Dune Part Two (See It Early In February)

Barbie is making so much money, they can now afford the costs of moving this to next year.

And yet they’re fine keeping their other movies where they are lol.

Four months out and still no trailer.  Hmmm.

Zaslav has Wonka coming out on December 15. He might delay Aquaman too.

Delaying Aquaman would probably be smarter than delaying Dune. If they had positioned Dune in December and bumped Aquaman to March, that would positioned Dune for another hopeful Oscar tech award sweep. Meanwhile, WB's only DC film next year is Joker 2, and the only thing Disney has finished filming for Marvel is Captain America, with its only superhero competition at the beginning of the year being Madam Web, which nobody expects anything from.

That's just what I'd do with my chess pieces if I were playing, though.

Aquaman does have a semi-benefit of being a sequel to a sleeper hit billion dollar movie. How much toxicity it is drenched in from the last few years of DC garbage is a question mark, though audiences do still tend to lean positive on Momoa (hell, Fast X pretty much coasted on Momoa). But I can't count it out because dismissing it almost seems as foolish as those who thought Avatar 2 was going to bomb. Mathematically speaking, even if Aquaman 2's drop mirrored that of Black Panther 2's, it would still be good for about $700-800 million. The only comparisons I can think of that would spell a certain doom for it are the drop between The Last Jedi and Solo, which were entirely different circumstances, and the drop between Transformers 4 and 5, which is a dangerous possibility depending on how diluted the well is. Meanwhile, Dune performed well for a pandemic movie, but we still don't know what its ceiling is.

The majority of Dune's profits will be taken by Legendary Entertainment as well, as WB is only acting as distributor. Aquaman is a full WB production, which translates to a bigger cut. If Dune and Aquaman both made the exact same box office down to the dollar, they'd stand to take bigger revenue of Aquaman. But they also pumped very little money into Dune, especially by comparison, so...

The Superman script is at the very least finished, and since the DGA is still working, pre-production can still move forward without too much of a hitch (other than potential rewrites, which can't be done until the strikes pass). Filming usually starts a little over a year before release, so he has comfortable buffer time on that film right now.

Unless the FX houses begin to unionize, like it looks like they might. Post might be fucked if crunch starts to get phased out (which, make no mistake, would be a very good thing overall).

Never fear. The Marvels was more than happy to take Dune’s IMAX spot.

Happy birthday to me

Got my ticket last night.