Lots of negativity in this thread, but that seems to be par for the course for any fandom. Personally I’m cautiously optimistic.

Skydance produced/co-produced (often partnering with Paramount) on a number of franchise movies, including Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Jack Reacher, Top Gun, GI Joe, Terminator, The Old Guard and Spy Kids. Some of their productions have been well-received (eg Mission Impossible, Top Gun Maverick) and others less so (Terminator Genysis and Dark Fate, although personally I quite liked Dark Fate). They’ve also produced smaller, critically acclaimed movies like True Grit, Annihilation and Air; as well as their share of dreck of course, like Geostorm.

What I think is clear though is that Skydance is primarily interested in big franchises, so if they were to acquire Paramount, I think more Star Trek movies would very likely be in the works which, as a fan, I’d be happy about. I know there’s an argument that Trek is best suited to TV, but some of the best Star Trek has been big screen Star Trek. And studios are more willing these days to have franchises run across both TV and film concurrently (MCU, DC, Star Wars), granted with mixed success.

Re Larry Ellison’s involvement - my guess is that he’d be a silent partner, putting some of his personal fortune - rather than Oracle’s funds - to help out his son. I believe he did the same thing for his daughter, Megan Ellison, whose company Annapurna Pictures he helped fun and which went on to produce films like Her, Zero Dark Thirty, Phantom Thread and Books Smart (and the stage musical A Strange Loop). I doubt Larry Ellison will take a hands-on role in the management of Skydance/Paramount.

You’re not the only one who’s picked up on this:
https://www.primetimer.com/quickhits/the-west-wings-hartsfields-landing-has-never-made-any-damn-sense

If you watch the show (and I’ve watched it a lot) you can tell that Aaron Sorkin wasn’t writing to a detailed plan. I think a lot of his ongoing storylines grew organically (and were often turned in very late, which ultimately led to him being sacked from the show), which meant he sometimes repeated, or retconned, beats, or made other mistakes.

Hartsfield’s Landing was probably named after Hart’s Location, another New Hampshire town that has often votes at midnight. I recall reading a story that, because of the weather, of the three towns that usually do vote at midnight only Dixville did so this year.

edit: Hrrm. Turns out that’s what the linked CNN story actually says. Serves me right for not RTFA.

Yes.

Troy is the first Sinead O’Connor song I ever heard. It’s filled with so much love and pain and rage. I was too young to understand it, but I listened to it a lot. It remains one of the most powerful artistic expressions I’ve encountered. Here is a live performance and the music video.

I had the same reaction. The real life reason of course would be that the fight scenes wouldn’t last very long if she could just Doctor Manhattan her way through them.

Hmm… I may have jumped the gun a little. Villeneuve has said he wants to make a third movie based on Messiah, but WB hasn’t officially confirmed it yet. (I thought I’d seen something issued by the studio which referred to Part 2 as the middle installment of a trilogy but I may have been mistaken.) They’re probably waiting for the box office results before formally greenlighting Part 3, just as they waited to confirm Part 2 even though Villeneuve put “Part 1” in the title of the movie. :-D

More info (for what it’s worth):

• https://movieweb.com/denis-villeneuve-confims-his-plan-for-dune-as-an-epic-trilogy/
• https://collider.com/dune-3-messiah-adaptation/
• https://screenrant.com/dune-3-possible-title-director-plans-everything-we-know/

Across the Spider-Verse Part 1 is one of the year’s best movies, but I think it could have benefited by cutting about 15 minutes. The pacing felt very deliberate. Scenes took their time to play out, which taken individually were all fine and justifiable, but cumulatively took their toll. In particular I felt that most of the action set pieces could have been trimmed a little here, a little there. That way, that huge action sequence towards the end, where Miles Morales goes up against the combined forces of spider-men, spider-women and other spider-beings (and which I do NOT think should be cut), would have had more of an impact.

Dune, I’m really pleased to hear, is now a three-part movie, with Part 3 adapting Dune Messiah.

Both Dial of Destiny and Dead Reckoning had similar budgets (around $300M) and similar opening weekends (around $80M). But the reviews and audience reactions have been better for Mission Impossible. This suggests the movie will have longer legs than Indiana Jones. Undoubtedly Paramount is hoping that Dead Reckoning’s trajectory will be more like Top Gun Maverick’s (staggering) 5.66 multiplier and less like (say) Quantumania’s 2.02 multiplier.

edit: The article also mentions that the global opening weekend box office numbers for Mission Impossible are a lot better than the numbers for Indiana Jones, at $235M (ie $80M domestic + $155M overseas) vs $130M (ie ~$85M domestic + only about $45M overseas). That said, it’s difficult to compare overseas numbers without a detailed breakdown of which markets each movie opened in. Mission Impossible may have played in more countries its first few days than Indiana Jones did.

Tom Cruise hits ChatGPT in the face. Or, rather, vice versa.

Everyone’s been in Marvel content at some point and it’s not really acting

Mission Impossible ain’t exactly Ibsen.

edit: I totally forgot when posting this that I actually saw Hayley Atwell as Rebecca West in Rosmersholm. 😂

See my comment to spacedancer - it’s the actors not the writers who have been advised by their union to keep working.

It’s the actors, not the writers, who have been advised by their union to continue working:

And per guidance from the actors guild stateside, members working under [British] Equity contracts are to “continue to report.” SAG card carriers working on Equity productions may choose to boycott but, due to tough anti-strike laws in the UK, studios would be able to sue them directly to force them back on to set.

The article doesn’t make it clear whether the WGA (the writers’ union) is advising its members to do the same on this show. Presumably it would depend on whether the writers’ contracts are struck under British or American law.

Theatre is an expensive business. Not as expensive as making a big budget movie or TV show of course, but the potential to recoup your investment is limited to the size of the house you’re playing, each of which incurs high running costs. In movies you can recover the capital cost (pre-production, production, prints) of a $100M film across 5000 screens each seating 200 people at a time four screenings a day, with close to zero recurring costs (other than advertising and revenue share with the cinema). In theatre you have to make back your $10M capitalisation from one venue, 1000 people at a time, with you also having to pay actors, backstage crew, front-of-house, and the venue owner for every performance, which are usually limited to eight per week max.

This is why it’s increasingly common for major theatrical productions (mostly musicals, but also larger-scale plays) to be based on existing IP, and to also feature Hollywood stars to draw in the crows. So in terms of plays (as opposed to musicals), we’ve had stage adaptations of recognisable movie properties like Misery (with Bruce Willis) and Network (with Bryan Cranston).

I would guess that whoever they cast in this Doctor Strangelove adaptation will be well known to the general public. Someone who could certainly do the roles justice is Geoffrey Rush, who’s got the name, the stage experience, and the acting chops. He also played Sellers in what I think might be his best performance, in the TV movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. (That said, he is getting on in age and his reputation of late has - shall we say - been tarnished.)

Coincidentally, some years ago I saw a play that was partly about Stanley Kubrick making Doctor Strangelove, and partly about John F Kennedy facing down the Cuban Missile Crisis.

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f8df9dde-be5d-489e-93c3-d7e03e8d3439

As long as they’re about how terrible DC films are, I suspect Marvel will be okay with it.

@kingmongoose7877 Yup. Really. Objectively in terms of craft The Godfather probably is a bit better (note that I said Logan deserved to be nominated for a bunch of Oscars), but personally of the two I prefer Logan. And yes I put them in the same sentence. Deal with it.

Seriously, I don’t know why Hollywood keeps choosing terrible writers for huge projects

Don’t worry, soon Hollywood won’t be choosing writers at all. (Thanks ChatGPT!)

(Obviously I agree that good writing is fundamental to the success of a movie, with few exceptions.)

@chickenwing Interestingly, one of the things I respect the execs behind the MCU for (Feige I suppose, although even those behind some of the very early decisions before the rise of Feige) is that they have a history of hiring relatively “indie” directors.

Starting with Jon Favreau, then Joss Whedon, the Russos, James Gunn, Peyton Reed, Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, Cate Shortland, Destin Daniel Cretton and Chloé Zhao and others I’m probably forgetting. These are not the sort of names you would have expected to head $100M-$250M popcorn movies with their prior experience mostly being in smaller budget movies and/or TV work. It would have been an understandable decision to hire directors with a more proven big budget epic track record, a “safe pair of hands” (ala Ron Howard who replaced Lord & Miller on Solo because they were seen to be too quirky for Lucasfilm).

Yes you could argue that Marvel homogenises their styles with a “house” look & feel wrt to cinematography, soundtrack, action scenes etc, but nevertheless, the sensibility these directors is generally infused into even their big budget MCU films. And, I’d argue, that accounts for some of their commercial success.

the studios panic and start doing weird experimental stuff with young directors.

I wonder if this is possible given the changes in distribution channel over the years. One of the reasons why theatrical releases are dominated by big-budget four-quadrant movies is because smaller, weirder stuff by younger film makers gets released on streaming. Going to the movies is starting to become expensive. Where I live (not in the US) a movie typically costs $20-$30, and premium formats (eg imax or luxurious seating, table service for food & drink etc) can run up to $50 just for the movie ticket. I’m more likely to see a movie that benefits from an enormous screen and enormous sound (ie “theme park rides”) at the movies, because I know I can get 90% of the experience of a smaller film at home at a fraction of the cost, and a fraction of the annoyance (given the inconsiderate behaviour of many people who go to see a movie these days).

I’d look at South Korean films there has been a ton of great films come out of there in the last 20 years or so.

True. Although, based on the ones I’ve seen (basically the well known Korean films and TV shows), they’re generally pretty full-on wrt violence, language and general tone. Not a bad thing by itself (I like dark and gritty), but this sensibility could limit the mainstream success of a movement inspired by South Korean films.

Speaking of foreign films and superhero franchises - I’d love to see the team behind RRR tackle a Marvel or DC movie.

@kingmongoose7877 Of course Scorsese’s mastery, knowledge and love of movies is matched by few and surpassed by none. But I do find it amusing that the he criticises lowbrow superhero genre movies when every third film he makes has a bunch of Irish or Italian guys telling each other to fuhgeddaboudit, then shooting each other in the head. (Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by that much.)

My point? There are bad, mediocre and good superhero movies, just as there are bad, mediocre and good gangster movies. And every so often there are great genre movies, like The Godfather, or - for my money - Logan (which I think deserved Oscar nominations for picture, director, adapted screenplay, actor, supporting actor and supporting actress).

And, basically, you just need a lot of movies to be made before a masterpiece is produced. For how many decades were westerns a popular genre? Were directors complaining about the guns’n’horses theme parks in the 1950s? Most westerns that were made over that time have been forgotten, but the great ones like Shane or Unforgiven live on. In fifty years most superheroes will have been forgotten, but a handful will live on.

To address @chickenwing 's post more directly: I remember reading articles a few years ago about how the age of the movie star was dead (Tom Cruise being cited as one of a few exceptions), and that the age of the franchise/brand (Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar) had arrived. If the age of the franchise is dying, what will rise to take its place?