Disney+ Mulan (2020) (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

In this case, I think safety and money are related.

If there was a way for Disney to make a lot of money by releasing Mulan into theaters, they would do it. But parents with families aren't going to want to go right now due to the virus, so Disney believes they will make more money by putting it on Disney+ at this point. They're happy to provide their older titles because, as Travis said, there's no risk because those have already made their money back and require no marketing. Mulan is a risk because it's new and arriving at a time when audience interest in going to the theater is questionable, so they've decided not to do that. They will almost certainly lose money on Mulan overall, but probably less than they would if they executed a big theatrical marketing push for it. Also, if it gets a few more people to sign up for Disney+, that's a benefit.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Slashfilm reports that the VOD pricing for Mulan in international markets is slightly cheaper than in the United States.

New 'Mulan' Featurette Praises Yifei Liu As The Noble Warrior As Disney+ Reveals International VOD Pricing - SlashFilm

Watch a new Mulan featurette and find out how much Disney+ subscribers will pay for the movie around the rest of the world.

www.slashfilm.com

Most notable, France is getting it included with the regular Disney+ subscription instead of having to pay any kind of extra fee at all. They don't have an announced release date, but when it does come, it won't cost extra. Lucky France.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Disney just released a new music video for "Reflection," which is performed again by Christina Aguilera, as she also did 22 years ago. Presumably this will appear over the credits.



I think it is ridiculous to do Mulan without the songs, and including it on the credits is an acknowledgment of how much people like it and want them. So they know how important the songs are to the fans, but they're still not going to be in there. I've wavered on this thought the course of this thread, but the movie just doesn't look very good, and now this has actually made me mad. Disney is not getting my $30 for a nonmusical version of Mulan that omits both Mushu and Shang in addition to the songs.

I'll stick with my Blu-ray of the original.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Thanks for posting that Jake!

I think it's GREAT that they turned to Aguilera to re-record Reflection for the closing credits of Mulan (2020). I clicked "play" on the link immediately and with great anticipation. I have always loved Aguilera's original cover of Reflection.

But after having heard her updated version, I think it's unfortunate that she decided to overproduce and over-sing the song (I will speculate in an attempt to ratchet up its emotional impact). To my ears it makes the lyrics hard to understand. While a 19-year old Aguilera was already adding all sorts of extra syllables and notes to her lyrics back in 1999, she has simply gone ahead and doubled/tripled them for this new performance. While some people might think you get more bang for your buck with that technique, I think it is an unnecessary affectation which takes away from her beautiful voice and ability to sing so beautifully. Other contemporary female singers fall victim to this same mistake.

I was really curious what a 39-year-old Aguilera would do with the same song. Now I know.

The 1999 version is so much more pretty:

 

[Wayne_j]

New trailer:


Note how awkward the end of the video is when they try to explain how to see it.

 

[TravisR]

New trailer:


Note how awkward the end of the video is when they try to explain how to see it.

I guess "Unlock Premiere Access" sounds better than pay more money on top of your regular subscription fee. The funny thing is that in probably less than a year, there's a good chance that that the PVOD idea will be a lot less foreign to the general public and it won't require an awkward explanation.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I could be totally wrong of course but I think this will be a success for Disney and an easy sell to the audience they’re targeting. The people who say they’d never pay that price or say they’re turned off by the concept aren’t the audience Disney is looking at to begin with.

 

[TravisR]

I could be totally wrong of course but I think this will be a success for Disney and an easy sell to the audience they’re targeting. The people who say they’d never pay that price or say they’re turned off by the concept aren’t the audience Disney is looking at to begin with.

Didn't they say they need like 10 or 15% of the 60 million D+ subscribers to purchase this to have it be a success? If that's the case, I think that's a very reasonable number for them to expect to hit.

Once again, I'm not the target audience for this so I'm sure not paying $30 to see it (I'll be surprised if I watch it when it becomes part of the regular subscription) but I think families will gladly spend $30 on this rather than the $100 or more that they spend on tickets and concessions at a theater. I also think that if this is successful, it'll be the beginning of irreparable damage to movie theaters so I wouldn't mind if it's a total failure.

 

[Jason_V]

Pretty good chance I'll be springing for it. Theaters won't be open here for a while plus tickets for 2 adults would cost $30 anyway. This way we can watch whenever we want and not have to worry about what's open and what's not.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I also think that if this is successful, it'll be the beginning of irreparable damage to movie theaters so I wouldn't mind if it's a total failure.

Even if this exceeds Disney's expectations, I believe they will go back to releasing their big tentpole films in theaters again when the market will accept them there. They have had so much success theatrically in recent years that there is no reason for them to turn their back on that model once families and fans will return.

I would like Disney to hold as much as they can until after the virus, but if they decide that is not feasible, I would probably pay $30 for Black Widow and Soul if released in this manner. A nonmusical Mulan is not something that interests me to that degree, but if it was something I know I would use., I'd do it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I also think that if this is successful, it'll be the beginning of irreparable damage to movie theaters so I wouldn't mind if it's a total failure.

I think theaters suffered irreparable damage when home viewing became cheaper, easier and better quality than the standard moviegoing experience, and theaters in response upgraded one screen per complex and raised prices for it. The theatrical experience has stagnated while the home experience got better, and theaters took little to no steps to improve their offerings. The content that has helped keep theaters afloat was, to use a term from the Russo Brothers during their Disney employ, was “weaponized” - that is, content built upon the excitement of seeing it before the secrets were revealed. Studios spent the past decade or longer making films where they’d routinely spend $200 million to make the movie and then $400 million to promote it. When you’re spending that much to make people come out, you’re buying an audience. It’s not sustainable.

I think Disney came up with Disney+ in the first place because they saw the writing on the wall for theatrical running out of steam between changing consumer preferences and the unprecedented explosion of high quality content available at home. I just don’t think Disney expected we’d be there as fast as we are; I think they expected another five years of business as usual.

But I think it’s unrealistic that a 19th century innovation would remain unchanged in the 21st century. And when it comes to leisure activities, I think the general public is more interested in doing what they want on their schedule, and not being beholden to leaving the house and paying money to do the activity on someone else’s timeframe. It’s very similar in spirit to the evolving consumer preference for streaming over physical. We’re now at a point where the act of experiencing content can be completely divorced from the need for either possessions a physical object and/or physically going to a specific location at a specific time. I think it’s just unrealistic to expect that that wouldn’t change everything.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Screen Rant posted a screenshot of the Disney+ page for Mulan which said that it will be available to all Disney+ subscribers on December 4.

Mulan Releases Free To All Disney+ Subscribers In December, No $30 Fee

Mulan will be free on Disney+ in December.

screenrant.com

Disney has since removed that information from the page, but you can see it was there. If this date remains, it would be a three-month window between the $30 premiere access and its inclusion in the standard tier.

I'll wait.

 

[Ejanss]

I also think that if this is successful, it'll be the beginning of irreparable damage to movie theaters so I wouldn't mind if it's a total failure.

"Beginning"? "Successful"??
We've had digital movies for TEN YEARS, and digital premieres for three months, and apart from a handful of kiddy movies, I think we can say with some conviction who the "total failure" was.

Disney, of course, didn't want to "change the industry with streaming", they wanted a lot of summer US box-office money, and a LOT of Beijing box-office money--not necessarily in that order--but their contract to release it in theaters and make back their budget went eyeball-to-eyeball with the Virus, and Disney blinked.

 

[TravisR]

Even if this exceeds Disney's expectations, I believe they will go back to releasing their big tentpole films in theaters again when the market will accept them there. They have had so much success theatrically in recent years that there is no reason for them to turn their back on that model once families and fans will return.

The problem is that if Mulan's PVOD is successful, the window between the theater and PVOD will quickly keep getting smaller (I'm still positive that if Universal forced AMC to take a two and a half week window, there's no reason that other studios won't do the same thing or worse) and that will train alot of the audience to wait a few weeks and see the movie at home. The tentpole movies like Star Wars or Marvel or maybe Avatar will still draw a crowd but the small movies will be all but dead theatrically and I can't see the theaters getting by on one big movie for two & a half weeks every couple of months.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The tentpole movies like Star Wars or Marvel or maybe Avatar will still draw a crowd but the small movies will be all but dead theatrically and I can't see the theaters getting by on one big movie for two & a half weeks every couple of months.

That was already where we were at before the pandemic, though.

 

[TravisR]

I think theaters suffered irreparable damage when home viewing became cheaper, easier and better quality than the standard moviegoing experience, and theaters in response upgraded one screen per complex and raised prices for it. The theatrical experience has stagnated while the home experience got better, and theaters took little to no steps to improve their offerings.

That's certainly true but the difference that I see is that people still go to movie theaters on dates, hanging out with friends, they've heard that a movie is good and are just plain movie fans. A two or three week PVOD window will really take a big chunk out of those numbers and at that point, the theaters will start to die off. I'm not saying that all theaters will be gone by next year but I have about 10 theaters within a driving distance of me and I think within a decade, that number will be dramatically smaller.

 

[Ejanss]

The problem is that if Mulan's PVOD is successful, the window between the theater and PVOD will quickly keep getting smaller (I'm still positive that if Universal forced AMC to take a two and a half week window, there's no reason that other studios won't do the same thing or worse)

Studios keep saying "But the audience WANTS a short window to home theater!"--and justified Digital for ten years with "They want to pre-order while it's still in theaters!"--and then claimed they "had" to shorten the window to get a jump ahead of all those nasty Internet pirates!
(Assuming any real adult casual computer user has actually gone to Pirate Bay in the last twenty years, has anyone ever not panicked and disinfected their system with three different virus cleaners if they so much as make accidental contact?)

And all three are alibis for the exact same thing: Studios are making less theatrical money, in a shorter time, and need more avenue to make back their grosses within a certain set "First-run release" time frame.
Disney used to do the same creative accounting back in the early 90's, when they figured out that if they released the VHS versions of a new or re-released animated title within a certain set period up to the same year as release, they could spin the $20 VHS sales as "First-run grosses". They didn't get caught at it until somebody questioned their claim that a Fantasia re-release had "outgrossed Terminator 2".

 

[TravisR]

That was already where we were at before the pandemic, though.

The smaller movies aren't keeping the lights on but on a Friday and Saturday night, they'll sell some tickets and sell concessions. My thought is that those movies will nearly disappear if they're available in a couple weeks at home.

 

[TravisR]

(Assuming any real adult casual computer user has actually gone to Pirate Bay in the last twenty years, has anyone ever not panicked and disinfected their system with three different virus cleaners if they so much as make accidental contact?)

That's what keeps me honest.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That's certainly true but the difference that I see is that people still go to movie theaters on dates, hanging out with friends, they've heard that a movie is good and are just plain movie fans. A two or three week PVOD window will really take a big chunk out of those numbers and at that point, the theaters will start to die off. I'm not saying that all theaters will be gone by next year but I have about 10 theaters within a driving distance of me and I think within a decade, that number will be dramatically smaller.

I figured that was going to happen anyway, regardless of the current circumstance.

I forget what the exact statistic was but New York City has shed something dramatic like 40% or 60% of its available moviegoing seats in the past decade, due to a combination of theaters going out of business and the reduction of capacity due to the installation of recliners replacing regular seats. Regal’s flagship location in NYC cut seating capacity by about 2/3rds when they switched their seats for recliners, and they had stated prior to the pandemic that they would be eventually doing that with all of their theaters. Landmark had a multiplex with about six screens, each with several hundred seats, and wasn’t making enough to sustain the lease - they ended up doing a new build where the auditoriums have between twenty and sixty seats now.

The smaller movies aren't keeping the lights on but on a Friday and Saturday night, they'll sell some tickets and sell concessions. My thought is that those movies will nearly disappear if they're available in a couple weeks at home.

I feel like this is already happening. Most midbudget projects have evolved from being two hour theatrical movies to ten hour prestige television/streaming events. The exceptions seem to be similar to what still sells on physical media - family entertainment, horror movies, and franchises where the audience’s investment began before the current paradigm shift went into effect.

I don’t think the variety of content itself is going away but the form it takes is shifting. I really, truly believe that Disney saw that this was on the horizon and that that’s why they’ve put so much time, money and effort into establishing it and loading it with premium content. I think they wanted to position themselves to be able to handle the loss of theatrical as the primary revenue source for their filmed entertainment.

I do think theaters will survive in some capacity but that it’ll be analogous to the way there are far more professional sports fans in the country than there are people who attend a professional sports game in person. Both groups see the same content and both can be equally engaged in that content but one type experience is equally available to everyone at a very low cost and the other is a premium luxury that is out of reach for many (or represents a special occasion splurge). We’ve already seen Disney dip their toe in that water, offering the very first showing of their new tentpoles at an artificially inflated price.

On the other hand, if this allows theaters to not have to try to be everything for everyone, it might enable them to scale back the number of locations, invest more heavily in the remaining ones, and make the premium experience they charge extra for the new standard.