Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) (1 Viewer)

[Malcolm R]

Let me say that again: They just directed the biggest movie of all time and should be able to use that clout to the benefit of whatever they want to do next, but they're filming a movie with one of their Marvel stars and don't have a distributor for it yet.

That's crazy. And it underlines exactly what you're talking about, because even a few years ago, they probably would have had distributors falling all over themselves to chase that movie before a single frame of it was shot.

Because the success of their Marvel movie in no way guarantees any interest in a small drama with a description like: An Army medic suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder becomes a serial bank robber after an addiction to drugs puts him in debt. (Summary of Cherry, from IMDb)

Sounds like the feel-good movie of the year. I'm not surprised the majors are passing. Sounds more like an afterschool special from the 70's.

Universal backed Colin Trevorrow after Jurassic World, a major worldwide blockbuster, and he turned in The Book of Henry which grossed less than $5m worldwide. Success in directing one film has no correlation to success in future films, and given the cost to produce, market, and release a theatrical film these days, they're going to be very selective.

Audiences also don't really respond to "names" anymore, directors or actors. The marketing for Terminator: Dark Fate has gone out of its way to drive it into our brains that this is the same director as Deadpool. Hasn't helped the box office much. Touting "the new film by the Russo brothers" would be largely met with indifference.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I call it the Hemsworth Effect. Success in Marvel movies doesn't necessarily translate into non-Marvel success.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

And it makes the point: If Cherry were to get picked up by a platform like Netflix rather than a theatrical distributor, it would likely end up being a hit for that service and do well for them. It would end up being seen by more people that way. Because there’s no shortage of audience interest in well made content that features dramatic, original and sometimes depressing storylines.

It’s simply become that first run commercial movie theaters are no longer the venue that audience wishes to view that content in.

It seems related to the Hemsworth thing. I bet people would be plenty happy to watch Hemsworth as non-Thor if he was coming to a Netflix original series or HBO limited series. But liking him as Thor doesn’t translate into willing going through the whole theatrical experience, particularly in an era when you can just wait a short while and it’ll come to you at home instead.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Audiences also don't really respond to "names" anymore, directors or actors. The marketing for Terminator: Dark Fate has gone out of its way to drive it into our brains that this is the same director as Deadpool. Hasn't helped the box office much. Touting "the new film by the Russo brothers" would be largely met with indifference.

I think that depends on who the director is and what their next project is. Christopher Nolan was able to capitalize on his success as the director of Batman into big success for Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk. The trailer for Tenant which has been running in theaters (I saw it before Joker) similarly positions it as from him. His work with Batman, and The Dark Knight specifically, was able to make him into a household name. Peter Jackson was able to use his name to help sell King Kong after The Lord of the Rings, but it didn't help The Lovely Bones, which was too far out of his genre sandbox. Also, Avatar was "from the director of Titanic," and that helped it to outgross the film to which it was promoting its relation.

I hate to admit it but the Russo Brothers on Cherry would seem to fall into the latter category, whereas if they were working on another more fanboy-oriented property, "from the director of Endgame" certainly did help.

Cherry is almost certainly not a huge-budget film though, so a major studio could probably acquire it for a song and platform it as an awards contender and do okay. It's not going to set the box office on fire, but I don't think it would completely tank either. I've been reading the novel, and if the movie does a good job of representing what the novel is, it is the kind of thing that would be seen as a serious awards bait picture. Maybe Disney will pick it up for Fox Searchlight as a result of their relationship with the Russos. They could do well with it there.

It seems related to the Hemsworth thing. I bet people would be plenty happy to watch Hemsworth as non-Thor if he was coming to a Netflix original series or HBO limited series. But liking him as Thor doesn’t translate into willing going through the whole theatrical experience, particularly in an era when you can just wait a short while and it’ll come to you at home instead.

I also think this is related to Hemsworth's choice of projects. Bad Times at the El Royale, which I loved, was long, dark and challenging and probably would have struggled whether he was in it or not. Ghostbusters had a lot of baggage that wasn't related in any way to his presence. No one asked for a Men in Black reboot that didn't star Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. If he were to find another big franchise that fits him as well as Thor does, maybe audiences would be more receptive to that. So far, he hasn't done that, but I don't think he couldn't if it was the right thing.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Nolan makes sense if you think of it this way: Warner has positioned him as a franchise unto himself. Though his films vary in topic, his signature flourishes are easily recognizable (and very effective) and that helps keep him going as a brand. It also doesn’t hurt that Warner promoted his name on the Batman films in a way Disney has not with any of their filmmakers. Warner’s Dark Knight Rises trailer included the verbiage “From Christopher Nolan, the visionary director of The Dark Knight and Inception.”

Can you ever imagine Disney doing that here on the Thor 4 trailer? “From Taika Waititi, the visionary director of Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit”? It’s not their style. Their poster credits in most cases put the title before any filmmaker or cast names. I can’t imagine that helps with taking your name places.

I think the marketplace factors alone are the biggest story but there’s probably a death by a thousand cuts element to it as well.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Can you ever imagine Disney doing that here on the Thor 4 trailer? “From Taika Waititi, the visionary director of Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit”? It’s not their style. Their poster credits in most cases put the title before any filmmaker or cast names. I can’t imagine that helps with taking your name places.

Thor doesn't need to have the director's name attached to the trailer because Marvel is the brand there. Warner promoting Nolan for Batman was, as you noted, a different style, but also, Nolan's Batman was not connected to a larger established cinematic universe where the connected brand is larger than any single film. Nolan's vision for his Batman films was entirely his own and not part of a larger puzzle, which all of the Marvel films are even when they have distinctive directorial visions. That's why I think they don't feature director names in their marketing for the bigger brands.

But Disney has already done that in reverse for Jojo Rabbit, which is being prominently promoted in marketing as "from Taika Waititi, director of Thor Ragnarok." So they're trying to use Thor to help sell his very non-Thor movie. Whether that is actually helping or not is up for debate. I saw it and loved it, but I knew who Taika Waititi was before Thor and would have seen his next film whether he had directed Thor or not.



Personally, I will seek out Cherry wherever it lands because the Russos are directing it (and doing it with Tom Holland doesn't hurt either.) The three of them are why I found out about and bought the book. But I admit that I am almost surely the exception on that relative to the size of the audience for their Marvel titles.

Incidentally, STX is promoting 21 Bridges as being connected to the Russos, and even had the trailer in front of Endgame name-dropping Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame. So that is going to be the first litmus test as to whether their involvement holds any weight now for a non-Marvel property. It also stars a Marvel superhero that they cast, in this case Chadwick Boseman. However, they are only producing it, not directing it, and also, it has been pushed back a number of times. When they had the trailer on Endgame, it was scheduled to debut on July 12. Then it got pushed back to September 27. And then it was pushed back again to November 22. So if anyone who saw the trailer on Endgame was interested in it because it was promoted as coming from the Russos, they've probably forgotten it by now due to the delays. And the November 22 date will be utterly dominated by Frozen II, so attempting to counterprogram that with an action thriller that's not in the Oscar conversation seems like a bad date for it. If it had stayed on July 12, it would have opened against Crawl and Stuber, and I don't even remember what opened on October 27, but both of those slots would have obviously been less competitive than against Frozen II. So I feel like that one might be out of gas before it starts due to the constant delays. We'll see.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I also don’t think this is a big ask for the fan base. Disney+ is $7 a month. The nationwide ticket average is supposedly $10 a person, but it’s closer to $15 in many places and now nearly $30 where I live. Anyone who doesn’t want Disney+ full time can subscribe for just one month right before the new movie comes out, binge the latest show all at once, and then cancel immediately. You can’t tell me that if fans are paying up to $30 for a single movie ticket, that asking them to pay $7 to see a series with characters they already love that runs four or five times the length of a movie is a bad bargain.

Money isn't the problem here. It's time. I simply don't have the time to keep up with constant tv releases. I can barely keep up with the 1 show I watch now as is.

It’ll be akin to watching Avengers with having seen some but not all of the individual character movies.

And that's the problem. I would have hated to see the Avengers movies without having seen all the previous standalone movies. Not because I thought the movie would be bad, but just knowing that stuff was going on that I wasn't fully appreciating would bother me. I don't think it's too much to ask to keep all the information in 1 medium, instead of spreading it about all over like a treasure hunt to get the most out of it..

Also: Is the Thor 4 thread the best venue for this particular discussion? Nothing in today's posts actually has anything to do with Thor 4. The article says that the Loki and Scarlett Witch shows will tie into the Doctor Strange sequel. This is clearly an interesting and invigorating discussion, but I'm not sure if this is the right place for it.

As the poster of the articles, I'm not sure this is the place for it either. I searched for a general MCU thread, I could have sworn there was one, but the search came up empty. One of the articles did mention the Disney+ shows being important to Thor 4, so that's what I ultimately went with.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Interesting observations re: Disney+ and Phase 4. As someone who did not see all the Marvel origin movies before a given character's appearance in the "team" films, and as someone who doesn't do a studio's work by ensuring I'm well educated beforehand even for non-Marvel films, I can attest that there is never a clean intro where you do not feel like you've missed something. Even when it seems an effort is made, it's just not the same as when characters have to be introduced properly because no one has met them yet. I don't expect this development to make that awkwardness any easier. Obviously, to me at least, quite the opposite.

 

[Josh Dial]

As the poster of the articles, I'm not sure this is the place for it either. I searched for a general MCU thread, I could have sworn there was one, but the search came up empty.

Here ya go

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Here ya go

Ahh, thanks! I searched for 'MCU' without spelling it all out.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Taika Waititi is getting a new co-writer for Love and Thunder. Sources tell Variety that Jennifer Kaytin Robinson will work on the script with him.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/...fer-kaytin-robinson-taika-waititi-1203499576/

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I loved "Sweet/Vicious", and mourned its cancellation, so this is really good news for me. The tone of that show was very simpatico with Taika Waititi's previous work.

 

[Sam Favate]

Vin Diesel says the Guardians - or at least some of them - will appear in Thor: Love and Thunder.

https://comicbook.com/2020/03/09/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3-vin-diesel-alpha-groot/

https://mcucosmic.com/2020/03/09/th...cTT61Pq32ZBYL1QApOU1B2wzv8fx8G9c__uqxclinpkO8

 

[Sam Favate]

New release date: Feb. 18, 2022.

 

[Jake Lipson]

The release date has been moved up a week to February 11, 2022.

Doctor Strange relocated to March 25, 2022 in order to allow Sony to open Spider-Man on November 5, 2021. So Disney probably wanted to space out Thor and Doctor Strange as much as they can. But the two of them are still only six weeks apart.

‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Sequel Pushes ‘Doctor Strange 2’ To 2022 As Disney & Sony Team On Release Date Changes

Sony and Disney just made major changes on their release date calendars, particularly among their Marvel properties.

deadline.com

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Anyone here watched "Thor", "Dark World" and "Ragnarok" as a triple feature?

Best Buy has steelbook 4Ks of the 1st 2 on sale so I popped for them. I'd always planned to get the 3Ds but I've heard not-so-good things about those, so I figured I'd upgrade the BDs to 4K.

Curious to know if these play as a decent triple feature since the other MCU movies play as part of the overall narrative between Thor flicks!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Not as well as say, the Iron Man films, but not badly either. Ragnarok has great 3D! Dark World is a dull looking movie and that hinders the 3D effect. The first one was one of the early post conversions before they really perfected the art - it has a mix of good moments and then less impressive stuff. The post credits scene is the only bit in the MCU actually shot with a real 3D rig.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Not as well as say, the Iron Man films, but not badly either. Ragnarok has great 3D!

Sorry if it wasn't clear - the first 2 were the ones I'd planned to get in 3D.

Disney sent me the 4K of "Ragnarok", and while it indeed looked great in 3D theatrically, I don't like the movie a lot and am not willing to drop $20 or whatever for the 3D since I've already got the 4K.

I want to own either 3D or 4K of all the MCU films, and I think the purchase of the 1st 2 Thors accomplishes that!

Even though I suspect they're not a particularly coherent "trilogy", I'll probably watch 'em that way for shorts and giggles!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Loki’s arc is the thing that kinda ties it together as a trilogy, more so than any one particular plot line.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Loki’s arc is the thing that kinda ties it together as a trilogy, more so than any one particular plot line.

I'll give it a shot! Maybe I'll even like "Ragnarok" this time!