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Let's talk about Fast & Furious. Fast 9 was supposed to be released this summer, but the studio pushed to next summer. When you spend $200M+ to make a film, you need the huge box office returns…
*Spoiler Alert* There might not be box offices next summer.
*Spoiler Alert* There might not be box offices next summer.
Fast's strategy is based on the assumption theaters will be back open & ticket sales what they were pre-covid… We can only get back to the kind of consumer behavior, when some combination of the following are in place: Vaccine. Treatment. Risk Mitigation (masks in public, etc.)
Imagine sitting in a theater right now. Shoulder to shoulder with strangers. Popcorn in your lap that is open to the air... somebody sneezes or coughs in the dark. We're coming out of this with some level of PTSD around germs and the scenario I just laid out feels super gross.
So Fast's strategy is headed for a harsh reality. AND, imagine how subtly different life will be in a year & how strange that might appear on screen. ie, if there is a scene in the film where they're in a packed bar / restaurant, nobody wearing masks... it's going to feel wrong.
It's like a scene from a movie pre 9/11 when people met loved ones at the gate, or where people didn't have to go thru all the TSA stuff. It works because we know this was in the past, but if Fast 9 is meant to be present day when it comes out, it'll have some serious plot holes.
What Fast missed, was the opportunity to create the future of film consumption. That franchise has a massive international following… and instead of assuming status quo, they were visionary... they could have created the biggest direct to consumer media release in history.
A global live world premier could have been the highest grossing PPV event in history (Mayweather vs. McGregor was $700M from 6.7M buys). Fast could have signaled a new path to world premiers & reshaped a dying industry. Oh well, you live you life a quarter mile at a time.
