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      Managing Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More Complicated

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesDC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexManaging Movie Superheroes Is About to Get a Lot More ComplicatedWalter Hamada, who runs DC Films, is overseeing a dizzying number of projects, part of a swarm of comics-based stories coming from Hollywood.DC Films, led by Walter Hamada, plans to release movies featuring DC Comics heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman at a much faster pace.  Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 27, 2020, 5:05 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — Walter Hamada is not a typical superhero wrangler.He doesn’t have a booming, fanboy-in-chief personality. His modest home office, at least as it appears on Zoom, is light on the usual cape-and-cowl collectibles. Hollywood was not even his first calling: He set out to be a mechanical engineer.As the president of DC Films, however, Mr. Hamada, 52, manages the movie careers of Wonder Woman, Batman, Cyborg, the Flash, Superman and every other DC Comics superhero. And the new course he has charted for them is dizzying.The most expensive DC movies (up to four a year, starting in 2022) are designed for release in theaters, Mr. Hamada said. Additional superhero films (two annually is the goal, perhaps focused on riskier characters like Batgirl and Static Shock) will arrive exclusively on HBO Max, the fledgling streaming service owned by WarnerMedia.In addition, DC Films, which is part of Warner Bros., will work with filmmakers to develop movie offshoots — TV series that will run on HBO Max and interconnect with their big-screen endeavors.“With every movie that we’re looking at now, we are thinking, ‘What’s the potential Max spinoff?’” Mr. Hamada said.If you thought there was a glut of superheroes before, just wait.To make all the story lines work, DC Films will introduce movie audiences to a comics concept known as the multiverse: parallel worlds where different versions of the same character exist simultaneously. Coming up, for instance, Warner Bros. will have two different film sagas involving Batman — played by two different actors — running at the same time.The complicated plan involves a sharp increase in production. Last year, Warner Bros. made two live-action superhero movies, “Joker” and “Shazam!” In 2018, there was only “Aquaman.” All three were smash hits, underscoring the financial opportunity of making more.For various reasons, including creative misfires and management turnover at DC Films (Mr. Hamada took over in 2018), Warner Bros. has badly trailed Disney-owned Marvel at the box office. Over the last decade, Warner Bros. has generated $8 billion in worldwide superhero ticket sales, including $36 million from “Wonder Woman 1984” over the weekend; Marvel has taken in $20.6 billion.Gal Gadot and Chris Pine in “Wonder Woman 1984,” which arrived to $16.7 million in North American ticket sales over the weekend, the best result for any movie since the pandemic started.Credit…Warner BrosSuffice it to say, Warner Bros., which invented the big-budget superhero movie in 1978 with “Superman,” has been under pressure to get its act together.Disney has succeeded in part because its divisions collaborate in a way that siloed Warner Bros. never has. But that is changing. AT&T mandated greater cross-company synergy when it took over WarnerMedia in 2018.“In the past, we were so secretive,” Mr. Hamada said. “It was shocking to me, for example, how few people at the company were actually allowed to read scripts for the movies we are making.”More than ever, studios are leaning on pre-established characters and brands — especially if their corporate parents are building streaming services. HBO Max has 12.6 million subscriber activations. Netflix has 195 million. How do you delight Wall Street and quickly close the gap? You start by putting your superheroes to work.This month, Disney announced 100 new movies and shows for the next few years, most of them headed directly to its Disney+ streaming service, which has 87 million subscribers. Marvel is chipping in 11 films and 11 television shows, including “WandaVision,” which arrives on Jan. 15 and finds Elizabeth Olsen reprising her Scarlet Witch role from the “Avengers” franchise.Warner Bros. has at least as many comics-based movies in various stages of gestation, including a “Suicide Squad” sequel; “The Batman,” in which Robert Pattinson (“Twilight”) plays the Caped Crusader; and “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson as the villainous title character.Television spinoffs from “The Batman” and “The Suicide Squad” are headed to HBO Max. WarnerMedia’s traditional television division has roughly 25 additional live-action and animated superhero shows, including “Superman & Lois,” which arrives on the CW network in February.Robert Pattinson in “The Batman,” which is scheduled for release in theaters in 2022.Credit…Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated PressSony Pictures Entertainment has its own superhero slate, with at least two more “Spider-Man” movies in the works; “Morbius,” starring Jared Leto as a pseudo-vampire; and a sequel to “Venom,” which cost $100 million to make in 2018 and collected $856 million worldwide. Sony also has a suite of superhero TV shows headed for Amazon Prime Video.And don’t forget Valiant Entertainment, which is turning comics properties such as “Harbinger,” about superpowered teenagers, into movies with partners like Paramount Pictures.Superheroes have long been Hollywood’s most reliable moneymakers, especially when sales of related merchandise are included. (Wonder Woman tiara for cats, on sale for $59.50.) But how much speeding spandex and computer-generated visual effects can audiences take?More than you think, said David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy. “If the stories are well written and the production values are strong,” he said, “then there will be little sign of fatigue.”Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Warner Bros. involves the recent prioritization of HBO Max. “The risk is, will watching these movies first on television degrade the entertainment experience, and later the value,” Mr. Gross said. “For an individual movie, there is no more profitable business model than a successful theatrical release — creating the biggest pop culture event possible. It’s the locomotive that pulls the entire train: merchandise, theme park licensing, other income.”On Friday, Warner Bros. released “Wonder Woman 1984” in North America, where it collected $16.7 million. Citing the coronavirus pandemic (only 39 percent of cinemas in the United States are open), the studio simultaneously distributed the film in theaters and on HBO Max. Warner Bros. will release its entire 2021 slate in the same hybrid fashion.WarnerMedia provided only vague information about the sequel’s performance on HBO Max, saying in a news release that “millions” of subscribers watched it on Friday. Andy Forssell, WarnerMedia’s direct-to-consumer general manager, said the movie “exceeded our expectations across all of our key viewing and subscriber metrics.”So far, “Wonder Woman 1984” has collected $85 million worldwide, with $68.3 million coming from cinemas overseas, where HBO Max does not yet exist. The film, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, cost at least $200 million to make and an estimated $100 million to market worldwide. It received much weaker reviews than its series predecessor.Toby Emmerich, president of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said on Sunday that he had “fast-tracked” a third Wonder Woman movie. “Our real life Wonder Women — Gal and Patty — will return to conclude the long-planned theatrical trilogy,” Mr. Emmerich said.Mr. Hamada rose to power through New Line, a Warner Bros. division that mostly makes midbudget horror films and comedies. Among other achievements, he worked with the filmmaker James Wan and others to build “The Conjuring” (2013) into a six-film “world” with $1.8 billion in global ticket sales. (“The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” arrives in June.)“A lot of times in studio meetings, executives just repeat buzzwords, and it becomes a joke,” Mr. Wan said. “Walt always brings something constructive, useful and important to the table. He talks to me in a language that I understand.”Mr. Hamada and Jason Momoa, the star of “Aquaman,” which was the lone superhero movie from Warner Bros. in 2018.Credit…Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Hamada arrived at DC Films in 2018, the division was in urgent need of stability.Two terrifyingly expensive movies, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) and “Justice League” (2017), both directed by Zack Snyder, were deemed almost unwatchable by critics. Ben Affleck, who played Batman in the films, wanted to move on, complicating sequel plans. At the same time, filmmakers were developing other DC movies that had nothing to do with the existing story lines — and, in fact, contradicted some of them.Mr. Hamada and Mr. Emmerich had two options: Figure out how to make the various story lines and character incarnations coexist or start over.The answer is the multiverse. Boiled down, it means that some characters (Wonder Woman as portrayed by Ms. Gadot, for instance) will continue their adventures on Earth 1, while new incarnations (Mr. Pattinson as “The Batman”) will populate Earth 2.“The Flash,” a film set for release in theaters in 2022, will link the two universes and feature two Batmans, with Mr. Affleck returning as one and Michael Keaton returning as the other. Mr. Keaton played Batman in 1989 and 1992.To complicate matters further, HBO Max gave Mr. Snyder more than $70 million to recut his “Justice League” and expand it with new footage. Mr. Snyder and Warner Bros. had clashed over his original vision, which the studio deemed overly grim, resulting in reshoots handled by a different director, Joss Whedon. (That didn’t go well, either.) “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” now four hours long, will arrive in segments on HBO Max in March.At least for now, Mr. Snyder is not part of the new DC Films blueprint, with studio executives describing his HBO Max project as a storytelling cul-de-sac — a street that leads nowhere.The multiverse concept has worked on television, but it is a risky strategy for big screens. These movies need to attract the widest audience possible to justify their cost, and too much of a comic nerd sensibility can be a turnoff. New actors can take over a character; James Bond is the best example. But multiple Gothams spinning in theaters?“I don’t think anyone else has ever attempted this,” Mr. Hamada said. “But audiences are sophisticated enough to understand it. If we make good movies, they will go with it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Stand’: Tracing the Stephen King Epic Through Its Many Mutations

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Stand’: Tracing the Stephen King Epic Through Its Many MutationsKing’s post-apocalyptic novel about the aftermath of a deadly pandemic has been adapted into a new mini-series for CBS All Access. But the story has a complex history of its own.Jovan Adepo and Heather Graham star in the new CBS All Access adaptation of “The Stand,” the second time the Stephen King novel has been made into a TV mini-series.Credit…CBSDec. 17, 2020Take a pandemic. Add the paranormal. Make it a uniquely American story of survival horror. The result: “The Stand,” Stephen King’s epic post-apocalyptic novel from 1978, a new mini-series adaptation of which debuted Thursday on CBS All Access.Conceived in the pre-Covid era, the show has taken on new resonance since, telling the story of a weaponized virus that wipes out 99 percent of the population. But that’s only the beginning. The real battle happens afterward as supernatural forces of darkness and light — embodied by the demonic dictator Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard) and the holy woman Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) — duel for the souls of the plague’s survivors.Since the original novel’s original release, King’s saga has entered the pop-culture consciousness in many different incarnations, including an expanded edition of the book and an earlier mini-series adaptation. In anticipation of the show’s arrival, we’re tracing the story from its point of origin to its latest mutation.The AllegoryThe opening act of King’s novel is an eerily plausible account of the complete collapse of human society after the “Captain Trips” superflu is unleashed upon the world. That aspect has found relevance across the decades since the novel’s publication, in the Cold War nuclear arms race, through the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, to the events of 2020.But that’s only the first part. Flagg is presented as an even worse plague upon the living — a grinning dictator who builds a new society based on human drivers like greed, pride, lust and wrath and who exploits the virus for the sake of his own power. Are there lessons to be applied in the real world? Successive generations have thought so.Alexander Skarsgard as the villain Randall Flagg, who was originally inspired in part by the Symbionese Liberation Army leader Donald DeFreeze.  Credit…Robert Falconer/CBSThe InspirationKing has written extensively about the inspiration behind “The Stand” and its evolution over time, namely in his 1981 nonfiction book on horror writing, “Danse Macabre”; in the preface to the expanded 1990 edition of “The Stand”; and in a post about the novel on his website.“The Stand,” as he has explained it, arose from two disappointments. The first was an unfinished novel about the kidnapping and brainwashing of the heiress Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army and its leader Donald DeFreeze. The second was a longstanding desire to write an American answer to “The Lord of the Rings” — a desire he had never found a way to fulfill. “The Stand” is, in part, a synthesis of these divergent ideas.Two news stories jump-started the book for King, one a “60 Minutes” segment on chemical and biological warfare and the other a report he recalled about a chemical spill in Utah that had killed a flock of sheep. Had the wind blown the other way, King has written, “the good people of Salt Lake City might have gotten a very nasty surprise.”Thinking about what the earth might be like after humanity, King, who was living in Boulder, Colo. (where much of the novel is set), pulled inspiration from George R. Stewart’s post-apocalyptic novel “Earth Abides” and from the fire-and-brimstone intonations of a preacher on a local radio station, who spoke ominously of plagues. King became fascinated, meanwhile, with a ghostly F.B.I. photo of DeFreeze taken in the middle of a bank robbery, in which the ringleader’s face was blurred. He wrote down the lines that would serve as the foundation of the novel: “A season of rest,” “A dark man with no face” and, quoting the preacher, “Once in every generation a plague will fall among them.”“And that was that,” King recalls in “Danse Macabre.” “I spent the next two years writing an apparently endless book called ‘The Stand.’”The EvolutionThe roots of “The Stand” run even deeper than the novel’s two-year writing time would suggest. His 1969 story “Night Surf” (a revised version of which was published in early 1978 as part of the short story collection “Night Shift”) had introduced the concept of the flulike virus nicknamed Captain Trips, in dubious homage to the Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. King’s 1969 poem “The Dark Man” has been seen as an anticipatory exploration of the character traits that would be poured into Flagg, himself nicknamed “The Dark Man,” in the novel.King spent two years writing “The Stand,” published in 1978, but its earliest seeds can be traced back to a story from 1969. Credit…DoubledayWhen “The Stand” finally arrived in October 1978, it was 400 pages shy of the version King originally turned in to his publisher. The edits were a consequence of publishing logistics rather than of quality control, King writes in the preface to the 1990 version of the novel: Based on his sales history, his publisher arrived at a price for the book that necessitated heavy edits to reduce the page count and make the book financially feasible. King made the cuts himself.By the ’90s, however, King was, well, the king of horror. In response to popular demand, a new expanded edition hit the stands, restoring much of what King had previously taken out and updating the material for the new decade. This is the most widely read version, and it’s the version upon which the new television adaptation is based.The AdaptationsMatt Frewer played the Trashcan Man in the 1994 TV mini-series on ABC, adapted by King himself and regarded by many fans as one of the better King adaptations. Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesThis isn’t the first time “The Stand” has been adapted for another medium. In 1994, ABC aired a four-part mini-series based on the 1990 edition of the book, written by King and directed by his frequent collaborator Mick Garris. With a strong cast led by Gary Sinise as the Texas everyman Stu Redman and Jamey Sheridan as the denim-clad demon Flagg, it stands out as one of the better King adaptations — not at the level of “The Shining” (which King famously hated), “Carrie” and “The Dead Zone,” but well worth a weekend binge. (Unlike the 1994 version, which showed the apocalypse unfolding, the new version will begin after the superflu has already struck, with flashbacks to the pre-plague lives of its characters.)And from 2008 to 2012, Marvel Comics serialized a 31-issue comic-book adaptation, written by the future “Riverdale” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Mike Perkins. The comics have been collected in a series of hardcovers and a huge, now out-of-print omnibus edition.King has also adapted some of the characters and concepts from “The Stand” into other novels. Most notably, the arch-villain Flagg appears, in various guises and interdimensional iterations, as the heavy in other King works, from the fantasy novel “The Eyes of the Dragon” to the epic “Dark Tower” series, which ties much of King’s oeuvre into a single expanded universe. It’s this latter incarnation that Matthew McConaughey portrayed (though the character is named Walter Padick) in the 2017 feature film “The Dark Tower.”Matthew McConaughey (left, with Idris Elba) in “The Dark Tower” as the character Walter Padick, a later incarnation of the arch-villain Randall Flagg. Credit…Columbia PicturesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More