Tag: HBO Max

Internet thinks that Warner Bros. may have killed movie theaters with huge HBO Max move

HUGE.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the movie-theater industry hard as people around the country have largely avoided (or been prohibited from) gathering in indoor crowds.

But even the optimism over a vaccine’s arrival may not be enough to save the theater industry, especially with the Thursday announcement from Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Pictures Group announced that it will release its entire 2021 film slate for streaming on HBO Max to run concurrent with the theatrical release. And by “entire film slate,” Warner Bros. means EVERYTHING. The Matrix, Dune, Space Jam, Suicide Squad will all be on HBO Max in addition to theaters.

In terms of the movie industry, it’s difficult to overstate how consequential this announcement will be for theaters.

Most blockbusters set for a 2020 release were delayed in order to have its full theatrical release (huge for revenue) in 2021. But this announcement could very well change how the movie theater industry functions in the future.

Twitter was already seeing it as the end for theaters.

We’ll have to see if the other studios — NBC Universal, Viacom, Disney — make similar moves with their streaming services. But for now, it doesn’t look good for theaters in 2021.

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HBO Max featuring Chadwick Boseman interview from ‘The Shop’

Boseman was a guest on LeBron’s HBO show earlier in the year and the interview has newfound relevance after his death.

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The tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman sent shockwaves throughout America and the world. Boseman, unbeknownst to anybody else other than his family, continued working and starring in movies, but he did so only on his own terms. In the past view days, HBO and HBO Max have featured Boseman’s recent appearance on ‘The Shop,’ created by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, where he discussed his approach to his career.

Among the many topics that Boseman touched on, which LeBron James reflected on after Boseman’s passing, was the late Kobe Bryant.

“It was crazy because we were sitting in the party talking about philosophy and poetry — that’s who he was. He was like, ‘This is what I’m into right now as an artist, not as a basketball player,'” Boseman said about Kobe. “We started talking about it, I’m like ‘Yo we should do something together.’ He was applying the same type of focus that he’s applied to basketball, as a producer or director, whatever.”

HBO has added an in memoriam tribute about Boseman before the episode.

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Here’s why Gone with the Wind is off of HBO Max for now

Gone With the Wind is gone.

Gone With the Wind is just over 80 years old but is still revered as one of the most decorated pieces of American cinematic art.

As it stands though, HBO Max temporarily removed from the 1939 Oscar winning film from its catalog on Tuesday night, following a public outcry asking for the film to be pulled, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

While the film has always been celebrated as one of the greatest pieces of cinema in America’s history, it’s also wholly problematic. It casts aside the horrors of slavery while romanticizing the Confederacy and glorifying pre-Civil War America.

The streaming service pledged to eventually bring the film back “with a discussion of its historical context.” There’s no current timetable for when the film could return to the platform.

Proponents of the film will point out that actress Hattie McDaniel, who played “Mammy” in the film, became the first black person to win an Oscar, when she won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 1940.

But her character was completely based on a stereotype of black women in the Jim Crow South. She was a caricature and acted as one of the most painful black stereotypes in film.

By the way, she wasn’t even allowed at the film’s premiere.

 

John Ridley, the screenwriter for 12 Years a Slave, perfectly explained why the film needed to be removed in a column he wrote in the LA Times explaining his position.

“It is a film that, as part of the narrative of the “Lost Cause,” romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the “right” to own, sell and buy human beings.”

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that slavery was bad.

This film does nothing in the way of depicting that. Sure, it was a product of its time. But we live in a time where black lives are under attack. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, films like this have to be admonished and revisited in their proper context.

This is no different than calling for the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue or any other different Confederate memorials erected across the nation.

HBO did the right thing here, but this is just the beginning. They can follow up on this by committing themselves to inclusion by hiring more black creators. That’s meaningful change.