when warmer weather returned and uncovered bodies from the snow.
 
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I remember going to an art-house for a double-feature of the "Female Trouble" and "Pink Flamingos". At first, I felt like throwing up; hen I found PF fairly amusing.

The other time I went back there for a double feature was the "Sweet Movie" and "Salo". The last one was disturbing, to say the lesat.
 
They'll just reopen it to serve overpriced Colas and Jujubes. All the movies will be on Netflix, Apple, Disney and the Amazon Prime.
 
Jaime Valles said:
I don't think they'll be able to reopen until there's a vaccine.
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Maybe. But treatment protocols are improving are a rapid pace. Fauci predicts new medicines approved in September. They know how to care for patients better now which is why the death toll is coming in where it was in March even though infections have gone way way up
 
"Moments of pure emotion and humor and wonder, that’s our business. That’s what people crave and want. They want magic, to get away from the humdrum lives they lead, whether it’s starting a fire or doing a cave painting or crazy religious rituals.”

But do most studios still understand that?

Theaters will shutter after all of this, and the focus is going to be not only on finding alternative ways to make money but also what the future will look like.

Will releasing movies online, like Trolls II and Mulan be the best way?
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https://nofilmschool.com/streamers-are-king-during-covid
 
As someone who works in Hollwyood, I've seen the impending death of what we all think of as Hollywood for about a decade now. The Pandemic just ramped up the speed control to maximum.
The whole "Big Hollywood Movie" mindset, star celebrity machine, the studios, all of this stuff is relatively unknown and irrelevant to the audience who is most desirable demographically. Their stars
are largely people you've never heard of if you are over 25 or 30 and a lot of those "stars" are brands/influencers, not actors. Hollywood even before March was already becoming a parody of itself, every time
I would visit the Fox, Sony or Disney lot and take a meeting or do a shoot, everything being done there just seemed old. The mindset, the wasteful way things are done. The Unions. None of it is nimble,
adaptible, responsive, it's all a bit dinosaur-like when you see it close up and BTS. As the article quotes, "This business isn't sustainable", at least not the way the studios do it. The streamers are a bit
more nimble and responsive and best of all, they answer to themselves, not hordes of corporate shareholders.

I've seen and experienced enough change to know that what we think or feel about the death of the entertainment business as we know it and the birth of the new mutation of it doesn't matter at all.
It's already happening, it's well under way and all we can do is see if we still have a place in it where we can still make a living doing what we like doing. There will still be a need for creators, writers,
producers, directors, crews but what we will all be working on and for who is a big mystery at this point. The herd will and is definitely being thinned.

I think people who do things like weddings, corporate video, etc. stuff that has nothing to do with the entertainment business stand a better chance of surviving than those who only work in and for Hollywood
because the industry is literally melting down and mutating before our eyes. My role in entertainment has been as a crew, production company and freelancer and we are now six months into basically no work
in entertainment. All of the work I have been doing in 2020 is for non-profits, corporations, etc. They have money and they want and need live streams and corporate/social media content. I am pretty much writing off
the entertainment business until at least well into late 2021, if it ever comes back at a level where my clients there will be calling me. Many of them have gone under this year or gone dormant as companies since Hollywood
production is basically dead.

I think a few theaters might survive but basically, Covid is the death knell for theaters it seems.
 
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You can buy a 70 inch 4K smart TV for $600, popcorn for a couple of dollars, and as much soda as you want to another couple of dollars... If first run movies are available to the home, it doesn't take too long to pay off that TV. The last movie I saw in a theater was around $40 for two people, the sound had a problem and so did the projection, gave both of us a headache. The movie before that was in 3d, didn't buy any goodies, and the price was like $50 for both of us.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsun...izen-tv/6395915.p?skuId=6395915&ref=212&loc=1

That said, we need better internet options, Spectrum still sucks. And of course rentals for first run stuff need to be a reasonable price.

And finally, the major movie producers need to make stuff that is worth watching! Nothing since Isle of Dogs has motivated me to go to the theater, and most of that didn't get rented either. When the stuff I want to watch never went to a theater because it was produced by a streaming company, that pretty well kills the idea of my going to theaters.
 
The HD-to-4K movement is over. The 4K-to-8K movement is tepid and not gaining much momentum. On the other hand, the CPU's and the GPU's are getting more and more powerful and the servers bigger and faster. With new compression algorithms, 70-100 Mbps downstreaming should suffice.

TV sets are getting cheaper and cheaper (per square inch and overall). Cable TV is holding on for dear life and the powers behind streaming services are in control of tens of billions of dollars. The business is indeed mutating, with the power shifting to the investors rather than agents and lawyers. Odds are that, within five years or so, the streaming market will be shared by 5-7 major platforms, with the rest working at the margins. The theater chains either will have to find themselves streaming partners, get into the production business themselves or close down shop.

The very high end talent will still make huge money, with the writers benefiting more than actors (relatively speaking) due to the unlimited delivery of content. Other industry players will have to move sideways. Professional documentary, promotional material, advertising, high end corporate, live streaming ought still be lucrative enough.
 
A huge portion of the demographically desireable audience doesn't own a TV or a laptop, doesn't go the movies, spends most of their time gaming or on their phones on social media.
My daughter is one of them. 25, highly educated, good job, doesn't own a TV, only has the laptop I bought her for college but spends little time on it outside of work projects. She doesn't
know or care about what "was" in theaters, popular TV shows, popular actors, mainstream movies or TV shows. Same with most of my nieces and nephews in their 20s and early 30s.

All of us droning on about home theaters, 70" TVs, 4K or 8K, the future of Hollywood, that's all just "old people noise" about things that have become irrelevant to this very desirable, huge
audience. Even if Hollywood miraculously survives to the end of the this pandemic, everything they do has shifted from mainstream to niche in the sense that everyone is into their own thing
(ultra narrow casting), in their own time (younger people only care about or will consume media on their own schedule on their own devices). I think Hollywood still measures their audience
and success using metrics that have become outdated and slow moving.
 
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