Tag Archives: COVID

Hollywood’s Epic Custody Battle

Will Black Widow Release In Theaters, On Disney+, Or On Digital? - The Direct

Hollywood has always had a lucrative but loveless marriage to the nation’s movie theaters.

For decades, studios and exhibitors have maintained a tense but workable relationship. Sure there have been some knockdown-dragouts, and lamps have been thrown in arguments over things like the cost of a ticket and how long someone should wait before they can see a movie from home.

But things got serious over the weekend. And while mom and dad haven’t filed for divorce yet, it looks like they are getting separated. And the custody battle could change life as you knew it as a moviegoer.

Theater owners on Sunday blasted The Walt Disney Co. for making Marvel’s Black Widow available simultaneously in the home and on the big screen, saying the decision undercut the movie’s box office potential and promoted piracy. It marked rare public in-fighting for an industry that prides itself on private unity.

In a blistering press release from the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), the trade organization accused Disney of handcuffing its own film by simultaneous streaming the film and releasing it in theaters, causing the movie to suffer a “stunning collapse in its second weekend in theatrical revenues.” NATO also noted that Widow dropped an unprecedented 41 percent from Friday to Saturday during its opening over the July 9-11 frame.

This is Hollywood eating its own. For years, studios and theater owners had a rough peace accord: a three-month delay between big-screen release and video availability.

But COVID destroyed that treaty. The pandemic forced industries to accomodate a populace sequestered at home, a disaster for companies in the spectating business like movies, theater and sports.

Disney and Warner Bros. have revamped their film slates to accommodate streaming releases, and studios such as Netflix and Amazon Video had already dampened box office revenue, which has remained relatively flat for 25 years.

In a sweeping indictment of all streaming studios, NATO accused Disney of using the virus as a ruse. “Despite assertions that this pandemic-era improvised release strategy was a success for Disney and the simultaneous release model, it demonstrates that an exclusive theatrical release means more revenue for all stakeholders in every cycle of the movie’s life,” NATO said.

This is one parent blaming the other for a child’s fatal disease, when in truth their union had been on the rocks for years.

Since 1995, Americans have bought 1.2 to 1.4 billion movie tickets a year. That’s roughly four movies a year, per American.

Whether that’s a healthy business model is up for debate. Whether it’s a stagnant one is not.

Widow‘s subdued ticket sales, coupled with steep second-weekend declines, suggest that moviegoing is far from returning to normal. And while Disney has not commented on NATO’s accusation, it did note that Widow’s box office has passed $324 million, including revenue from Disney+ Premier Access.

But even that is debatable, NATO claims. It argued that Widow‘s stand-alone box office debut was actually $92-$100 million, a rare swipe at studio veracity.

“One can assume the family-oriented Disney+ household is larger,” the release said. “How much? How much password sharing is there among Disney+ subscribers?”

Ouch.

The way back is unclear. The professional sports world seems to have brokered a rough balance between at-home and in-person spectating, though not without significant casualties (The 2021 Tokyo Olympics, for instance, will be fan-less.) There is money to be made.

So these are not necessarily irreconcilable differences. But, given the stark contrasts over what constitutes a true moviegoing experience, they are irrefutable.

Heard Immunity

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 20: Anti-vaccine protesters demonstrate outside 2019 Comic-Con International on July 20, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)

My mom finally dumped the tax preparer she employed for the past five years, thank god.

I’d pleaded with her since she moved to South Carolina to give the accountant, an old family friend, the ax after Mom said she was still paying taxes in Georgia “because Robin said that’s where my pension was based.”

But I finally won my case this year, when Mom passed along that Robin — and her mother — said they weren’t going to get a COVID vaccine “because it alters your DNA.”

“They should be so lucky,” I scoffed. I then argued why that opinion mattered. “How would you feel if you knew your pilot felt the same way?” I asked. “Do you really want someone in charge of your fate, financial or physical, if they don’t believe in science?”

Then I stumbled upon a jarring two-month study that confirmed my mother’s accountant was hardly unique. Last week, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a detailed report on anti-vaxxer disinformation on social media. The report found that up to 65 percent of “anti-vaccine content” on Facebook and Twitter originated from twelve influencers within the anti-vaxxer movement. 

Entitled The Disinformation Dozen, the CCDH tracked 425 social media accounts supporting anti-vaxxer theories on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The accounts racked up 59.2 million followers in December — an increase of 877,000 more than they had in June.

Moreover, the analysis of 689,000 “anti-vaccine comment” posts found that about 73 percent of the content came from the Disinformation Dozen.

Regardless of your take on vaccines, I recommend reading the report, because its got some damning information, including a detailed indictment of the 12.

Atop the list is Joseph Mercola, “a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines.” Mercola, whose accounts remains active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, has around 3.6 million followers. Among is cure-alls is a “Hydrogen Peroxide Nebulization” therapy to fight coronavirus.

Joseph Mercola

Second on the list is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), one of five organizations CCDH identifies as an anti-vaxxer group. Emblazoned atop CHD website is a garish promotion of its latest feature, Medical Racism: The New Apartheid.

From CHD website

Given the difficulty of getting communities of color to trust the medical community — particularly vaccinations — is it any wonder why we are still losing 1,000 people daily to the pandemic? The list includes authors, website founders and an alternative medicines physician. It’s a rogue’s gallery of swindlers, charlatans and the factually-challenged.

What’s impressive about the report is that it offers, like the vaccination, a path forward. Namely, de-platforming, which has become an invaluable tool in modulating — and moderating — the national blood pressure. That’s bad news for panic porn outlets like CNN, which has seen a 45% drop in viewership since Trump was knocked off his soapbox. But when’s the last time your stomach churned from the latest lie posted by Agent Orange?

Its recommendations:

  • Establish a clear threshold for enforcement action (such as a “two-strikes” rule on accuracy).
  • Display corrective posts to users exposed to disinformation.
  • Add warning screens when users click links to misinformation sites.
  • Institute an Accountability Application Programming Interface (API) to make the AI of social media platforms more effective.
  • Ban private and secret anti-vaccine Facebook groups.

Then of course, there’s the hard way forward: through. When COVID was hurtling past a quarter-million Americans dead on its way beyond a half-million, the right brayed about the need for herd immunity. Some folks, they bloviated, may have to risk death and go back to school or work for the greater good. That was before we had vaccination options.

Now that they’re here, perhaps what we need is heard immunity. A salvo in the “Well, that’s what I hear” defense against the progress of science and emperical evidence. It helped inoculate many of us against the Big Lie, though not entirely. Dominion’s billion-dollar lawsuits against the most egregious misinformers will cull some of that herd.

Which brings us back to Mom’s H&R Blockhead accountant. According to the CCHD study, about 1 in 6 Americans prefer ignorance over information, feelings over fact. That’s means about 17% of this country doesn’t believe in advancement.

That sounds about right.

The Flaccid Stimulus

Congress seals agreement on COVID relief, government funding

There has been much braying surrounding Congress accidentally doing its job this week and agreeing to a COVID relief fund. And make no mistake: Any gesture that turns federal monies from a privileged spigot into a public sprinkler is American at its core.

But I have to laugh every time I hear or read that relief will include “stimulus checks” for working stiffs.

What a reprehensible, utterly dishonest term.

Let’s call these checks what they are: welfare checks.

What American, pray tell, tells herself, “Great! I’m getting a $600 Trump check! Now I can look into gold futures!”

No, I suspect that the average American is going to do what I’m going to do: Take that check to the bank, pray it clears, and buy food. Because that’s where this nation is after 10 months of a pandemic: scrounging and scared.

I saw Rand Paul on the Senate floor this morning, explaining how he wasn’t voting for the package because it would send the country deeper into deficit spending, devalue the dollar and ultimately saddle generations with debts their ancestors incurred.

Sen. Rand Paul recovered from coronavirus; volunteering at hospital | 10tv.com

Gosh, ya think so, Rand? So what makes this spending any different from the dollars you were spending before March? You know, when you were beaming about how rosy the stock market and jobs reports looked?

Forget that the Americans who churned those gears were already dog-paddling in a gig economy, turning their own Toyotas into Uber taxis and laptops into bartering tools. We were trillions in debt before we got sick, Rand. Where was that speech on prudence, Senator?

Let’s be clear: COVID-19 is largely an unfortunate tax on the stupid. We have chosen not to wear masks. We have chosen leaders who can’t be bothered with science. We cannot in clear conscience say that we don’t get what’s coming.

But illness eclipses ideology. Disease dwarfs principle. If COVID has reshaped the way we live, it will have to reshape how we spend. And in the face of a pandemic that tightens like a hangman’s noose, we’ll have to rethink what makes a livable wage, what passes for adequate medical care. Suddenly, $15 an hour doesn’t seem like price gouging.

We can’t afford healthy folks deciding healthcare. We can’t afford rich folks deciding spending policy. COVID has made America one bloated, irritable transplant patient, dependent on medication and susceptible to viruses. The next time your libertarian friend rails about getting the government out of his wallet, ask him what he did with the latest welfare check.

It will, after all, buy almost a third of an ounce of gold.