Does Disney want the British cinema industry to collapse?
The studio’s decision to release a new blockbuster online is another blow to UK venues, says Robbie Collin
You might have thought that five months into an existential crisis, Hollywood would have realised the importance of calm, methodical and collaborative action. Instead, the business has poured itself another glass of absinthe and cracked open the Sartre. Disney has announced that its forthcoming live-action remake of its 1998 animation Mulan will be skipping cinemas and opening instead on the Disney+ streaming platform, where 60.5million subscribers around the world will be able to unlock the film for an additional fee: $29.99 (£23) in the United States, with international pricing still to be decided.
Speaking on Tuesday evening, Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO, said the strategy applied to “most Disney+ markets, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of countries in Western Europe”. Chapek added that in countries where Disney+ had yet to be launched, and where cinemas had been able to reopen – China, for example – Mulan would still receive a theatrical release.
It is important to grasp what Disney isn’t doing here. The studio is not offering its customers the option of watching their new film at home in places where a trip to the cinema still isn’t possible. Nor is it presenting them with the option of doing so in the places where it is possible, but perhaps not always desirable. Rather, it is cutting cinemas out of the equation in every market in which it can do so, to “learn from it and see what happens”, as Chapek put it. Not only does this rob families of their last remaining hope of a summer trip to the pictures, it lobs a nuclear banana skin on to the cinema sector’s already hellishly slippery route back to operational health. Exactly where the UK figures in all of this has yet to be made clear. “A number of ” Western European countries obviously means not all of them, and British cinema owners had been counting on Mulan for months to help rally their patrons after the reopening process began in early July. (As recently as late June, Disney reaffirmed its commitment to releasing Mulan “where we believe it belongs – on the world stage and the big screen for audiences around the globe to enjoy together.”) But the fact that the studio’s list of confirmed
Mulan streaming markets includes New Zealand – a country where all lockdown restrictions were lifted two months ago – doesn’t exactly offer much hope of that.
Either way, it appears to contradict Chapek’s claim that releasing Mulan online is for the benefit of “a broad audience currently unable to go to movie theatres”. (Cinemas are
Cinemas are now desperate for a major release that will coax customers to return
reopening across all of the countries he mentioned, with the exception of the US.) Nor will that premium rental fee offer families much of a saving on the cost of an ordinary cinema visit. In fact, the only obvious beneficiary here has two big, round ears and is best friends with Donald Duck.
That Disney would have made such a seismic announcement without first pinning down the international detail – let alone mischaracterising the $29.99 fee as a rental charge rather than a one-off cost – suggests that this is a decision borne of panic, and therefore totally par for the course for Hollywood in the age of Covid. Mulan represents a $400million investment, and after multiple postponements the studio will now want to recoup as much of that as possible. “We’re looking at Mulan as a one-off… as opposed to… some new business windowing model that we’re looking at,” Chapek said.
But the past 10 years have taught us that where Disney leads, the rest of the industry will puppyishly follow, for good or otherwise. Their one-off will prompt others. Top Gun: Maverick; Fast & Furious 9; Disney’s forthcoming Marvel titles, Black Widow and The Eternals; and No Time to Die, the new James Bond movie: all of these films are currently hiding in studio vaults, waiting for the cinema business to recover before they emerge.
Yet in every country without its own independent and commercially robust national film industry, that recovery depends on Hollywood’s support.
And what Disney have effectively told cinemas is: bear with us, chaps, but we’re just going to check if we actually still need you around.
Do they? That remains to be seen. To even come close to scraping back Mulan’s costs, Disney+ would have to convince one in five of its existing subscribers to part with that $29.99 fee, instead of simply waiting for the film to land on the free part of the service. And that seems ambitious in a marketplace where nimble Netflix has taught consumers to treat streaming fees as the price of admission to a buffet of endless variety, rather than a cover charge on top of which we’re expected to order à la carte.
With its lower production costs and widely spread creative risk, Netflix was one of the few Hollywood operations whose short-term business model was pandemic-proof. But that will not give much succour to cinemas now desperate for the kind of major release that will coax customers back. Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is scheduled to arrive on August 26; after that, it’s Wonder Woman 1984 in October, assuming that release date holds. It’s like trying to fuel a cruise liner with tiny drums of lighter fluid. The propeller’s still churning, but it’s about to cut out.
‘Mulan’ was a $400m investment and Disney wants to recoup as much as possible