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

Some info is beginning to trickle in.

An estimated $16.7 million of the box office total came from U.S. and Canadian theaters, the AT&T Inc-owned studio said on Sunday ... The 2017 “Wonder Woman” film opened with $103.2 million domestically.

Millions watched the film on HBO Max, the company said in a statement, but it did not specify how long they tuned in. Total viewing hours on the platform tripled on Friday compared with a typical day in the previous month, the statement said.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...gh-in-cinema-streaming-showdown-idUSKBN2910MZ

The excitement over the streaming numbers sounds fake already. The reviews are pretty dismal. The second week drop off is going to be significant. WW (2017) maintained its popularity for three straight weeks, which is rather unprecedented. On the 22nd day, it hit $300M.
 
Sony benefits from the Warner move as they have no streaming service to foist on their talent:

Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquera revealed during an interview with "CNBC", coming to us via "The Verge", that Warner Bros.' new release strategy has made more filmmakers interested in working with their studio:

"After the Warner Bros. announcement, it's been a bit of a boom for us because it's made dating our movies next year somewhat easier. But the real benefit has been the number of incoming calls from talent, creators, actors, and directors to us saying, 'We want to be doing business with you because we know you're a theatrical distributor and producer.' That has worked very well for us."
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https://www.joblo.com/movie-news/fi...y-following-warnermedias-hbo-max-decision/amp
 
Netflix added over 5 million U.S. subscribers over the past year.

But Netflix wasn’t alone. Streaming services grew across the board in 2020, as recent entrants such as Disney Plus and HBO Max built momentum. Combined, those strong performances boosted the category overall by 50% over the last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The average U.S. household now subscribes to 3.1 streaming services, versus 2.7 in 2019.

Amazon’s Prime Video closed out 2020 with nearly 50 million subscribers, up from roughly 43 million in Q4 of 2019. Hulu now boasts nearly 35 million subscribers, up from 27 million.

Among the newer entrants, Apple TV Plus more than doubled its subscribers, from 4 million in Q4 of 2019 to over 8 million in Q4 of this year. Since its launch in early 2020, HBO Max has won over nearly 17 million subscribers. Disney Plus, which ended 2019 with 24 million subscribers, today has 37 million.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/9059059...eaming-rivals-as-americans-add-disney-hbo-max
 
Sony's head doesn't sound too up to date. Company's own production budgets are below average and its theatrical revenues are a seesaw.

https://m.the-numbers.com/movies/distributor/Sony-Pictures

Meanwhile, theater chains are in trouble, making Vinciquera look like the last man standing athwart history.

Of course, his comments can be construed as "fluid".

Sony’s slate is “fluid,” said Vinciquerra carefully, when asked about the studio’s theatrical plans for the next couple of years.

“What we won’t do is make the mistake of putting a very, very expensive $200 million movie on the market unless we’re sure theaters are open and operating at a significant capacity,” he said. “We’ve changed our release schedule pretty dramatically.”

When asked if Sony would send movies straight to premiere video-on-demand services, Vinciquerra said that over the next five or six months, some “very unique things” may happen. A backlog of films that are ready to go means that studios may be likelier to offload them onto non-theatrical platforms out of necessity.

“We have sold three movies to streamers… because we couldn’t find a place to date them, so we sold them for a profit,” he said, but maintained that the studio is a “big supporter of the theater distribution model.”
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https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/so...-tony-vinciquerra-bofa-conference-1234764198/
 
Batutta said:
Well Wonder Woman 84 being dumped on HBO Max is no great loss, as that movie is a hot pile of garbage. Terrible script, full of one dumb idea after another, with a tacky tone reminiscent of the worst Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Seriously disappointing. The whole creative team at DC/Warner needs to be replaced. The first Wonder Woman being good just seems like a fluke at this point.
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Sadly, WW84 is no where near as good as the first. And I loved the first one... I watched a little over the first hour and a half last night and then decided to go to bed about 1:30a. Even though it had finally started to “get good”, it still didn’t hold my attention. And even in the context of that “universe”, the concept still seemed a little far fetched. It seems like so many other things born in Hollywood or involving big corporations. It feels like it was written and produced by a committee and EVERYONE had to have something of theirs included, instead of their being a strong, singular vision and goal. And I like long movies where time is taken to develop characters and story and tell it properly, but I felt like I was watching at least 45 minutes of just filler and still had questions about some thing’s that probably should have been fully fleshed out by that point.

I’ll probably finish it today or tonight, but the last ~45 minutes or so will have to be drastically different/surprising for my disappointment to be curbed.
 
ahalpert said:
Are you sure about that?

"Ryanair is buying 75 more 737 Max jets, Boeing's biggest order since the grounding"
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...iness/ryanair-boeing-737-max-order/index.html
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What with https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55582496 Boeing fined 2.6Bn over 737 safety claims and the latest 737 crash https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55606599 and Ryanair now cutting back a LOT of it's flights https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55571834 (cancelling the order?) I can't see Boeing's future looking good.
 
No, it's not looking good. But who knows. I read that Indonesia has frequent crashes, so I dont know if Boeing is at fault in that particular instance.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not necessarily rooting for them. I just don't think their collapse is a foregone conclusion. We've seen companies rise from the ashes before, and they're a big one and probably have ample government support.
 
ahalpert said:
No, it's not looking good. But who knows. I read that Indonesia has frequent crashes, so I dont know if Boeing is at fault in that particular instance.
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Fair point re Indonesia. The cause is not yet known and Indonesian airlines etc do have a poor safety record. The problem is the headline is "Another Boeing 737 crash". Only weeks after the fleet of 737(max) were un-grounded.

ahalpert said:
Don't get me wrong - I'm not necessarily rooting for them. I just don't think their collapse is a foregone conclusion. We've seen companies rise from the ashes before, and they're a big one and probably have ample government support.
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True. Though we are in somewhat uncertain times.
 
It was a 737-500 which is a pretty old model, I think it is 2 generations old? MentourPilot on Youtube made a video about this soon after the word spread and he mentioned something about it being an older model, older than the 737 Next Gen that he normally flies, which is older than the Max generation. Or something like that.
 
Greg_E said:
It was a 737-500 which is a pretty old model, I think it is 2 generations old? MentourPilot on Youtube made a video about this soon after the word spread and he mentioned something about it being an older model, older than the 737 Next Gen that he normally flies, which is older than the Max generation. Or something like that.
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There are some systemic problems with the 737 that run through all the versions after the original base model.
 
Wonder Woman 1984 is now up to $32M in the US box office. Which would not have been deemed a success in 1984. The film dropped 67% in its second week and 45% the second. AT&T is allegedly willing to continue the franchise (its next sequel will be called "Wonder Woman vs. T-Mobile" and a sequel's sequel, "WW vs. ExxonMobil").

Additionally, as predicted, WB/HBO Max will restructure its financial arrangements with top talent.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...antees-filmmakers-a-payday-for-hbo-max-movies
 
It's currently trading at 1.4 million shares per minute. Up to this point in the day, over 800 million shares have traded but there are only 164 million shares in existence. So what the heck is going on? Does that mean each share has already traded five times today? The people that were stuck with a losing stock can now sell and get out and these redit folks will likely screw themselves. It's a matter of who blinks first.

Oddly enough, it might be a good short opportunity. How long can they prop up the price?

It seems to me the reddit stock manipulation would backfire. All the hedge fund needs to do is short even more at the current price and make even more money when the stock tanks again at an even more rapid pace. This is really fascinating to see how long they can keep the price propped up.
 
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Paul F said:
It's currently trading at 1.4 million shares per minute. Up to this point in the day, over 800 million shares have traded but there are only 164 million shares in existence. So what the heck is going on? Does that mean each share has already traded five times? The people that were stuck with a losing stock can now sell and get out and these redit folks will likely screw themselves. It's a matter of who blinks first.

Oddly enough, it might be a good short opportunity. How long can they prop up the price?
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I have no idea exactly what's going on with the number of share trades, but I think you have the dynamics backwards.

There's a reddit thread where people targeted stocks that were ALREADY massively shorted by hedge funds (the first was Gamestop). Then they piled into the company. As far as I understand it (which is little), after they collectively inflate the share price, they can sit on it and wait for the shorts to cover their position which will lead to a short squeeze and the redditors will pocket the hedge fund money.

I think Elon musk tweeted in support of the gamestop move, probably because he hates short sellers.
 
I don't get it. Sure, if a fund was stupid enough to go deep on one stock, this could hurt them. But as long as a fund can stay liquid, it can cover it's short and then short the stock at the higher price and make even more money, assuming they act quickly enough. Meanwhile, the reddit folks have paid inflated prices for a stock. When they start selling and the price falls, some of those reddit folks are going to lose.
 
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