During the recent D23 expo in Anaheim, California, Disney unveiled a plethora of new shows and exclusive content for their new Disney+ streaming service. Titles ranged from a new High School Musical television series to a live-action remake of ‘Lady and the Tramp’, the iconic Disney animation. The move comes amid the news that Apple, HBO and NBC will all be launching their own streaming services to compete with the changing landscape of online media and aim to pull shows they previously allowed on Netflix, such as The Office, back to their own respective platforms.
Other news involving Disney include the end of Spider-Man in the MCU as Sony pull out from the multi-billion dollar franchise. The new deal, as Deadline reported, would have made Disney own a 50/50 co-financing stake in all new Spiderman films, compared to the current deal of circa 5% that exists on first-dollar gross. Sony has, up to date, earned no profits off MCU films featuring the web-slinger.
In other news, the release date for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune has been pushed back to December of 2020. The sci-fi epic, long awaited by fans, stands as an outlier among the many reboots of popular franchises, David Lynch’s 1984 version was critically panned and regarded as a commercial flop. However, Villeneuve is not new to gambling on large productions, having previously directed Blade Runner 2049, a film considered financially unsuccessfully after failing to double its $259.2 million budget in box-office revenue. The upcoming film’s success will mark a decisive point in whether large studios decide to focus on more creative ventures for blockbusters or return back to household names such as Ghostbusters, Terminator and Rambo, the latter of which will be releasing a new sequel, titled ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ this month.
Anton Rivas Partile – Film Writer
