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MCUniverse: Into the Spider-Thread


SpaceChampion

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Saw a few articles about rumors of D'onofrio returning as Kingpin in Hawkeye. That would be awesome.

if this and the Daredevil rumor turn out to be true I'll be really curious to see if they keep any of the Netflix stuff. Maybe use the multiverse to say "This guy went though stuff that was basically like what you saw, but with some slight differences whenever we feel like it." 

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2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Could be? 

*points to the east coast of Australia*

You guys have been considerably more sensible on Covid than us. Here in North America, we're spreading our legs and our cheeks for Delta variant. Don't worry, we'll be locking down around the time you guys are reopening. :D  

And lockdowns in Australia don't have much to do with North American box office.

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Echo apparently will be in Hawkeye and seems to have the same power as Taskmaster, the ability to copy any movements / fighting techniques.  Seems odd Marvel would do that, especially since Yelena will be in Hawkeye too.

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On 7/24/2021 at 6:32 PM, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Shifting gear slightly, Black Widow's box office drop was in the news last week. I just checked box office mojo:

Domestic (US & Canada) Friday Box Office:

July 9: $39.5 mil

July 16: $8.06 mil (-79.6%)

July 23: $3.50 mil (estimated) (-56.5% & -91% respectively)

And it's still playing on over 4,200 screens. Disney reported monster streaming numbers from Disney+ on the opening weekend and stopped after that, suggesting there was a similarly large drop there.

Normally, I'd say it'll probably shed 2-3k screens by next Friday and disappear completely within a month. But these are not normal times. It's not like there's much of anything to replace it until The Suicide Squad comes out, and that doesn't seem to be generating a lot of buzz at the moment. A month from now we could all be back in lockdown anyway.

Critics seem to like it. Audiences are a bit more mixed but generally favorable. But as we saw with Shazam! and Bumblebee, Franchise films and high RT scores don't necessarily translate into monster box-office receipts. 

Some people have blamed the concurrent theatrical/streaming launch but I'm not so sure. Hesitancy about Covid likely kept some people away. But am I wrong in thinking there just wasn't a lot of excitement for this movie? Even looking at trivial things like social media trends and trailer views on youtube, it didn't seem like there was a ton of enthusiasm there. At least not by MCU standards. Maybe the popularity of the Disney+ content took the light off it. I don't know.

I thought the trailers for Black Widow looked great, but then I started seeing people talking about it after it came out and that let the air out of the balloon a little bit.  Having seen the movie myself, I share a lot of the sentiments of others.  It was okay.  The humor was forced, the bad guys sucked (they outright ruined Taskmaster), the accents were hilariously bad, and the plot didn't really make much sense, which I suppose is the case for most of these films, as they're largely complete nonsense. 

This one just felt off, though.  I think if the humor had landed I'd probably feel more positive about it.  Instead, Black Widow thinks it's funny when it very clearly is not (outside of maybe two or three moments), and that is obnoxious. 

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14 hours ago, briantw said:

I thought the trailers for Black Widow looked great, but then I started seeing people talking about it after it came out and that let the air out of the balloon a little bit.  Having seen the movie myself, I share a lot of the sentiments of others.  It was okay.  The humor was forced, the bad guys sucked (they outright ruined Taskmaster), the accents were hilariously bad, and the plot didn't really make much sense, which I suppose is the case for most of these films, as they're largely complete nonsense. 

This one just felt off, though.  I think if the humor had landed I'd probably feel more positive about it.  Instead, Black Widow thinks it's funny when it very clearly is not (outside of maybe two or three moments), and that is obnoxious. 

The humour. It's becoming so forced and too common in MCU. Watching Loki get punched and kicked repeatedly wasn't that funny and the need for humour in the end credits scene just did not fit with what should have been an emotional moment. It's not quite The Simpsons S6 - Round Springfield level of humour and emotional.

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On 7/24/2021 at 10:21 PM, RumHam said:

if this and the Daredevil rumor turn out to be true I'll be really curious to see if they keep any of the Netflix stuff. Maybe use the multiverse to say "This guy went though stuff that was basically like what you saw, but with some slight differences whenever we feel like it." 

I would be completely on board with this,

 

I saw BW last weekend in the theater. It was about a third full (in Florida). My expectations were lowered, so I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. I do agree that it would've been a better movie had it been released before IW. We didn't learn anything new about Natasha, really. Wait. No, we did learn where she got her vest and found out that she had been thinking about the hair color change for awhile before bleaching her red locks. 

I guess at a stretch, you could say that her sacrifice had more impact since she did have a family still alive, but seeing she had hardly seen them in 20 years, that's stretching it too far.

I'm still looking forward to future MCU movies, but not excited for anything at the moment. Maybe Dr Strange, as WandaVision and Loki have set it up. 

 

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"$50 million" from an anonymous source? That seems excessive to me. Still, if Disney failed to renegotiate after changing the release strategy, she'll probably have some money coming her way. This will never see the inside of a court room.

News from last year was the Patti and Gal were also miffed about the release of WW84 because they were due $10 million bonuses if the film did $1 billion at the box office. Warner Media agreed to just pay them their bonuses. Yeah that thing was never going to make $1 billion at the box office.

 

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44 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

"$50 million" from an anonymous source? That seems excessive to me. Still, if Disney failed to renegotiate after changing the release strategy, she'll probably have some money coming her way. This will never see the inside of a court room.

News from last year was the Patti and Gal were also miffed about the release of WW84 because they were due $10 million bonuses if the film did $1 billion at the box office. Warner Media agreed to just pay them their bonuses. Yeah that thing was never going to make $1 billion at the box office.

 

I'm amazed disney didn't negotiate new deals with their actors when planning to stream films. I wonder how the cast of Cruella were affected too.

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24 minutes ago, Ghostlydragon said:

I'm amazed disney didn't negotiate new deals with their actors when planning to stream films. I wonder how the cast of Cruella were affected too.

It's common to find business relationships being strained during a recession. Good clients that you've worked with for years are suddenly sluggish when it comes to their obligations to you. "Oh, were we 'net-60 days'? Sorry, I thought we were 'net-90'. I don't know what I was thinking. Don't worry; we'll mail that check as soon as we can."

From Disney's POV, their parks were closed for over a year, box office receipts have all but dried up, they laid off thousands of employees and their executives are on half rations. D+ is the one bright spot, but that's a relatively small part of a large company.

They came into this thing with a significant debt burden due to the Fox acquisition, and that situation isn't getting better. We'll have a better idea when they announce quarterly earnings but I'd imagine they're borrowing a lot of money right now. 

Add to that, they announced this massive slate of Star Wars and MCU content that probably represents a few $billion in production and marketing costs. Guaranteed they are pinching pennies wherever they can. Paying eight figure bonuses to actors is probably something they'd rather not do right now.

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Both sides sort of look like scum in this, if you ask me. Scarlett Johansson made 20 million from this film and is trying to ignore Covid, to get more money. Disney on the other hand is using Covid as an excuse, for why the movie was put on streaming, but is conveniently ignoring why a new contract was never negotiated with Johansson, that factored Covid into the equation

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3 hours ago, sifth said:

Both sides sort of look like scum in this, if you ask me. Scarlett Johansson made 20 million from this film and is trying to ignore Covid, to get more money. Disney on the other hand is using Covid as an excuse, for why the movie was put on streaming, but is conveniently ignoring why a new contract was negotiated with Johansson, that factored Covid into the equation

Pretty much this. I tend to err on the side of the person who is not a corporation. But in the case of rich as entertainers my lack of sympathy is more evenly split. It's a contractual matter so lawyers at 10 paces will sort this out. A nice gesture on the part of Johanssen would be to give any money she squeezes out of Disney to all the cast and crew who are not up for bonuses: doing it for the principle of the thing, not to make herself even more rich. How likely is that?

I'm guessing she is no planning to appear an another Disney production any time soon. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, most of the time.

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26 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm guessing she is no planning to appear an another Disney production any time soon. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, most of the time.

Previous comments from her already suggested a split. 

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3 hours ago, sifth said:

Both sides sort of look like scum in this, if you ask me. Scarlett Johansson made 20 million from this film and is trying to ignore Covid, to get more money. Disney on the other hand is using Covid as an excuse, for why the movie was put on streaming, but is conveniently ignoring why a new contract was negotiated with Johansson, that factored Covid into the equation

Did you not see that South Park documentary about the Jonas Brothers and how they were treated by the Mouse(TM) ?

Make the Mouse(TM) squeal like a... mouse, I say. Drain him of all his precious bodily fluids. 

Also, if she signed a contract that guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release; and was willing to renegotiate in good faith; and Disney ignored her... She's got a legitimate grievance.  

53 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm guessing she is no planning to appear an another Disney production any time soon. You don't bite the hand that feeds you, most of the time.

Ya think?

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12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Previous comments from her already suggested a split. 

She is a big movie star in her own right (though the MCU is partly the reason for that), and she's an OG Avenger in the MCU. I dunno if she's suffered from a gender pay gap with her male co-stars, and this was meant to be her real payday. So even though she is mega rich and privileged if she's been short changed it's just another nail in the coffin of her relationship with Disney.

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12 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

She is a big movie star in her own right (though the MCU is partly the reason for that), and she's an OG Avenger in the MCU. I dunno if she's suffered from a gender pay gap with her male co-stars, and this was meant to be her real payday. So even though she is mega rich and privileged if she's been short changed it's just another nail in the coffin of her relationship with Disney.

People are mistaken to focus on the amount of money. Everything is according to scale. I'm sure she's felt undervalued for a long time and disrespected, the latter being the priority, and some things along the process of Black Widow were the last straw. It's not about the money because she needs it. It's because she's earned it, in her eyes (and I would agree with that opinion). She also had to wait forever for her solo film, and per the reviews (I haven't seen it), most seem to say its only her film because of the title. Tie that in with her feeling like she was just there to be eye candy and I get frustrations boiling over.

It's not exactly like the Mouse is all about ethics over business. 

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