We’ve recently witnessed an unusual confluence of remarkable events with May 20th’s historic announcement that Zack Snyder’s Justice League will be released on HBO Max.
First, a fan based social media movement came together to essentially “levitate the Pentagon.” Although unlike the symbolic anti-war protest event in 1967, our contemporary RTSC movement literally achieved what seemed to so many doubters and skeptics an utterly impossible task.
Second, a sea change is underway with the how the television and film entertainment is delivered, shifting from cable TV to the so-called “streaming wars” (similar to cable TV replacing broadcast antenna TV, etc.). One of the big players on that streaming war stage is a late arrival: HBO Max. And as mentioned HBO Max is now shrewdly playing an ace-in-the-hole of giving fans a rebirth of the original Snyderverse vision.
And third, the entire world has been shut down by a global pandemic. Covid-19 has halted film and television production and will likely continue to hurt the movie theater industry for a good while to come. Many theater-goers will be wary of entering a movie theater for some time. Presumably masks and distancing will be required. Concession stands will make no money because no one can eat or drink while wearing a mask! Fears of a resurgence of the disease in autumn, and concerns over just how bad that will be, will continue to harm the industry.
Anyway, it probably will be a long time before the movie theater industry returns to it’s former vigor.
(Personally I believe it will survive. But not until Covid-19 and/or it’s potential mutation(s) are really and truly gone. Either by virtue of naturally running it’s course or due to a vaccine. Nota bene: for some diseases we remain unable to come up with a vaccine, e.g., Malaria, Ebola, Dengue, HIV/AIDS.)
This combination of events makes me wonder if something akin to a ‘magnetic pole shift’ has begun with plans for ZSJL to release on HBO Max. Here is the rationale:
It sounds like there are plans for Zack Snyder to edit the film footage into a six episode TV miniseries for HBO Max. As Grace Randolph put it, “something that could be their Mandolorian.” Original TV series that keep fans hooked between episodes is the very core of success for Netflix and other streaming services. So for the sake of argument, let’s presume this does indeed happen. After the series has had enough time to attract new subscribers, it would then make sense for the film to release as a roughly four hour movie. Available of course exclusively via HBO Max subscription.
After that, ZSJL will become available then for digital purchase. Then it will release on disk as well. And finally it will make it’s way eventually to rental on other streaming services, and to TV markets that run with commercials, etc.
Once ZSJL has had both it’s TV miniseries run and digital release as a film via HBO Max, some semblance of normalcy may have returned to the theater industry…
Why not then give the film a (relatively) traditional theater release? According to traditional thinking, no one is going to pay to watch a movie in a theater after so many other ways of viewing it have been made available. But the entire world of entertainment media–or specifically it’s delivery system–will probably be in a process of re-configuring then. We don’t really know what that will look like yet. Release of any movie may very well be, by definition, ‘limited’ for all films. However I do have faith that movie theaters will remain in existence. I think a market will remain for film fans that love to watch movies on the big screen. Movie goers will still want to enjoying the experience communally with other fans, munching away on movie theater popcorn. More than likely theater movie-goers will pay a monthly membership subscription of at least $20. That was just being rolled out prior to the pandemic, actually. So it will be a luxury, for sure. But there may be enough devoted theater fans with sufficient income to make it work.
In any case, moving forward… perhaps at least for a good number of years, anyway… for all the reasons enumerated above, the theater business simply may not be quite as robust as in the past. And as such, theater release of movies might assume a place at the end of the film distribution cycle, rather than the beginning.
And that is what I mean by a “magnetic pole shift.”
The Snyderverse 