Anyone can make a snow white movie, who cares what Disney does. A smart studio would make all of the classic Brothers Grimm stories but R rated.
Disney delay Snow White for another year.
- Thread starter joberg
- Start date
I mostly agree.
At this point I think Disney is totally in damage-control mode. Not just in terms of Snow White but the whole company.
Movies, TV, video games, books, sequels & reboots . . . It's all commercial products to them. If your company is launching a new line of hair shampoo and the testers say it smells like crap, you change the smell. You don't sit around thinking about what personal biases brought the testers to that opinion or whether they are just being trolls.
Corporate thinking is not that complicated:
"The internet is laughing at our seven dwarves so we need to change them."
"Let's see . . . what are our options? That little guy from 'Game of Thrones' criticized the idea of using real little people so we already ruled that out. And the internet is laughing at our footage of regular size people so it looks like that's out too. What else does that leave? . . . hmm . . . . Let's do CGI versions of the original dwarves. They won't be real enough to upset anybody, right?"
This is totally how product planners would operate. Do a very simplistic read of the situation (compared to creatives) and then pick whatever looks less risky.
Tan Djarka
Sr Member
Billy Barty passed away.
Solo4114
Master Member
Honestly? No, I don't remember. I vaguely recall seeing pictures of the live actors, thought it looked dumb, but that was it. Having a meme kick around for a couple of days, though, I kinda doubt moves the needle much.
I think you've followed the development of this film way more closely than lots of people, myself included. I have no idea what controversy is surrounding Rachel Zegler, past or present. I literally hadn't heard her name prior to this post. I had to look up what the Dinklage thing is about re: this film. I'm not gonna get into opining on that whole debate, though.
My point here is that I'd guess the vast majority of the moviegoing public is similarly ignorant and, as a result, this kind of stuff just...isn't gonna register. What might, though, is seeing pre-release photos and saying "WTF is this nonsense?" meme or not. Because, yeah, they looked really bad.
But more likely, I think it's less about "Did people react negatively to prerelease photos?" and more about "Our test audiences are saying this is not looking good" and/or "We've had some major production issues while this was getting made, and it makes more sense to shelve it for a tax break."
As for whether a controversy can impact the bottom line, sure, it can, but I think it's worth considering the nature of the controversy and how widely known it is. Falling into the "Twitter is not real life" category, I think people can tend to find certain opinions about films far over represented in online communities, whether it's social media or places like this. Universally accepted attitudes about this or that issue often are ignored by the wider public. And while a controversy can affect things, I think it's way more likely that, say, some aspect of the film making it unacceptable to Chinese censors or whatever is more likely to affect things.
Basically, I think our instinct when it comes to looking at film performance is to immediately place ourselves and our perspectives at the center of things. Oh, it's obviously because of [thing I've pointed out] that this film is failing or this franchise is struggling. I tend to think it's larger issues, though, and a lot of them are issues that happen behind the scenes and have way more to do with financing than with whatever tempest-in-a-teapot controversy has cropped up online about this or that film/actor/whatever.
Right, and that's assuming things even got that far. I have no idea if the live action actors were the originally intended look of the final product, or if they were just meant to be visual placeholders for whenever the digital versions were added. Like, we don't know that they weren't stand-ins for what were always intended to be digital dwarves. I have no idea. And it's entirely possible that neither did anyone in the studio, given how stuff is "fixed in post" these days.
joberg
Legendary Member
When you mix entertainment (Disney fare), with politics, you're bound to create controversy. We know that a certain propaganda was, is and will be present in Disney movies (and others), the fact remains that a few key people have gone crazy with:
"Appropriation" (whatever that means
)"Using dwarfs is sooo controversial and type-casting of the worst kind
"The use of Caucasian actors is almost forbidden"
"Transforming the original male character into:" (choose your gender/sex/race du jour
)I'm simply tired of looking at movies that do not transport me into another world and make forget about my life on this crazy planet
joberg
Legendary Member
They just purchase the last 30% of Hulu from Comcast. They'll put it on their Disney+ channel soon.
Jm419
Sr Member
I think you're probably right; the economic forces are going to be the driving ones in any equation evolving financial layout on this scale. But I do have to point out the growing zeitgeist that Disney just... doesn't make good movies anymore. South Park just made fun of Kathleen Kennedy by name for this; I think this is more than some tempest in a teapot on Xitter.
I do suspect the audience is growing tired of the same old stuff, as you've pointed out, but I think there's more reason than one for that. Some people are tired of being talked down to by Hollywood elites, while others are getting tired of the same formulaic crap. In both cases, I think it's the writer's room that's at fault, whether that's the writers themselves or Disney management getting involved.
Solo4114
Master Member
Eh. I don't really think South Park has its finger on the pulse of pop culture these days. Or at least, while it's capable of lampooning pop culture, it's not exactly representative of the vast bulk of people who consume it and their attitudes. If anything, I'd say that South Park tends to be more contrarian, and therefore not really aligning with the broader public. I know around these parts, it's practically chapter and verse to say that Kathleen Kennedy has ruined Star Wars, but I think that's not generally what the public thinks.
What I think is more likely is what you get at later, which is that audiences are just kinda tired of retreads and remakes and franchises, or at least aren't as excited about them as they used to be. I don't think it has to do with "talked down to." I mean, that's true for some people, sure, but I think for most people it's more just the "been there, done that" thing, and not being especially closely tied to these franchises in an emotional sense.
With Star Wars, I'd say the biggest flaws weren't "they talked down to people," (Which happened far more in the online interactions with certain fans), and much more that the films didn't seem to have a coherent vision to them. The spin-off films were a mixed bag. Rogue One was generally pretty well regarded. Solo, I think, was actually pretty good, but the concept of it was harder to sell, and the real problem with that film had zip to do with audiences and way more to do with cost overruns necessitated by having to reshoot 80% of the film with a different, more expensive director. Basically, they made Solo "twice." If they'd made it "once" and it did the same box office it did, I bet it would've been regarded as a major success. But because it needed to make something like HALF A BILLION DOLLARS to be considered a success, when it "only" made A THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLARS it was a "failure."
If we take Star Wars as the example, the real problem for Kathleen Kennedy seems to be in the production end of things, rather than the actual films themselves. Consider, for example, the films that haven't been made. The Rogue Squadron one, the Rian Johnson trilogy, the Game of Thrones Guys one, Taika Waititti's film, etc., etc., etc. LFL announces all these projects they have in the works, and aside from the TV shows, none of them has come to fruition. And that's after they declared a "strategic pause" or whatever they called it. The problem here isn't with "woke" or whatever; it's with their business model.
Same story with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Again, the film "only" made ALMOST $400M. But because it had a budged of ~$300M, it's a failure. This is not a "The stories are bad, and they keep making bad movies" thing. This is a "They keep throwing too much money at production, to the point where major successes in any other context end up classified as failures." Compare Dial of Destiny or Solo to Halloween (2018). Halloween made almost $260M. By Disney standards, that's a massive failure, right? Wrong. Because Blumhouse only spent $10M on it. On a $10M film, they made $260M. That's a MASSIVE success...but in Disney films, it'd be a box office bomb because they're spending more than that amount just to get the film to market.
Disney's problem isn't their content. It's their business model and production approach. By all accounts, people like their products. They just don't like them to the tune of $750M-$1B for every single movie.
What I think is more likely is what you get at later, which is that audiences are just kinda tired of retreads and remakes and franchises, or at least aren't as excited about them as they used to be. I don't think it has to do with "talked down to." I mean, that's true for some people, sure, but I think for most people it's more just the "been there, done that" thing, and not being especially closely tied to these franchises in an emotional sense.
With Star Wars, I'd say the biggest flaws weren't "they talked down to people," (Which happened far more in the online interactions with certain fans), and much more that the films didn't seem to have a coherent vision to them. The spin-off films were a mixed bag. Rogue One was generally pretty well regarded. Solo, I think, was actually pretty good, but the concept of it was harder to sell, and the real problem with that film had zip to do with audiences and way more to do with cost overruns necessitated by having to reshoot 80% of the film with a different, more expensive director. Basically, they made Solo "twice." If they'd made it "once" and it did the same box office it did, I bet it would've been regarded as a major success. But because it needed to make something like HALF A BILLION DOLLARS to be considered a success, when it "only" made A THIRD OF A BILLION DOLLARS it was a "failure."
If we take Star Wars as the example, the real problem for Kathleen Kennedy seems to be in the production end of things, rather than the actual films themselves. Consider, for example, the films that haven't been made. The Rogue Squadron one, the Rian Johnson trilogy, the Game of Thrones Guys one, Taika Waititti's film, etc., etc., etc. LFL announces all these projects they have in the works, and aside from the TV shows, none of them has come to fruition. And that's after they declared a "strategic pause" or whatever they called it. The problem here isn't with "woke" or whatever; it's with their business model.
Same story with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Again, the film "only" made ALMOST $400M. But because it had a budged of ~$300M, it's a failure. This is not a "The stories are bad, and they keep making bad movies" thing. This is a "They keep throwing too much money at production, to the point where major successes in any other context end up classified as failures." Compare Dial of Destiny or Solo to Halloween (2018). Halloween made almost $260M. By Disney standards, that's a massive failure, right? Wrong. Because Blumhouse only spent $10M on it. On a $10M film, they made $260M. That's a MASSIVE success...but in Disney films, it'd be a box office bomb because they're spending more than that amount just to get the film to market.
Disney's problem isn't their content. It's their business model and production approach. By all accounts, people like their products. They just don't like them to the tune of $750M-$1B for every single movie.
I think perhaps maybe Solo4114 and Jm419 are saying something similar, except that one is talking about the core problem, and the other about symptoms.
Content choices (writing/casting/etc.) are not the core problem with Disney; but they are the reason the shows and movies suck. But I think Disney's business practices and production approach are indeed the reason for the bad writing and poor plot/casting decisions.
I think for those of us in the peanut gallery, it seems more achievable to treat the symptoms by fixing the writing and casting; changing an entire business is unlikely to happen. The problem with trying to address the core problem is that you could keep digging forever. Are the poor business practices due to Bob Iger? Then is Eisner to blame for Iger being where he is? And so on, and so on...
Content choices (writing/casting/etc.) are not the core problem with Disney; but they are the reason the shows and movies suck. But I think Disney's business practices and production approach are indeed the reason for the bad writing and poor plot/casting decisions.
I think for those of us in the peanut gallery, it seems more achievable to treat the symptoms by fixing the writing and casting; changing an entire business is unlikely to happen. The problem with trying to address the core problem is that you could keep digging forever. Are the poor business practices due to Bob Iger? Then is Eisner to blame for Iger being where he is? And so on, and so on...
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Solo4114
Master Member
I think the Variety article re: Marvel strongly suggests that they will actually be altering their processes, or at least their budgets. There's some talk of doing Blade on a $100M budget. It's insane when you realize that that budget is only about 1/3 of the budgets of their other films. But you know what? Maybe it should be. Maybe with less money, they'll be forced to have a really compelling story, or get clever with how they present things to you. Maybe the climax won't be "Blade fights 1000 CGI vampires," ya know?
I certainly hope that is the case! They need a wakeup call!
Riceball
Master Member
From what I've seen/read, Disney says that the people shown in those images were just placeholders/stand ins and not meant to be the actual cast. Which seems odd to me, why shoot publicity stills will stand ins in costume? It seems like a waste of time and money to do this since it means that you'd be doing the photoshoot twice, once with the stand ins and then again with the actual cast (CG or otherwise. And if they're meant to be reference shots for later compositing, why have them in costume? They could have just as easily had them stand around in different colored t-shirts and that would have been enough for the artists to know which character goes where based on what color/design t-shirt the stand in is wearing.
Solo4114
Master Member
Right. I suppose that could be PR spin on a poorly received picture, or it could be accurate but still a boneheaded move to release the pic. Either's possible.
Let's recap the last several months with this flick:
July/August: Disney released pics of the 7 "magical creature" actors wearing costumes. No tracking dots or anything. (Why would they even release pics of the stand-ins if they always intended to replace them? Why not just prepare a few pics of them with the CGI replacements done?) The internet mocked and memed the hell out of the "magical creatures".
September: The internet dunked on Rachel Zegler pretty hard during the writer/actor strike, and continued to wisecrack about the movie in general.
October: Disney released new images of CGI dwarfs and pushed the movie's release back a whole year.
What happened here is clear enough. Disney is gonna make the movie 1.5x to get one usable version. They do this regularly.
July/August: Disney released pics of the 7 "magical creature" actors wearing costumes. No tracking dots or anything. (Why would they even release pics of the stand-ins if they always intended to replace them? Why not just prepare a few pics of them with the CGI replacements done?) The internet mocked and memed the hell out of the "magical creatures".
September: The internet dunked on Rachel Zegler pretty hard during the writer/actor strike, and continued to wisecrack about the movie in general.
October: Disney released new images of CGI dwarfs and pushed the movie's release back a whole year.
What happened here is clear enough. Disney is gonna make the movie 1.5x to get one usable version. They do this regularly.
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Lightning
Master Member
Solo4114
Master Member
I went back and looked, and yeah, it does look like that. In which case, I'd actually buy that they used these folks as reference points, and folks lost their minds over nothing. Another reason I don't tend to follow pre-release hype anymore.
Lightning
Master Member
Not nothing, these were clearly not going to be 7 classic dwarfs. And the "Magical Creatures" bit did come from Disney.
I think those were exactly what Disney intended to use because they revised "magical creatures" to "Seven Bandits". "Bandits" are not dwarves, and now we have CGI dwarves. The "diverse" group shown in those early shots is exactly the direction Disney would try to go in, instead of following the story. There's nothing wrong with diversity, just forced diversity that we've had to stomach for the last 10 years or so. It doesn't serve the story, just virtue signaling for a corporation (which doesn't really care about that anyway, see Victoria's Secret's sharp veer away from diversity/inclusion in favor of profit).
I had thought the original pics (the seven dirty hippies) were official. Maybe they were spy shots.
Whatever. It doesn't change the substance of my point much. "Magical creatures" is an odd re-name for "dwarves" and they still didn't have any evidence of tracking dots/etc. I think that was the intended final form at the time.
Whatever. It doesn't change the substance of my point much. "Magical creatures" is an odd re-name for "dwarves" and they still didn't have any evidence of tracking dots/etc. I think that was the intended final form at the time.
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