Denis Villeneuve has reason to be angry about the HBO Max/Warner Bros. streaming deal from last week. The Quebecois filmmaker has emerged these last 10 years as a major voice in mainstream moviemaking, with films such as “Arrival,” “Sicario” and “Blade Runner 2049” earning him glowing reviews and a major fanbase. He was just getting started.
Villeneuve, whose upcoming “Dune” is part of the streaming deal, has written an essay for Variety, a scathing response to Warner Bros.’ HBO Max all-streaming decision. Suffice to say, he’s not happy, and the brunt of his anger is being directed towards AT&T and its hold over the WB.
“I’ve learned…that Warner Bros. has decided to release Dune on HBO Max at the same time as our theatrical release, using prominent images from our movie to promote their streaming service. With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history.
“There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion. Therefore, even though Dune is about cinema and audiences, AT&T is about its own survival on Wall Street. With HBO Max’s launch a failure thus far, AT&T decided to sacrifice Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate in a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.
“Warner Bros.’ sudden reversal from being a legacy home for filmmakers to the new era of complete disregard draws a clear line for me. Filmmaking is a collaboration, reliant on the mutual trust of team work. Warner Bros. has declared they are no longer on the same team. Streaming services are a positive and powerful addition to the movie and TV ecosystems. But I want the audience to understand that streaming alone can’t sustain the film industry as we knew it before COVID. Streaming can produce great content, but not movies of Dune’s scope and scale. Warner Bros.’ decision means Dune won’t have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph.
“Warner Bros. might just have killed the Dune franchise. This one is for the fans. AT&T’s John Stankey said that the streaming horse left the barn. In truth, the horse left the barn for the slaughterhouse.”
Warner Bros. has turned into a total shitshow. If you remember, they negotiated $10M buyouts for the “Wonder Woman” team before announcing the HBO Max deal, setting a precedent for their tentpole releases. Why would any director, with any sense of artistic self-respect, now want to join the Warner team of collaborators?
Patty Jenkins and James Gunn have jumped ship and are now working for Disney. One can only imagine, Nolan and Villeneuve, who are both currently furious at Warner, to go to another studio. But, which one? Warner has been one of the premier major studios to give a portal to auteur directors
The theatrical experience is not permanently gone, this pandemic shall pass and we will all be able to go back to the movies. Warner Bros. jumped the gun by hitting the panic button and setting off a cataclysmic avalanche of repercussions towards them.
I wrote last week:
‘When this pandemic is over, we will be able to again meet at a cinema, watch a movie on the big screen, share the experience with strangers all around us, but the industry won’t be the same. I will always choose theatres over the small screen, whenever they open again, but a part of every cinephile died today with news of this WB/HBO Max merger.”
The man doesn't stop. James Gunn has confirmed he's already hard at work writing his next film, even as ‘Man of Tomorrow’ makes its way toward theaters next summer.