I learned in the news that Warner Bros. has decided to release “Dune” on HBO Max at the same time as our theatrical release, using prominent images from our movie to promote their streaming service. With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history. There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion. Therefore, even though “Dune” is about cinema and audiences, AT&T is about its own survival on Wall Street. With HBO Max’s launch a failure thus far, AT&T decided to sacrifice Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate in a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.
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When NYT and CNBC put out detailed analyses of the situation and never mention 'Nolan' or 'Tenet' once, when filmmakers like Mr. Villeneuve put their careers on the line to expose the actual reason for the move ("AT&T is about its own survival on Wall Street"), it's irrational to continue to insist on putting the blame on one single film that while, yes, lost money, but still did pretty well, all things considered: the fact that it was an original IP, that it lost less money than Mulan, etc.
okay. let's say you were in a car accident and you broke your arm. just because the doctor says "you are in pain due to your arm being broken" does not mean you can conclude that the car was not involved.
A better analogy would be: we have a family with five children in it, and one day, the oldest, usually a straight-A star student, brings home a report card with a B, C, and D, but also a bunch of Fs. The parent decides that a lesson/punishment is in order, so she...sends ALL the children off to military boarding schools, out of the blue without warning.
Who is in the wrong here? Who do you think the vast majority of people will sympathize with, and villainize? Do you really believe most people will go, "Yep, it's the oldest's fault. His bad grades directly led to this. He is a key factor in what happened to all of them."
No, because most people will recognize that the parent's reaction is insanely disproportionate to the events preceding it. Yes, the oldest absolutely did mess up in bringing home a sorry-ass report card, the parent is absolutely in the right to be angry at such awful grades, and the oldest deserves punishment of some kind.
But a straight-A student messing up one semester somehow immediately causing his parent to then immediately ship all five of them off to military boarding schools? Nobody would accept that at face value. People would immediately think, "There's more to the story here." or "There has to be another reason. Maybe the parent was just looking for an excuse to ship them off." and so on.
Replace 'oldest child' with 'Nolan/Tenet', and 'parent' with 'AT&T' and you get my point.
What are we actually arguing here? I thought it was beyond obvious that Tenet underperformed in the US and other big titles jumped the ship as a reaction to that. We even discussed it before Tenet's release how it and Mulan will be the guinea pigs in this test. Tenet's release was a test, I thought everyone understood that. I'm not even sure what the controversy is here.
As others pointed out, the government's reaction to the cries of the movie industry is ultimately to blame, but it's still fair to say that if Tenet would've performed better then we wouldn't be in this situation right now.
I dont believe for a second that if Tenet did better (what little better it could have done realistically) the decision would have been different, WB and AT&T must have known no movie was going to make what it was supossed to make in the BO, the fact that they already had this agenda to push streaming makes this apparent, its either a case of the inverstors hearing what they wanted to hear, or something they where going to do regardless, "yeah sure release Tenet, make nolan happy, then because it cant realistically make the money it was going to make we can pull this narrative that, at least for this couple of years, theaters are fucked"
people forget how ruthless the suits are, i mean this little speculation of mine is just that, speculation, but i cant help it but to believe my little story of what happened at WB, and that hollywood reporter article really gives me stuff to support my beliefs
For those singularly blaming Tenet/Nolan for the WB move, what exactly were they supposed to do in terms of a theatrical release? Let's not pretend there was a winning answer here.
I don't think anyone is singularly blaming Tenet/Nolan for this, just that it's preposterous to suggest it wasn't a heavily weighted factor in AT&T's decision making.
For example, if AT&T didn't have a big flop I bet they'd be a lot more open to experimenting with theatrical releases stateside once a vaccine begins rolling out.
Instead, they're removing any possibility of giving domestic theaters a cent. If you don't think their only pandemic-era theatrical release was a major influence on that, you're drunk.
-Vader
Never said it wasn't the major influence, I just think the situation was inevitable regardless of what movie(s) tried to get out in theaters. It was always going to be movies severely underperforming or no movies at all and the theaters are in equal danger either way. So blaming any movie/director at all instead of the pandemic/government response is just flat out asinine. And talk about such a shitty move from WB/AT&T. Look at Dune, which Legendary fronted 75% of its budget (over $100 million) and they weren't even notified of the plan.
Last edited by Hustler on December 11th, 2020, 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
That’s exactly the point. It was inevitable it would underperform. Even below even their own expectations. But you have it backwards: that’s not an argument for why Nolan / WB pushing Tenet shouldn’t be held accountable as a major catalyst “since it is inevitable this happened anyway,” it’s the very inevitability of underperformance you speak of that’s an argument for why Nolan and WB shouldn’t have pushed to release Tenet in the first place.
AT&T would be less ruthlessly opposed to a domestic theatrical strategy if Tenet’s release didn’t so clearly convince them it was far too risky.
That’s exactly the point. It was inevitable it would underperform. Even below even their own expectations. But you have it backwards: that’s not an argument for why Nolan / WB pushing Tenet shouldn’t be held accountable as a major catalyst “since it is inevitable this happened anyway,” it’s the very inevitability of underperformance you speak of that’s an argument for why Nolan and WB shouldn’t have pushed to release Tenet in the first place.
AT&T would be less ruthlessly opposed to a domestic theatrical strategy if Tenet’s release didn’t so clearly convince them it was far too risky.
-Vader
ok im beginning to understand your stance, but still, thats a similar argument to that of "victim blaming", also Chris was in a though corner, if he agreed to delay Tenet, he would have been seen as a hypocrite by many, being such a spokesman for the theater experience, leaving theaters to languish in a prologued hiatus would have been inconsequential, he did the right thing by releasing the film where it was possible and safe to do so, there is a lot of valuable data to extract form Tenet`s exhibition, but WB and AT&T are clearly not interested in a nuanced analysis, the decision was probably already taken, the point im trying to make is that, once Tenet gets its home release, it will likely break even and make a profit, but the capitalist nature of WB/AT & T will not be satisfied with this outcome, they dont care about supporting theaters, they`ll happily let them die and jump into the streaming wagon, potentially screwing thousands of people`s jobs in the process, hence why i strongly feel placing any blame on Chris and company is irrelevant and ultimately misses the mark.
so to be 100% clear, you think criticizing Christopher Nolan pushing to release Tenet during a global pandemic, a venture of dubious safety and public health risk with even more dubious box office prospects, is "victim blaming"
That’s exactly the point. It was inevitable it would underperform. Even below even their own expectations. But you have it backwards: that’s not an argument for why Nolan / WB pushing Tenet shouldn’t be held accountable as a major catalyst “since it is inevitable this happened anyway,” it’s the very inevitability of underperformance you speak of that’s an argument for why Nolan and WB shouldn’t have pushed to release Tenet in the first place.
AT&T would be less ruthlessly opposed to a domestic theatrical strategy if Tenet’s release didn’t so clearly convince them it was far too risky.
-Vader
This whole debate in general is just talking in circles though, and just goes back to my original question about what they were supposed to do. The point of pushing Tenet's release was to attempt to put asses back in seats and get the theaters jump-started. Not necessarily to stake the entire theater industry on one movie, something needed to come out and hopefully perform just well enough to convince other releases to move forward. Smaller movies weren't going to be able to do that, nor would one or two big movies save the industry. We're talking about a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Not to mention if they had sat on Tenet, they'd be in no better position today to release it either... 3 months later. Worse off, in fact. And Tenet being THE reason to put an entire year's worth of releases on streaming is sheer scapegoating. This is as much about pushing HBO Max as it is about Tenet or the pandemic. In other words, it's all to blame.
