to reverse its day-and-date decision about “Dune” - commitments have been made, logistics have been locked in - but here are a few reasons why I think it will prove to be a mistake.ġ. But it’s amazing how much common sense “sophisticated” business rationales can leave behind. Winning massive numbers of subscribers is the new “It opened huge!” And for entertainment conglomerates, imitating the model invented by Netflix, subscriptions have become the coin of the realm.
#DUNE 2021 RELEASE DATE MOVIE#
A movie like “Dune” is a subscription magnet that’s the whole point. Under different circumstances, who can say how well the movie would have performed?” And, of course, they’ll double down on making the argument for how much it helps the company’s bottom line to offer the film on HBO Max. The studio would say, in essence, “We’re fine with a $50 million opening. will take all that speculation - the lack of certainty - and use it as cover for its decision. So if it makes, say, $50 million three weekends from now, how much of that shortfall will be pandemic-related and how much will be HBO Max-related? We’ll also speculate about what it would have made on opening weekend in pre-pandemic times. If so, a qualified victory will be declared, and we’ll be left speculating about how much the movie might have made if it weren’t competing with itself on TV. But let’s say that “Dune” manages to post receipts in that range. The highest opening-weekend gross earned by a movie so far this year is the $94 million made by “ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” over the long Labor Day weekend, followed by the $80 million made by “ Black Widow” and the $70 million made by “ F9: The Fast Saga.” (Sorry, but when did “The Fast Saga” becomes part of that movie’s title? They should really lose that.) Of course, “Shang-Chi” opened exclusively in theaters. There’s simply too much anticipation for “Dune” on the part of three generations of sci-fi fans who are devotees of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel (not to mention its daisy chain of sequels).įar likelier is the following scenario: that on opening weekend, “Dune” does… okay. If that happens, the HBO Max release will be seen to have been a disaster - but I don’t think that’s a very likely scenario. The whole world pronounces it a disappointment and a bomb. One is that on opening weekend, the film crashes and burns, making back just a small fraction of the $165 million it cost to produce (which, of course, doesn’t include the huge sum it cost to market). I think there are two basic potential scenarios for how the release of “Dune” could play out. The question is: Does it really make sense to take one of the most feverishly anticipated movie extravaganzas of the decade and give it away to folks in their living rooms? And at a moment when many have begun to question the wisdom of opening a film simultaneously in theaters and at home (day-and-date, as it’s known), “Dune” now stands as the apotheosis of an issue hovering over the entertainment industry and defining it. But the year when people couldn’t go to the movies is over. The pandemic is still with us, of course. And since people, for most of last year, couldn’t go to the movies, it was decided that each of the studio’s 2021 films would be made available, the same day it’s released in theaters, on HBO Max. to do all it could to put its new streaming service into orbit. In the first year of the pandemic, which was the year of HBO Max’s ostensibly game-changing launch, it became a transcendent corporate goal for Warner Bros. The revamped company will have many interlocking priorities. is owned by AT&T and will be merging, probably next year, with Discovery. “Dune” is opening simultaneously in movie theaters and on home screens because Warner Bros., the company that Wikipedia now describes as “an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate,” also owns HBO Max, the streaming service where “Dune” will be made available (for no extra cost) to subscribers. We know the answer, and there’s a kind of petty spreadsheet logic to it. So why would this overwhelmingly epic, visually spectacular, one-of-a-kind sci-fi popcorn movie be opening Oct.
Big as in: The movie transports you to the desert planet of Arrakis, and for 2 hours and 35 minutes you live there. As in images and sounds that fill the screen and fill the senses. But however well it does or does not do at the box office, it’s undeniably the biggest, grandest slice of movie in a long time. “ Dune” has the potential to be the biggest movie of the year.