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Village Roadshow Entertainment has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
- treetalker 2y agoHow is this possible when The Matrix: Resurrections was the best entry in the whole series? /s Does anyone know: Did the dispute with Warner Brothers cause the digs against Warner Brothers in the Resurrections script, or vice versa, or were they both caused by something else, or were they unrelated?
- Andrex 2y agoUnrelated. - The dispute was after the movie released. - Only one of the Wachowskis could be convinced to come back. - WB had tried and failed at least once getting a new Matrix movie off the ground after Revolutions without the Wachowskis. - The Matrix Resurrections features the line "[Warner Bros. are] going to do it with or without us." More background: https://ew.com/movies/matrix-resurrections-scene-doing-sequel-without-wachowskis/ https://ew.com/movies/matrix-resurrections-scene-doing-seque...
- DecentShoes 2y agoThey deserve that for Matrix Resurrections.
- mvdtnz 2y agoAnd Joker 2 or whatever stupid-ass name they gave it.
- emseetech 2y agoFolie à Deux was a great name though. Not defending the movie but as a title for a Joker & Harley movie it works.
- tjpnz 2y agoShould've called it Folie à Doo Doo.
- wodenokoto 2y agoI haven’t watched either yet, but is the sequel a bad movie or just not at all what one would be expecting?
- LaundroMat 2y agoThe latter. (I really liked both movies by the way).
- franze 2y agoI loved Joker 2! They spent an unbelievable amount of money for the audience to have a really really awful time and awful feeling in the stomach afterwards. Recommended it you want to have a bad time - with a film that just aims at that.
- clown_strike 2y agoIt's a musical. Either of your interpretations applies.
- moomin 2y agoI’m in the tiny demographic who thinks Joker 2 being a musical starring Lady Gaga was a strong decision, let down by waves in the general direction of almost everything else about the movie.
- zeroday28 2y agoHey! I enjoyed Matrix Resurrections.
- jack_pp 2y agoWe demand proof of mental health
- SSLy 2y agogot plenty found in ICD/DSM.
- gigatexal 2y agoSame here
- echelon 2y agoMatrix Resurrections had a super trippy premise, which was in line with the original film. The first half of the movie was momentously expectation-breaking mind fuckery, and I immensely enjoyed it. (I wish I had shut the film off after the reveal.) The action sequences and set pieces were absolutely lackluster and downright boring despite the film's budget. (Not sure if this is due to the age of the actors - the John Wick series seems to have figured this out just fine.) Most damning of all, the story arc, character arcs, and final resolution were phoned in and utterly forgettable. It's tragic, given the ludicrously audacious start of the film. The setup was there, but there was no investment beyond the trick premise. Lana swung for the fences but struck out. It felt like an M. Night Shyamalan letdown.
- jon_richards 2y agoI actually like 2 and 3 in retrospect, but I shut 4 off about halfway through. I liked the reimagining of agent smith ("the man") from an unnamed government agent to a tech bro. The conversation about the new matrix being made "with or without" the original creator was a great fuck you to whoever was pulling those strings. I wanted them to add another couple layers to the mind fuckery. We're used to watching the matrix and knowing which scenes are in the matrix and which are in the real world. Mess with that. Reveal halfway through that the "real world" scenes we've seen so far (in 4, not the previous movies) have actually been in the matrix. In my ideal world, the climax would've been Neo realizing that he's been dead the whole movie, existing as a manifestation of the free machines, giving them individuality and choice the same way that agent smith took away human individuality and choice in 3. Trinity can still be saved, but Neo can never go with her to the real world.
- bee_rider 2y agoWoah, a matrix movie came out… wait, four years ago?
- cadamsdotcom 2y agoBetter to keep living like they only made 3 Matrix films :)
- bee_rider 2y agoOnly two actually, and one of them was an anime.
- moomin 2y agoThis is the correct answer. It will never cease to disappoint me that 2&3 didn’t go in one of the many interesting directions implied by the Animatrix.
- plantain 2y ago3?! I prefer to live like there were only 2.
- arduanika 2y agoRandall would maintain there's only the 1. https://xkcd.com/566/ https://xkcd.com/566/
- defrost 2y agoand Dark City was its name? On a serious not The Matrix was a fine film with fantastic effects but on a scale of Punch & Depth per $ spent on production Dark City delivered more bang per buck.
- WorldMaker 2y agoDark City was a famous budgeting disaster because it spent way too much on sets and went rather over-budget, then did the terrible thing of not making that much money in the box office. The Matrix was able to spend so much of its budget on effects and effects innovation precisely because it got handed so many of Dark City's way too expensive sets trying to recoup some of the costs of Dark City. They are definitely related, and I also think Dark City was the better version of Matrix 1 on a storytelling and aesthetics level, Matrix's innovative effects aside, but then I like all of the Matrix sequels a lot more than I like the first Matrix film.
- pylotlight 2y ago[flagged]
- echelon 2y agoAnother sign tech has absorbed Hollywood. It's become so anemic that it's falling to shambles. Big tech will buy it up on the cheap.
- bravoetch 2y agoThey mention about $50m coming in annually, I assume that's from film and tv rights. What does big tech have to do with that?
- echelon 2y agoThe mid market film has died thanks to Disney monopolizing the box office with their tent poles. (Though this is questionable hypothesis and more of a complaint about Marvelization.) The healthy revenue from long box office legs and DVD sales has died thanks to streaming. And the youth that would rather get their dopamine fix elsewhere. But the streaming wars have done incredible damage to this once thriving industry. Amazon and Apple have come in and subsided their own studios from unrelated business units. (Where is antitrust?) They're teaching consumers that the price of movies is free.
- lupusreal 2y agoTheater tickets are too expensive for most people to watch an unknown quantity on a whim. They prefer franchise movies because they roughly know what they're going to get for their money, and that's why Disney is still going strong while others fail. I don't think Disney is sucking the air out of the rest of the movie industry, I think ticket sales for anything novel would still suck just as hard if Disney wasn't in the movie business at all. It's not like people have a fixed amount of times they're going to pay to see a movie every year and Disney is hogging up that number. When people are feeling economic hurt, not seeing any movies in theaters at all is an option many will pick.
- MilnerRoute 2y agoNon-paywalled link. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/joker-matrix-producer-files-bankruptcy-183511434.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/joker-matrix-producer-files-b...
- sien 2y agoNote this is related to but separate from the Australia company Village Roadshow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Roadshow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Roadshow The Australian company owned 3% of the American Village Roadshow.
- daniel_iversen 2y agoWonder how it's possible. > "The breach of contract lawsuit against Warner Bros. came after the studio introduced “The Matrix Resurrections” in December 2021 on its HBO Max streaming service the same day the film was released in movie theaters. Village Roadshow complained that the Burbank studio’s pivot away from an exclusive theatrical release had destroyed the value of a key franchise." -- how is that true? Did they lose that much box office money on Matrix Resurrections that cashflow or lack of revenues made them collapse? > “A confluence of macro-economic factors have weighed heavily on the company’s balance sheet,” -- Now we're getting somewhere. An unbalanced budget? What might have caused it I wonder? Would they have a worse time than the other studios or have less cash reserves etc? A shame the article doesn't give many answers. Would love to know.
- fsckboy 2y agoI just assume every step of this was hollywood accounting tricks to not pay a bunch of the people they contractually owe money to. eddy murphy called it "monkey points" https://hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html https://hollywoodlexicon.com/points.html
- yieldcrv 2y agoBankruptcy doesn't mean they run out of money. Its protection from creditors on the expectation that a current or perceived liability will impair them, and the protection thwarts it. But yes 99% correlated to having no ability to repay. Its possible they expect a countersuit to win. Or they borrowed to much to pay lawyers.
- donavanm 2y agoThe proximate cause seems to be a $100M claim from WB against VREG regarding additional finance costs for matrix revolutions circa 2021. VREGs counter(?) suit was recently kicked back and told to go to arbitration. VREG also claims to have spent $19M pursuing their legal claims/response so far. My read is legal costs + no productions in the pipeline + no recent profitable activity + a likely ~$100M arbitration result is exactly whats led to bankruptcy.
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- system7rocks 2y agoI wonder too if this is poor leadership not understanding that the streaming era is just a return to classic TV. Like hey, swinging and missing on a high cost major blockbuster is more devastating than greenlighting a ton of lower budget movies with up and coming actors. Aka I like Chris Pratt or the Rock just fine but one movie a year is enough??
- Carrok 2y ago[flagged]
- system7rocks 2y agoWho are you responding to? Cause it’s not my comment.
- Carrok 2y ago[flagged]
- whatever1 2y agoI still like the characters that Spacey portrayed. I admire his work I don’t admire him as a person.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoPeople these days have no ability to separate the art from the artist. It's a shame. I guess it's their loss if they deprive themselves of perfectly good art because they don't like who made it.
- Carrok 2y agoI will gladly deprive myself of “art” made by admitted and convicted rapists. To each their own I suppose. I used to love Spacey.
- miguelrodrigue 2y agoUg5
- greatgib 2y agoVillage Roadshow put into development 99 feature films, 166 scripted television series and 67 unscripted series. Of those, six movies and seven television series went into production. I don't know if it is standard practice, but these numbers looks wild to me.
- cm2187 2y agoI don't know the exact numbers but it is consistent with other stuff I heard (notably the Brett Easton Ellis podcast which I recommend). Script writers churn a lot of scripts, many of them get bought but never produced. Or sit as a project for 10 years or more. But I think development doesn't mean they engage massive costs, just that they start trying to get the financing, perhaps with a tentative director and/or actor name attached to the project.
- WorldMaker 2y agoYeah, there's a bunch of reasons Hollywood is notoriously known for "Development Hell" as its longest phase in the creative process. Production is generally "quick" and has a lot known knowns. Development is a lot of gossip and paperwork and contracts and writes and rewrites and license agreements and market studies and so forth, sometimes "forever" even for projects "everyone" thinks should be an easy thing to kick off and wants to see on some screen.
- qingcharles 2y agoThis is standard. Hollywood is horrible, though. It's not usually the best stuff that bubbles to the top. And even when the good stuff does get visibility, everyone wants a piece of it (especially if they are put up some $$ or other benefit) and meddles incessantly with the production, from the script, to the casting, to the marketing. In the music biz we used to call this "write a word, take a third." I've never asked what the Hollywood equivalent is. Every production gets enshittified. There are mountains of supremely talented people in Hollywood, but an equal amount of totally untalented chucklefucks with money and connections to screw everything up. Maybe the AI will put production back into the hands of the talent. Their scripts will go unmolested by talentless moneyed hacks.
- bitwize 2y agoIt turns out, if you go all in on "torch the franchise and run" films (Matrix 4, Joker 2), you might not make back your money and can end up in a shitheap of financial trouble if they were costly to produce, distribute, and market. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TorchTheFranchiseAndRun https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TorchTheFranchis...
- Yeul 2y agoDid anyone even want a new Matrix movie? The story was concluded.
- WorldMaker 2y agoThe storyline (immediately) continued and deepened in The Matrix Online and some of us did hope for a revival of The Matrix Online, given most people missed playing through that story, with a better budget and a goal to finish its planned storyline. Matrix 4 was interesting in that it seemed to leave The Matrix Online canon (the Wachowskis seem earnest in trusting there cross-media plays in the franchise to be/remain canon) but didn't answer some of the old questions. On the other hand it did deliver a few nice things. But yes a Warner Brothers execute hoping to boot up a Matrix branded money printer would not have had the sense to talk to anyone previously involved in The Matrix Online, despite owning Monolith (RIP), Matrix 4 was never really about continuing the story to the people demanding "we need a Matrix 4 by such and such quarter".
- maxsilver 2y agoNot really (except hardcore fans, who already followed the 'after-trilogy' lore, and would have been happy with a continuation in a much cheaper format) But Warner Brothers itself wanted a big tentpole release, and insisted Matrix be it. (Even though it wouldn't really fit that mold) The Matrix 4 itself, even mentions how the demands on the release were ridiculous and wouldn't work (it's not 1999 anymore, you can't just re-do 1999 and expect it to work). The Matrix 4 film itself is really good (IMHO), as a huge fan of the original stories and lore, it moves the universe forward in a way that feels authentic to the original trilogy, it reunites old characters, makes charming and thoughtful new ones, and it remains authentic and true to the original romance underpinning the whole thing. The lack of Hugo Weaving/Laurence Fishburne, and a little bit of dated action fights is the only real bummer I can think of. The problem is that the film is only good, and not mind-crushingly great. And what everyone seemed to want out of this, was a guaranteed 300+ mil smash hit at box. If they had released it to theaters, I don't think it would have made that. But it 'only' cost $190 million to make (Matrix 2 was 265m in 2024 dollars), and I think Matrix 4 would have done at least $200 mil total at box, if it had a theatrical release (for comparison, The Marvels is another 'good-but-not-great' SciFi action film, and grossed $206 million at box).
- neonate 2y agohttps://archive.ph/Ptomj https://archive.ph/Ptomj
- ggm 2y ago"Hollywood accounting" being notorious for avoiding payout to rights owners down the list, is it fair to ask if this is a bit "leopards ate my face" as one arc of Hollywood consumes another by creative accounting? The decision to release product against Village Roadshows wishes feels like potential breach of contract stuff but this is now water under the bridge. I wonder if the bond completion insurance side of this is also now a bit underwater: money in films is strange and all kinds of people and their two-and-a-half employee company could be affected. Feel a bit sad for industry people who lose their shirt in this.
- shrikant 2y agoPeople in India might know them as the "VR" in the PVR chain of cinemas in some cities across India.