More Troubles for Netflix Witcher; George R. R. Martin's HBO Deal on Hold; Barbenheimer Stays Strong at the Box Office; and More

The embarrassing mess that is Netflix's The Witcher (see below) has been given a welcome reprieve as production of season four (originally planned for September) is on hold until 2024. As RDI speculates, this is probably due to the writer and actor strikes, but it serves as a welcome pause which could allow Netflix to just let it die. No one is excited about the Netflix show anymore and with Cavill leaving, there's nothing to retain the casuals who have survived the incoherence to this point.

George R. R. Martin's HBO deal (2021) has been suspended. I think most of the projects proposed would never see the light of day anyway, but this suspension is unrelated to that and more about the strike. What I don't believe is that he's working on book six of Game of Thrones (cf on his general bullshitting on that account)--I've long thought Martin gave up on finishing the series, which he hopelessly complicated and derailed with the fourth and fifth books. He's allowed himself to become a fanboy of his own content, hopelessly lost in the imagined histories about events whose outcomes are already known.

Barbie and Oppenheimer have had soft drops for their second weekends, meaning they are both smash hits in terms of box office (helped, to be fair, by having almost no competition). Barbie will catch Guardians 3 for second place this year (I don't think it can reach Super Mario's number), while Oppenheimer could roll past Little Mermaid to 6th this year (yes, that's how dismal the box office has been). Oppenheimer's success doesn't mean much of anything beyond more blank cheques for Christopher Nolan. The Barbie result is more interesting to me, because (some) conservatives attempted to Bud Light the film because of how they saw its messaging, but 'won't someone think of the children!' has only ever had a Streisand Effect so I'm curious what lessons, if any, they learn from this (the same goes for the industry, which has been trying films and shows like this for years but with little to no success).

Angry Joe is about as milquetoast of a critic as you could get for film and TV (cf). However, he, like parts of the mainstream media, has either hit a breaking point or (more likely) seen enough backlash that he's finally put the breaks on praising all of it. Joe has dunked on Witcher season three as well as the unwatchable Secret Invasion. Your reaction might be, hey, they were just bad shows, but that doesn't normally stop Joe, as he went to bat for She-Hulk among other thing. This is only interesting as a barometer of a cultural shift I've been seeing for awhile--one that hasn't impacted what's being made, but is killing much of what is.

A little over a year ago there were rumours that Kamala Khan creator Sana Amanat was going to be quietly removed from Marvel due to MeToo allegations. That clearly has not happened, which suggests any consequences Amanat faced (if any) did not impact her career. I don't know if these accusations are true (they were never tried in court), but as with sexual assault it's uncommon for women to face the same kind of penalties as men (even when their victims are also women, ala Joey Soloman, cf, or the better known Amber Heard situation).

This article was written by Peter Levi

Barbenheimer Takes Theatres Off Life Support, Snow White Adaptation in Trouble, and Affirmative Action Fallout Continues

After two mega bombs in Indiana Jones 5 (June 30, 335; cf) and The Flash (June 16, 267; cf) allowed Discount Spiderman 2 (June 2) and Little Mermaid (May 26) to eek out a bit more box office (675/556 respectively), Mission Impossible: Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise (July 12) cleared the slate despite a weak opening (short of 55 million its opening weekend) and is on target to disappoint vs expectations. What's arrived now is Barbie and another bloated, overrated Christopher Nolan film (Oppenheimer). Both are having genuinely big opening weekends (estimates are 155/80) assisted by excellent marketing (no fan-baiting; somehow I missed the entire campaign), but it remains to be seen if they have legs (are they like Batman v Superman or Black Panther 2, where word-of-mouth killed them after a big opener?). On the plus side, they face no meaningful competition. Putting the openers in perspective, if the estimates are correct Barbie beat Super Mario for the biggest opener of 2023, although it trails 2022's Doctor Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 among recent films (releases that occurred before fans realized the MCU had become utter shit). It's important to remember that because of ticket price inflation there's about half as many people in theaters as there were 20 years ago, so while in comparison to recent films it's a great opener, it's unremarkable historically. What's interesting to me is if it can hold audience interest. I've seen a lot of pushback from conservatives over Barbie's messaging, but whether general audiences care remains to be seen (I don't think The Sound of Freedom is a good comparison for people on the right, as the Neo-Liberal backlash to that film seems to be what boosted it--complaining about a true story about human trafficking created a Streisand effect).

I had no idea there was a live action Snow White film in the works (to be inflicted on the world in 2024), but it looks just as clueless as Little Mermaid and I have no idea why you'd pose Gal Gadot as being jealous of Rachel Zegler--it causes ludonarrative dissonance and no one seeing that believes it. People can wish beauty standards were different, but that can't be meaningfully changed (there's some historical and cultural variation in body shape, but facial beauty is related to symmetry and both are tied to underlying signs of health--that's never going to change). That aside, Snow White is yet another girl boss--oh boy, that's a fresh take! I'm curious to see how much of the target audience (girls/women) will show up (my expectation is it will do better in the US than internationally, but flop regardless). Much like Barbie above, this film wasn't made for me, but I am curious about audience trends and what does (or doesn't) work for the public.

Diversity

My prior surmise that the recent Supreme Court decision about Affirmative Action would impact Hollywood has been confirmed. This doesn't mean efforts to cast diversely will stop (people will certainly continue to push for it, even in historic biopics like Oppenheimer), just like BlackRock moving away from the ESG name won't alter their funding of such efforts. What it does mean is the executives who were hired for such tasks are being jettisoned. As The Wall Street Journal says:

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer. ... The number of CDO searches is down 75% in the past year, says Jason Hanold, chief executive of Hanold Associates Executive Search, which works with Fortune 100 companies to recruit HR and DEI executives, among other roles. Demand is the lowest he has seen in his 30 years of recruiting. [my emphasis] ... “They’re telling us, the only way I want to go into another role with DEI is if it includes something else,” he says of the requests for broader titles that offer more responsibilities and resources. He estimates that 60% of diversity roles he is currently filling combine the title with another position, such as chief human resources officer, up from about 10% five years ago. ... Since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, companies are anticipating spillover legal action could have an impact on them [my emphasis]

What people should take away from this is that corporations don't care about causes (something I would have assumed everyone knew, but apparently that's not the case). BlackRock does have an underlying reason for funding this (largely as a distraction from its unethical practices), so as long as they do, others will play that game. However, the people being funded are only interested in the money, so the moment that disappears, so does everything else (for those who think this only applies to Target or Walmart or other giant companies, don't fool yourself--if progressive Critical Role couldn't make money promoting the agenda, they wouldn't promote it--it's a business, not a charity). There's also been a complete failure to spread this approach elsewhere. Russia and China are going in the opposite direction (ultraconservative, with Russia at that point and China following suit) and there are indications many African and Eastern European nations are going the same way, while the Middle East never embraced the agenda. You have to ask yourself: what has this approach achieved? The populations in the West are now heavily divided over something they felt positively about just ten years ago (the 2013 legalization of same-sex marriage in the US serving as a kind of capstone)--the autocratic, preachy, top down approach not only doesn't help but has created a backlash that's becoming increasingly virulent. It's worth asking why corporate entities (and their government drones) continue the confrontational approach when the prior tactic of bottom-up, hey we just want the same rights as everyone else, worked so well (oddly enough, screaming at someone does not turn them into an ally).

This article was written by Peter Levi

Indiana Jones 5 and Witcher Season Three Bomb along with more Echo Troubles

To the surprise of no one Indiana Jones 5 has bombed in spectacular fashion, as it echoed The Flash's anemic opener. The film wasn't helped by how bad Indy 4 is and that, unlike Star Wars, other than the original film, there's no universal acclaim for the prior entries (both Temple of Doom and Last Crusade had their critics--as a kid I preferred the former to the latter, but neither were as good as the first film). That said, there was still plenty of affection for the IP and, unlike The Flash, the impact of its failure is far more limited--Disney knew the film was bad before release and the IP has been largely inert since Indy 4. I've seen it argued (1:38:42-1:39:34/2:42:27-2:42:42) that the Affirmative Action decision in the US will impact how ESG functions at the company (if the approach can be legally challenged, companies will have to search for a workaround). This pair of big budget failures has helped discount Spider-Man continue to limp forward into 'meh' box office territory (Spider-Man 3 made 1.9 billion, Miles Morales has reached 647 million). To dovetail back into the Indiana Jones IP: I don't think either George Lucas or Steven Spielberg ever understood the IP, not just because of the abominable fourth film, but from the various problems that occurred in the sequels. I mentioned previously that only the TV-show came close to capturing the right spirit, but it also failed and I think we're in for an unfortunate reboot in the future.

More rumours about the poor quality of Echo have leaked, with a long time Marvel stuntman saying he's been told that the show was originally going to be scrapped (Batgirl-style), but Disney was desperate for content because of the (still ongoing) writer's strike so decided to air it. This echoes (heh) comments from insider Jeff Sneider who said in May the show was so bad it had to be completely reshot with a shorter episode count. All of this seems highly plausible and I expect Willow-levels of awfulness. The only question is: does it kill Echo as an IP and further damage Daredevil and Kingpin? Time will tell, but I think for the former the answer is definitively 'yes'.

While it's much too late, Bud Light finally fired Marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid for the campaign that has lost them around 28 billion at this point. The marketing began (appropriately enough) on April 1st, but many (myself included) did not think Bud would ever fire the person responsible. Billions of value lost later and on June 27th, she was terminated. While Heinerscheid did not get the same gush of media support that Disney's Victoria Alonso received months ago, the press did their best to shame any and all who participated in the backlash, but to no effect--the people who drink cheap, crappy beer hated the media long before this. I'm curious what impact, if any, this has on the entertainment industry (many of their viewers also drink cheap beer). Is this why the hammer has started to fall diversity heads? I suspect there's another cause, but I'll get into that below.

I'm not sure there's a point in covering Witcher season three, as I have no plans to watch it (even the overly generous xLetalis says he won't watch after this season--his poorly thought out pseudo-apology video for his reaction seems to be an effort to play nice with both sides). There are people enjoying the season, but for the first time I don't know any personally. To me there was never any hope for the show after its botched first season. What we can hope for is that there is no fourth season and that the push for botched adaptations disappears with Rings of Power (Jeff Bezos is finally asking what Amazon Prime is doing to bleed so much money, but Bezos is an ESG supporter, so I wouldn't expect any meaningful changes to their products).

Diversity Heads fired

I mentioned last time that Diversity Chief Latondra Newton was fired from Disney, but as it turns out she is one of four who have been terminated recently (Verna Myers at Netflix and Karen Horne and Jeanell English at WB--they are all women, of course, because men are inherently problematic--except for people like Elliott Page, presumably). There are reasons to think these moves are connected to the Supreme Court decision referenced above, although all three of these companies are bleeding money and cutting expensive sinecures helps. The reality is meaningful diversity doesn't require a manager (creating departments to govern behaviour is Orwellian, after all). It's not clear that this will result in any meaningful changes in the quality of entertainment produced, as there are no signs of positive developments as box office hits historic lows. For those few who find firings like this alarming, there are plenty of safe places to go, from Mastodon to Critical Role and so forth. While BlackRock has talked about moving away from the name ESG, it continues to fund its goals so I'm expecting plenty more Witcher: Blood Origins, She-Hulks, The Woman Kings, and so on.

It's been interesting watching Andy Signore's career evolve after beating the MeToo charges that got him fired from Screen Rant (cf; a channel that seems dead outside of Pitch Meeting). At first Signore attached himself to Fandom Wire, then jumped back into the YT game as an entertainment commentator/scooper. This effort did not work, as he had generic, Campea-like opinions and often got into fights with other people in the community. He jumped on the Johnny Depp trial and has ridden that success into being a celebrity gossip channel for court cases--it's a successful niche and a redemption story. I have no investment in Signore (his content isn't to my taste), but it's interesting to see that some people are able to find a way out of a losing career path.

This article was written by Peter Levi