Check in this link in which cinemas in Spain it can be seen The Irish
Is it time to "break" Disney, as suggested by Matt Stoller, author of Goliath: a hundred years of war between monopoly power and democracy? pulp fiction It was the first film released by Disney after buying the Miramax studio in 1993, for which it paid 80 million dollars and then sold it in 2010 for 660 million. Since then, the game of stamps from the Mickey Mouse factory has only grown, and some have stopped being amused by the issue. Martin Scorsese may not own the same gift as Kanye West to shake the media cobwebs when one of his premieres looms, but there is no doubt that the director of The Irish knows how to do it. And with style. After getting comfortable in an interview with the magazine Empire in which he described Marvel movies as "amusement parks" (and not in a good way), this week Martin Scorsese has justified his criticism neither more nor less than doing it from a tribune in the New York Times.
"I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered. I said that I tried to see some of them and that they are not for me, that in my opinion, they are closer to the theme parks than to the movies, as I have known and loved them all my life. And that in the end, I don't think they are cinema »
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Along the way, he has given us an article that seems more like a history lesson. A love letter addressed to authentic cinema, and that will have to be archived for posterity:
After praising some of the great names that shaped his love for the seventh art (steel helmets de samuel fuller, Human de Ingmar Bergman, Live his life de Jean-Luc Godard or the entire filmography of Alfred Hitchcock), the second part of Martin Scorsese's opinion piece delves into darker ground. One of the final sentences, perhaps the most brilliant, is enough to condense his position: «The situation is that now, unfortunately, we have two camps: there is world audiovisual entertainment and cinema».
Al Pacino in The Irishman, by Martin Scorsese (Premiere in Spain on November 15)
Scorsese, who knows what he's talking about after launching last week The Irish in an unusually low number of American theaters (opening in Spain on November 15), alludes directly and indirectly to the concentration of power of the big film studios, among which Disney is the undisputed colossus.
The great cake of cinema today is shared between five film studios: Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Universal, and Paramount.
scorsese unchained
Since the turn of the millennium, the biggest change in the film industry has been one of "gradual but steady elimination of risk," says Scorsese. In his opinion, what makes a good film the most exalted is, at the same time, the least attractive element in a company's roadmap: "many films today are perfectly manufactured products ready for immediate consumption [...] what they lack something fundamental in cinema: the unifying vision of the individual artist. Because of course the individual artist is the biggest risk factor of all."
The nature of the modern franchise is that of a string of films that "say sequels, but in spirit are remakes." […]; "Films that obey market research and that have been tested with audiences, examined, modified, re-examined and re-modified until they are ready for consumption."
It's hard to say more with less.
Disney, to the whole world
Although 2009 and 2012 were historic years for Disney thanks to the purchase of Marvel and LucasFilm respectively, several indicators suggest that this 2019 Disney is on track to break all records. The six most watched films in the world so far in 2019 are his: The Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Spider-man Far from home, Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4 and Aladdin.
It is no wonder that in the middle of the year, Disney announced a record turnover of 8.000 million dollars. But there is more: on November 14 Disney will launch its own Netflix (Disney +, with its own productions such as the Star Wars series The Mandalorian).
In case anyone has forgotten, at the beginning of the year, Disney bought Rupert Murdoch for 71.000 million dollars a little treat called 21st Century Fox, owner of, among many other names, The Simpsons and National Geographic.
The six most watched movies at the global box office so far in 2019 are owned by Disney
The great cake of cinema today is shared between five film studios: Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Universal, and Paramount. With the acquisition in March 2019 of 21st Century Fox, Disney suddenly eliminated one of the calls six majors of the film industry. It was the first time, since the near disappearance, bankruptcy, coming out of bankruptcy and going into the background of MGM, that a movie studio was removed of the map. The three highest-grossing movies of 2018 in the United States they were from Disney: Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War y Incredibles 2.
And what's wrong with this? Can't everyone who wants to see auteur films just go to Netflix? The reader may ask himself, and Scorsese himself asks himself (and answers himself sarcastically) in his article: «Anywhere except on the big screen, which is where the film director intended his film to be seen.
That the concentration of supply reduces variety is a problem for which it is not necessary to design a scheme. Unlike what can happen with sectors such as books or music, the cinema sector has limited support: if there are more publishing releases, an extra table can always be set up in the Fnac news section. Building a new movie theater is another story.
Although Quentin Tarantino also suffered the coming of the Disney hurricane when projecting Los odiosos ocho in fewer rooms than you would have liked, Director of Pulp Fiction has been less hostile towards the Marvel movies, going as far as to declare that Thor: Ragnarok it's your favourite. All in all, in 2015 Tarantino had to suffer in his flesh a drastic drop in theater quota due to the Star Wars Episode VII, owned by Disney.
Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino
Scorsese has something to say on the issue of theaters: "Would I like my film to be in more theaters for a longer period of time? Of course I would like to. But regardless of who you make your movie with, the fact is that the theaters at most multiplexes are packed with franchise movies." After his first tantrum in Empire, Scorsese soon received the support of another great, Francis Ford Coppola, which he called Marvel movies "despicable."
One war, two battles
Given the degree of salseo that is in the chicken coop, better subscribe to the blanket and go to the living room, I could think of more than one. That in the saón it is warm and, at least, there things will be calmer. No?
No.
With the arrival and consolidation of Netflix and other video services on demand as a model of success the very future of film production and consumption is presented to us in the form of a sudoku with numbers that change boxes unpredictably.
Rome, Alfonso Cuarón (Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), was released in only five cinemas in Spain in 2018. The last of the brothers' films Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, was going for a series and stayed on film, with a premiere again limited to Netflix. The penultimate episode of this puzzle comes from the hand of Martin Scorsese himself. The Irish It will be released in some Spanish cinemas on November 15, and in all theaters on November 27 via Netflix, which is the one who has financed the film.
Still and promotional image of Roma, by Alfonso Cuarón
One of the most popular interpretations of the 21st Century Fox purchase, according to we read in Vox, is that Disney is preparing for the "long winter of the streaming apocalypse." With the arrival of a fifth actor (Hulu is very popular in the US), a certain Apple TV+, Disney has shielded a catalog in a position to cough (and catch a cold) to Netflix and HBO themselves. Cinema is not at risk of extinction. If anything, it only that danger is a certain way of making cinema.
In the list of the most notorious acquisitions or absorptions of Disney there are interesting names:
1. The Capital Cities/ABC cable channel in 1995 for $19.000 billion
2. FOX Family in 2001 for 2.900 billion.
3. The Muppets in 2004 (estimated to be around 70 million)
4.Pixar, then commanded by Steve Jobs (and with only six films released, all resounding successes) for 7.400 million dollars.
In 2009, Marvel's super purchase would arrive with which Disney would obtain the rights to use and exploit some 5.000 characters for 4.000 million dollars, and in 2012, and for another 4.000 million dollars, LucasFilm.
In case anyone contemplates the possibility that Star Wars: Episode IX is going to be the last installment in the saga, It will be good for you to know that there are already three more confirmed films. If we add to these the myriad installments of Avatar that James Cameron is shooting right now (and that belong to 20th Century Fox, that is, to Disney) we find that the Christmas bombings of the billboard from here until 2027 are already assigned This is how the calendar looks:
Avatar 2: December 2021
New Star Wars 1 movie: December 2022
Avatar 3: December 2023
New Star Wars 2 movie: December 2024
Avatar 4: December 2025
New Star Wars 1 movie: December 2026
Avatar 5: December 2026
In the meantime, the thirty films that currently make up the Marvel universe will be expanded with a very juicy calendar of new sequels (or remakes, according to Scorsese) already confirmed and which, surely, other specialized web pages will know much better than Postposmo.
And outside the world of cinema…
GoPro, Photobucket, Cocoa China… It's been a long time since the matter stopped being just about movies. The list of conglomerates, properties, affiliates, subsidiary companies or simple shares that Disney's tentacles reach would give for several movies. No one has been able to better explain this Kasi Kafkaesque organization than the Titlemax.com website, whose graphic we invite you to appreciate in all its splendor.
Is there room for hope in this tunnel whose final light one can even guess? Is it the final aspiration of Disney to win the monopoly of the audiovisual world? In 2010, the same year he divested Miramax, Disney saw fit to return ownership of the Power Rangers to Saban, to those who milked bad things with seven television seasons, each one with more horrendous costumes. The Power Rangers have returned home and today we are proud to say that they have regained their independence and their identity. Too bad that since 2010 nothing has been heard from them on the billboard.
All the companies of the Disney colossus
Updated 6/11/2019: Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, responded to Martin Scorsese's criticism Martin Scorsese claiming not to believe that the director "has never seen a Marvel movie": "Anyone who has seen a Marvel movie could not honestly make these statements", he added.