Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga has been waiting more than a year and a half for the most important film of his career to hit theaters: the James Bond film “No Time to Die.” It has been a strange and surreal wait. Months before its October 8 premiere, its title track, Billie Eilish, has already won a Grammy Award.
“Last night I had a dream that was Sam Mendes,” Fukunaga said in a recent interview, referring to the director of the two previous Bond films. “We were on vacation on a frozen lake. He was done with the Bond movies and said, ‘Oh, you did one. Now you can take a break. ‘ Then we started skiing on the frozen lake. “
“It was a strange dream,” Fukunaga said.
The generally reliable and enjoyable fall release season this year is, like the last 18 months, a bit disorienting. On the way there are films that were originally going to be released in April 2020, such as “No Time to Die”, as well as summer films that hope to find better conditions now and others filmed and edited during the pandemic.
What has come together is a hodgepodge of movies, something far more robust than last year’s impromptu and mostly virtual fall season, which ran all the way to the Oscars in April. But the recent increase in COVID-19 cases due to the delta variant has added uncertainty to a time when Hollywood expected to get closer to normal.
“Everything is variable and everything will remain variable,” said Tom Rothman, president and CEO of Sony Pictures. “It’s the antithesis of what it used to be. In the old days, you planted your flag and you didn’t move whether it rained, thundered or lightned. Now, being flexible and agile has a great advantage ”.
The unpredictability of conditions is universal, but it is deeply felt by studios like Sony, which even in the pandemic have remained largely committed to releasing films exclusively in theaters. While Disney (with Disney +) and Warner Bros (with HBO Max) have sought to increase subscriptions to their streaming services with big launches in 2021, Sony, Universal, Paramount and MGM (home of Bond) have mostly stuck to the plan to release first on the big screen.
In all the movies coming this fall – including “The Last Duel” (October 15), “Dune” (October 22), “Eternals” (November 5) and “House of Gucci” (November 24). ) – nothing can be as tense as today’s old-fashioned film drama. Citing the increase in COVID cases due to the delta variant, Paramount has uprooted itself from the season by putting off “Top Gun: Maverick” until next year. But following the promising performance of some films at the box office, many major productions and Oscar hopefuls are doubling down on film and its cultural impact, even if it is a risk.
“We have a lot of inventory. You don’t want to keep putting off all the movies, ”Rothman said. “At a certain point, you have to go out.”
With confidence in film rebuilding over the summer, the delta has sapped some of Hollywood’s momentum. The National Research Group had recorded that more than 80% of viewers felt comfortable going to the movies in July. But that number dropped to 67% last month.
However, the last major production released in the summer, Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, gave the fall a boost with an estimated $ 90 million in ticket sales this past Labor Day long weekend, one of the best premieres in the pandemic. Notably, it was only shown in theaters.
Even before all the numbers were released, Rothman and Sony pushed the release of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” the sequel to their $ 856 million superhero hit, by two weeks by October 1st. This will be followed by “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” on November 19, Denzel Washington’s “A Journal for Jordan” on December 10, and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” : No way home) on December 17.
No studio is betting as much on theaters this fall as Sony. The studio lacks a major streaming platform, but has signed lucrative deals with Netflix and Disney to stream movies after their theatrical releases. Discussing the disappointing results of films like Warner Bros.’s “The Suicide Squad” versus a movie hit like Disney’s “Free Guy,” Rothman recently explained that it is due to the viewing window.
“There is no economic model, much less making a profit, … without a universe with (exhibition) windows. It doesn’t exist, ”Rothman said.
That debate of which movies will be released, where and when is sure to remain unresolved in the months ahead and beyond. Warner Bros. has pledged to resume 45-day exclusive theatrical releases next year. But little is certain this fall, including the release schedule.
“Until we’ve really put the pandemic behind us, I don’t think you can predict what the future of cinema will be,” Rothman said. “We are still in an emergency situation at this time.”
So Hollywood’s summer limbo will last into the fall. However, there are more movies scheduled than at any time prior to the pandemic. The Venice and Telluride film festivals have sparked interest in a wide range of films, including Jane Campion’s acclaimed Netflix drama “The Power of the Dog,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which is currently being released. scheduled for November 17. The Oscar race would also bring great performances. Among the first highlights: Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s “Spencer” (November 5) and Will Smith as Richard Williams, Venus and Serena’s father, in “King Richard” (November 19).
In “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (“The eyes of Tammy Faye”), Jessica Chastain is transformed into the infamous televangelist. Searchlight Pictures will release it in theaters on September 17.
“We like that communal experience, especially after a year and a half starving. It does not mean that streaming is going to disappear. It’s here to stay, “said Chastain, who also stars with Oscar Isaac in the HBO miniseries” Scenes from a Marriage. ” “In my mind, I just see that the industry is expanding.”
The number of movies released during the pandemic is often underestimated. But even with some high-profile debuts, the next season is packed. Apple has Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” starring Denzel Washington. Amazon, the musical adaptation “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” (September 17). There are new films by world-class filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro (“Nightmare Alley,” December 3), Pedro Almodóvar (“Parallel Mothers,” December 24), Asghar Farhadi (“A Hero,” January) and Paolo Sorrentino (“It was the hand of God”, November 24).
There is also a feast of documentaries including the Julia Child portrait of Julie Cohen and Betsy West, “Julia” (as yet undated); Liz Garbus’s “Becoming Cousteau” (October 22); “The Rescue” by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (October), on the 2018 Thai cave rescue; and, fittingly, a portrait of one of the pandemic’s most ubiquitous faces, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, in John Hoffman and Janet Tobias’s “Fauci” (10 September).
Netflix will release three dozen movies between now and Christmas, including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter” (December 17); the western “The Harder They Fall” (November 3), with Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba; Lin-Manuel Miranda’s debut feature “Tick, Tick … Boom!”; and Antoine Fuqua’s “The Guilty” (September 24), a crime thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a degraded police officer who takes calls to 911.
Just before production began earlier this year, Fuqua came into close contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. To keep his distance from his cast and crew, he directed the film from a van parked outside the set.
“We live in a strange world right now, and it wears us all pretty down,” Fuqua said. “But I try to stay positive. That’s why ‘The Guilty’ happened. I think we all have a responsibility to move forward, not to wallow in the situation we find ourselves in and find new ways of doing things. “
Hopefully the long delay in a series of films that have been waiting behind the scenes for over a year, including Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (December 10), “The French Dispatch” (“The French Chronicle”) by Wes Anderson (October 22) and yes, “No Time to Die” will soon be over.
“What I haven’t gotten in this case is the satisfaction of someone else watching the movie and saying ‘I hated it’ or ‘I liked it,'” Fukunaga said. “That is the part that one is waiting for. Some people are going to like it. Some people are not going to like it. But you still want to hear it. Even if you don’t want to hear it, you want to hear it. “
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Follow Jake Coyle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP.
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