A true hurricane has meant for the film industry the recent decision of Warner Bros to launch on the platform HBO Max the premieres of his productions that due to the pandemic situation he has not been able to bring to the screens of cinemas around the world.
However, although some theaters are slowly opening their spaces in many cities, Warner after doing an experiment with Tenet, was able to verify that attending the rooms is not going to generate an important or significant income, which could translate into losses from the investment that each film represents for the production houses and for Warner as a distributor.
But Warner is likely to be faced with a storm of lawsuits. Will Smith, Hugh Jackman, Denzel Washington, Margot Robbie and Keanu Reeves (protagonist of the expected Matrix 4) have announced through their representatives that they could sue the distribution company for this decision, since they consider that they were not taken into account and met without notice with the people of HBO Max.
One of the reasons that could lead this group of actors to sue Warner is because of the agreement that the company reached with figures such as Gal Gadot or the director Patty Jenkins, who were notified of the Warner action and will receive a large amount of money, a situation that did not happen with the plaintiff group.
Michael Nathanson, who is the founder of a media research firm, has stated that this situation has upset many important figures and producers, mainly to those who have managed to keep Warner Bros as one of the places tops, where talent and creativity have open doors. This decision markedly undermines the trust that many talents and producers had placed in Warner and that can now be lost due to their hasty decisions.
However, faced with all this situation, there is a determining factor and of course the most important one that Warner, HBO and the actors and producers have not mentioned, and is the opinion of the viewers, since in the end they are the ones who will go to the cinema or pay a membership to streaming services to see their productions.
Many experts believe that the public will have no choice but to accept this modality new to see their premieres through streaming networks, obviously on devices such as televisions, computer monitors, tablets and even smartphones, which reduces the quality of the special effects of the movies and even the image. It is also difficult to make a definitive balance on the dates when the pandemic is already controlled and to open the rooms as before. In this sense, the final decision will be made by the viewer, who will decide whether to see these premieres on the networks or wait for them to be projected on the big screen.
Producers, actors, scriptwriters, technicians and all those who work in the industry will have to go through this modality to continue providing new productions, since it is possibly the only way to recover the millionaire investment that each producer makes when making a film.
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