The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
[Western Animation] Max? More like Min
Posts
Just finished Blue Eye Samurai, and I thought it was great. Akemi for best character, though the voice cast was stacked. Branagh was appropriately loathsome as Fowler. I was pointing at the TV when Ming Na Wen showed up. And of course George Takei, who is a treasure. And and Masi Oka as Ringo, whose running commentary is a necessary mood lightener.
There were some weird issues with time and space where someone recovers from a savage beating or stab wounds seemingly over the course of a long period, but for plot reasons only a day has passed.
Not gonna lie, sorta shipping Mizu/Akemi, though they did more work on Mizu/Taigen.
Whereas the first movie had some grounding in real psychological theory, the second looks like an excuse for a lot of tired jokes about angsty teenagers.
Envy has a cute design at least.
This irrationally annoys me because they already established that adults have the same five-emotion framework as kids so the necessary retcons will hurt.
Kinda like how Incredibles 2 felt like a sequel to a slightly different Incredibles 1.
Will probably skip.
I doubt they will even bother to explain it, with retcons or otherwise.
I understand that in a comedy, continuity and self-consistent worldbuilding must always be a secondary consideration. The first priority must always be jokes.
But they should at least be funny jokes.
It could be good. Could be not. If it's good, I feel it'll be because it's aimed at teens/young adults with a compasionate light. More of a "this resonates to but is respectful of your experience."
If it's bad, it'll be aimed at teens/young adults with a mocking light. A "haha, teens sure are rough and cringe; right audience?"
The filmmakers of the original talked a bit in the audio commentary about how they took inspiration from Paul Ekman's psychological model, which posits that there are six core emotions, and all other emotions are partial expressions of the core emotions. Anxiety, for example, is an expression of one aspect of fear, but not the entire emotion of fear.
The idea presented in the film that new emotions come from combinations of core emotions is actually more similar to another psychologist's model, that of Robert Plutchik. Plutchik posits that there are eight core emotions. When it was announced that Inside Out 2 would be adding new emotions to the cast, I considered that they may be Plutchik's other core emotions that were not included in the first film, those being Anticipation, Trust, and Surprise.
Obviously, that's not the direction they're going with it.
Edit: Not only was John Cena in it, but James Gunn worked on the story.
The new C[E|F|I|...]Os post merger suck and really seem to hate animation which is baffling as to why acquire the WB. Sure they wanted the other parts but why not just cut it loose as an independent entity.
The short answer is the normal inhumane one. They want to control it all. It doesn't matter to the C-suite execs how it's being used, just that they're the ones using it. Letting it be a success or failure as an independent entity would undermine their entire culture as executives.
As has been pointed out as the strikes went on. This isn't a financial fight. It's an identity fight.
Apparently, it was testing pretty amazing.
Even if it were only testing mid; it feels very different to cancel a project that's only in early stages vs one that's basically done and that a ceo can say "yes, all these people spent their time and effort making this Buttt it'll make us more money (on paper) if we just throw it in the garbage and mark it as a full loss." It doesn't feel right. Like, I accept that capitalism means that creative works are expected to make profit; I'm (mostly) at peace with that. But it feels like a step too far to twist that to "it's worth more to Company to expend money and labor and creative energy and then just Burn It for a writeoff."
To be fair, you're trusting the financial acumen of Zavlan, so whether it is actually more profitable or not is not a settled question.
And the concept of Wile E. suing Acme definitely has potential. It's certainly a better idea on its face than "the Looney Tunes hang around with Lebron James."
I've got great news - the lawyer was Brett Favre.
If you spend $70M on a film and write it off to offset $28M in taxes elsewhere, that’s a $42M loss.
If you spend $70M on a film and release it for a paltry $10M take, that’s a $60M loss you can use to offset $24M in taxes elsewhere for a net loss of $36M.
So even if it’s likely to bomb, it should still be more profitable to release the thing every time, no?
What am I missing?
Hollywood accounting has been borked for decades
It's not $0 to release it. Even if you do literally no marketing, there's still distribution, and likely various actors/staff people have payouts contingent on the film being released. On top of this, if it's of particularly poor quality, it can harm their reputation or related franchises.
This is on top of regular Hollywood accounting that obscures the shit out of actual costs, debt, and revenue. The main two tricks being that big productions suck up a ton of costs for the studio in general because they're the most 'dangerous' in terms of taxable money stream. They needed a wind tunnel built? Well, that wind tunnel doesn't go away and can be used elsewhere. Ordering food for 500 staff and cast? Well, another 50 for the thing being made next door with nobody actors and unlikely to make a big profit gets sucked into that. The second main trick is that a lot of the revenue gets 'paid' to a related company. Sony Distribution might take something like a 40% revenue cut from Sony Pictures, and Marketing By Sony takes anothe 20%, etc, so the 'profit' that the film by Sony Pictures is always in the red. It may have cost $70m, but probably a big chunk was to the rights holder (themselves in a hat), the producers (themselves in a coat), and stuff like prop and set creation (themselves in a mustache). Also, those people get to write it off too.
I guess my annoyance is the way the internet talks about write-offs like they’re this black magic that studio execs can use to inexplicably print money by canning a finished film.
When all you’re describing is just a studio giving up on an unfinished project they lost confidence in.
Zaslav has been quoted as "we haven't really been able to crack the kids."
My dude, an excellent first step toward cracking the kids is to STOP SHITTING ALL OVER GREAT PROJECTS.
While Hollywood accounting can erase some things, it can't erase everything. Especially if you get part of what's known as "back end points" where you get a percentage of the gross income of the film. Even if it is a complete failure, there's still payouts to those who have those clauses in their contracts.
Which means for Zaslav and co, a bomb could end up costing them more than a hit.
I think if he keeps up this habit of trashing finished or nearly finished movies, it's not only his company's reputation which takes a hit, contracts may change. I can imagine any deals with WB pictures going forward will contain clauses that if the movie get tossed, for any reason, the actors will still get extra money just as if it was a moderate success. Because why else do something with that studio which keeps you from getting the money you've earned?
The article has dueling sources who say the movie didn't test all that well with audiences vs. it's actually good. Oh, it also notes exactly why WB is flushing it down the memory hole. *drum roll* It's because they figure the movie will take a loss and they want to take those losses now rather than a few months from now.
*I hadn't heard of them either, but apparently they're reputable enough for semi-reputable places like Slashfilm and The Wrap to pick it up.
And Rightly so. (filmmakers cancelling)
If anyone tapped to work on a film has a strong hunch it could end up trashed just for a balance-sheet write-off; who would want to put their creative effort into it?!
And on the one property everyone knows is a Warner Bros. thing too.
Confirmation: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/coyote-vs-acme-wb-warners-canceled-reversal-shop-film-1235645372/
Isn't it better to take losses later rather than now, assuming the losses would be of roughly the same size?
Yeah, reputations matter and it's pretty fucking tough to build a rep in the industry if some shithole parent company decides to memory-hole your work for a slight tax break.
Imagine if Cartoon Network just completely disposed of the first series or two from Tartakovsky for a greedy tax writeoff? And done it before they even aired? The guy and the people he employs have been a cornerstone of modern animation and it would've been possible they could've killed off his future by actually giving him work. This shit should be totally illegal.
Or you are surrendering the copyright and other distribution rights to the government. In lieu of 'x' taxes, I will give you the film that would just cost us money.
Oh Yes! That's kind of a genius solution. "You want to do a tax-writeoff on a piece of media." Fine. Great. It immediately goes up for public access in some form or fashion.
What little I know about how business folks think, a known loss now is better than an unknown loss in the future, especially if that loss will hit next Fiscal Year. I'm not enough of a business guy to know why that's the case, though.
Curious if anything will come out of it, but I'm guessing Zaslav is not enjoying the possibility.
Damn. Who could have guessed one of the most seismic events in Hollywood for the year, if not THE seismic event, would revolve around Wile E. Coyote?