You missed my point- The Gen-X cash cow still is increasing in value, hell they are still marketing stuff to the previous generation for fleecing.

Disney is bleeding out, they need money NOW. They are losing a cool 30 million per day. One report stated that now that the park in Florida is open they are losing MORE money than if they just kept the gates locked, the volume is just not there to sustain operations.

This may be off topic but we are getting close to where actual actors and actresses may become a thing of the past as technology evolves to the point that computer generated graphics and speech are indistinguishable from actual actors and actresses; couple that with no royalty fees ever or insanely expensive contracts for top stars and we may see some recognizable actors and actresses looking for work in the "unskilled" labor markets.

I disagree in the "VERY" part there. But we'll see.

Personally I'm all for it though. Choose your own adventure? Fuck that, choose your own actors for a movie. And porn of course...thats the cash cow

I'd have to think those parks are bleeding them, for sure, but their properties are long, long term investments. How many Spider-Man, Batman or Superman movies have been made by studios so far? They'll milk Marvel properties and Star Wars for decades, and the era that grew up with or was an adult during the OT is matured money. Kennedy gambled on it, kinda lost, but this is a long term money battle.

That market has peaked, and is on the way down (dying).

Yup and it will be another 15-20 years before Gen X also peaks and dies off.

Related-

"Based on Walt Disney’s balance sheet as of May 5, 2020, long-term debt is at $42.77 billion and current debt is at $12.68 billion, amounting to $55.45 billion in total debt. Adjusted for $14.34 billion in cash-equivalents, the company's net debt is at $41.11 billion. Walt Disney has $206.29 billion in total assets, therefore making the debt-ratio 0.27.

The Q3 report as of June 27 has long-term debt at $54.2 billion and current debt at $10.22 billion, amounting to $64.42 billion in total debt. Adjusted for $23.12 billion in cash-equivalents, the net debt is $41.3 billion vs $207.65 billion in total assets.

In other words, while the balance sheet doesn't show the impact of Corona on the organization yet, Disney is having to borrow a LOT of money in order to keep enough cash on hand to pay its bills."

Hmm, interesting read, I didn't know Spielberg had dropped Indiana Jones-5 and took the writer with him....wow! There has to be some bad blood going on. My guess is that Spielberg being best buddies with Lucas dropped the film to please him. I'm guessing the relationship/friendship between Lucas and Kennedy is now over.

https://www.piratesandprincesses.net/indiana-jones-and-kathleen-kennedys-continued-chaos/

Great article & well written

"Kennedy has lost her most important relationships (Lucas, Spielberg, Iger), she has lost the fans, she has lost her most important franchise (Star Wars), and now she has lost Indiana Jones. The movie will almost assuredly come out after her tenure, if it ever comes out at all. Rather than the type of movie she had wanted, insiders suggest this will now be a gritty send-off for Indy in line with Temple of Doom, bereft of her influence. And worst of all, when it does come out, she is unlikely to receive praise for whatever success it sees. Indiana Jones 5 is the final disappointment for Kathleen Kennedy. Just like Star Wars, it too has slipped from her grasp, another surefire win that eluded her to the very end."

That isn't surprising. George and Steven are tight, and while George would be hard to please with any SW plot after his exit, the way they shit on it made it as worse as it could ever be.

This comes off more as fan fiction, filling in blanks with presumption, than an article bound by fact.

I don't know....sure, there is a lot of guessing. However, when you're dealing with the powerful media co and a monster brand, chances are you'll never get the REAL facts...just rumors and leaks. Remember when they fired the VP Kiri Hart, she was quietly removed from the Lucasfilm website, no news or PR wire about her moving on....she was then called a consultant (probably because of the terms in her severance pkg). There is never any good pr for a company or brand when they air their dirty laundry....just like a good salesman that refuses to talk politics or religion.

A lot of it is the writing style of that particular article. It's like a novelization, the author takes real people (Lucas, Kennedy, Spielberg), and then imagines their inner thoughts and emotional responses to real life occurrences (some of which may or may not have occurred as written). Plus some of the author's own editorializing on the various creative decisions that were made. It may be entertaining, but it doesn't feel much like "news."

It's hard to know. They may have leaks that they can't report on, however with the current state of the media, who's to say what is truth and what isn't.

"What is truth?" - Pontius Pilate

Lmao, Mr. Plinkett(Aka Mike Stoclasa) is freaking funny. Picard was awful, almost as bad as Discovery. WTF! Who are these writers? It seems like they've never even watched Star Trek before accepting the gig...such garbage.

An hour and a half?!?!?!?

Spielberg is a canny old rat, he isn't going to risk have his name tied to a sinking ship.

FF to 1:23 minutes for the conclusion....it's the cliff notes, but this guy is so spot on....he's really good at pointing out why our shows/movies are so fucked up and a mere shadow of what made them a franchise.

His 9 or 10 part series on The Phantom Menace is required watch, a primer on making a decent film with a compelling story.

He points out what Lucas did right and wrong using Lucas' own footage and words, masterful.

Getting closer to the trailer debut

https://ew.com/tv/mandalorian-season-2-first-look/

I was beginning to think they were just going to roll into season 2 without a trailer. Anyday I hope

Speaking of trailers, Dune drops tomorrow. Cannot wait for this.

https://www.ign.com/articles/dune-first-trailer-release-date-announced

https://www.polygon.com/tv/2020/9/8/21335628/star-trek-discovery-season-3-trailer-release-date

Anyone remember... what did we say about time travel plots?

Discovery season 3.....Picard actually makes this pos look good. What the f is gender neutral? I wish they quit these HW crusade stories and maybe write something with a larger appeal, something about racial tension, climate change, corporate overreach, you know something relevant. If Roddenberry was alive he'd take this idiots to court for destroying his legacy.

Where was "gender neutral" mentioned? Only thing that really caught my eye was some Idris Elba type son dude, and the one...or two white guys in the trailer were evil or asshats.

White actors have been playing bad guys and stooges in movies and TV since they started making ‘em, they just don’t have a monopoly on the leading man roles anymore.

I have. They are great, but that is an investment.

It's been that way since the Brits have been portrayed always as the baddies for the last few decades. More PC bullshit.

I don't know, Brits make pretty good baddies. Alan Rickman in Die Hard, hard to beat.

It was in my news feed....

http://www.comicon.com/2020/09/02/star-trek-discovery-to-add-non-binary-and-transgender-characters/

Meanwhile this looks fantastic....Davis Goyer knows how to write an intelligent, exciting script. A lot of people think Foundation is the best or one of the best Scifi novels ever written (cough, The Mote in God's eye, cough). I guess we'll see but this is exciting....it's all the right ingredients.

That's funny, he's the one where I realized the culture typecasting was in full force.

To be fair, he was playing a German.

Here you go bruv

It looks good, but Dennis Villeneuve keeps getting the visuals wrong in my opinion...he puts too much emphasis on light and dark in his movies....too stark just like Bladerunner. But damn the casting is top notch. Looks.like the Baron Harkonen is Dave Bautista and his nephew is Jason Momoa....it looks like he paid a lot of homage to Lynch's version.

Yeah looks good to me, but they aren't showing much here. Trailer is focused on House Atreides. Baron Harkonen is shown briefly in the muddy bath, played by Stellan Skarsgard. So many great actors, Villenueve a great director. I'm looking forward to it. It's probably the only movie that will get me back in the theaters this year.

Would have loved to see what Villenueve could have done with a Star Wars movie. Perhaps someday.

You are right about the color palate. This certainly isn't Jodorowsky's Dune. In fact much of that design eventually ended up in other films like Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe, Prometheus, etc. If you've never seen the documentary, it's really worth a watch. It would have been visually off the charts.

Haha, i did see it, it was wild...truly alien. Maybe LSD had something to do with it.

Rumor has it.. Season 2 will be... interesting. One reason the trailer has not shipped yet is there is a notable tonal shift in the season and they don't know how to cut the trailer. Word is half the season is literately about another character, not The Mandalorian.

I suspect someone was working on a spin off series and using this series as a jump off.

So they say Foundation inspired, Star Wars, Dune and even The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, I need to read it again, I don't remember a whole lot of it. But I did re-watch Lynch's Dune tonight, wow, it was better than I remember, even though it failed at B.O. He poured a lot into it, but it was very choppy. I always thought Tim Burton kicked off the Steam Punk look in the movies, but looks like Lynch may have been the first. Another thing, the whole Giedi Prime (House Harkonnen's planet) looks like was ripped off by ST to conceive the Borg, even the costumes... Amazing to learn that after all of these years.

Cast of characters of Dune 2020
Two-time Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet will star as Paul Atreides, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica Atreides, Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Harkonnen, Zendeya as Chani, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, David Dastmcalchian as Piter De Vries, Chang Chen as Dr. Yueh, and Dave Bautista as The Beast Raban Harkonnen.

looks like were missing Feyd

I figured Bautista was playing that role

As if we needed proof this cluster trilogy was never planned

https://www.fortressofsolitude.co.za/daisy-ridleys-recent-comments-prove-star-wars-is-a-giant-mess/

Also Lucasfilm is supposedly developing a SW tv series centering around a young Mace Windu...

Sounds like Solo....another project that nobody was asking for. Mace Windu is probably one of the most least interesting characters in the SW films, and the Clone Wars cartoons didn't bother to expand much on his backstory either. His purple lightsaber is more interesting than the character. And if inclusion is their motivation here, then do a Lando spin-off instead with Donald Glover. That's already established & a far more interesting character IMO.

The Clone Wars were covered extensively in the cartoons. If they insist on focusing on TV shows set during the Skywalker era, it should be focused on the underdeveloped periods between Episodes III-IV & Episodes VI-VII.

That's what I'm talking about, he stole the show in Solo and I'd totally watch a Lando movie. Of course Donald Glover's an artistic type and might be above returning to mid-grade commercial fare like SW at this point in his career. But I hope he'd do it if the add enough zeros to the end of his paycheck.

I'm speaking as a liberal when I say this (I apologize but I call it the way I see it) Mace Windu series sounds like a box they needed to check off. If it gets talented writers and directors it can work. I said it before it's hard to fuvk up SW

I care as little about Mace as I do about any other character introduced in the prequels, but at least it'd beat a Jar Jar series. Plus they could have Samuel L. Jackson do voiceover, Dukes of Hazzard style. "Uh oh, looks like the Padawans are in trouble again ..."

Meanwhile people are still obnoxiously toxic towards Gina Carano.

https://www-nme-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.nme.com/news/tv/the-mandalorian-fans-want-gina-carano-fired-for-mocking-trans-people-2752622?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&amp&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nme.com%2Fnews%2Ftv%2Fthe-mandalorian-fans-want-gina-carano-fired-for-mocking-trans-people-2752622

This should be a Black Mirror episode where a brilliant guy or girl moves up through the ranks of a company by busting his/her ass and then gets undone because of a bad joke or tweet.

Mando Season 2 TRAILER is out now......

MANDO SE 2 Trailer

Here ya go

Sweet! Didn’t realize it was dropping in October already.

First time I've had goosebumps from a Star Wars product in...a decade plus?

Yeah, compelling story, yet simple. The opening sequence was pretty great, (reminded me of Firefly) with the ship cruising around in the orbit.

PS: with the success of season 1 behind them, they're more confident now, which could mean a less safe storyline. I think this would be a good thing....(explore without raising eyebrows) and I think the trailer indicates just that.