James Bond Film's Opening Delayed Seven Months, From April 10 to November 25, Supposedly Due to Coronavirus;
Rumor Claims Test Screenings "Didn't Go Well"

Update: The South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) has been cancelled.

Awww! And I think David Frenchie-poo was going, and all psyched to meet liberals from Vox and stuff!

...

It will cost the film at least $30 million dollars to move the release -- which had already been supported by an ad campaign and the release of a single of the movie's theme -- seven months ahead. But they say that they would lose more money if they released the film into a world where people are avoiding movie theaters and crowds.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that MGM will likely take a $30 million to $50 million hit by moving the film's release back by seven months when the dust settles. Although the bulk of the marketing campaign for the Cary Joji Fukunaga-directed pic — the 25th installment in the storied 007 franchise — had yet to roll out, the marketing outlay already was significant with just four weeks to go before the release, including a $4.5 million Super Bowl spot that ran in February. MGM declined comment.

Still, the alternative MGM was facing was far more costly, and even an eight-figure loss will be easier for a film like No Time to Die to withstand considering the broader profit margins on a Bond film. The production budget for the latest installment is on par with the $245 million budget for the last Bond film, 2015's Spectre. Sources say the studio’s decision to move No Time to Die to Nov. 12 in the U.K. and Nov. 25 in North America -- which was made on Tuesday, one day before announcing the delayed release -- was largely based on the economic reality that large swaths of theaters across the world have been shuttered in recent weeks, stretching from Japan to Italy.

World Class Bullshitters claimed that an industry analyst estimated that the entertainment industry had already lost $5 billion.

To put that in perspective: Hollywood has lost the equivalent of Ten Micro Bloomberg Presidential Campaigns.

I know, right? So much money.

That isn't just about movie ticket revenue; it's also about extra costs incurred for shutting down productions (as Mission Impossible 7 recently stopped shooting in Italy) and for lowered attendance at theme parks.

Disney has parks in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and they've both had to close due to the outbreak. And I imagine their US patronage is down, too.

Can we make Hollywood lose... more... money?

Speaking of #Woke Movie Disasters, The New Yorker just reported how barely-a-filmmaker Cathy Yan got the gig to direct the $90-$100 million budget disaster Birds of Prey: Being About the Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.

Cathy Yan's only previous film (apart from shorts) was called "Dead Pigs." It made less than five thousand dollars globally, and no, that's not a Mara Gay/Brian Williams glitch of innumeracy.

The only film this woman made before being hired to direct a $90-$100 million dollar budget feature made less than $5,000 globally.

But she's oppressed! She's not getting the chances men do!

Anyway, here's how she got the gig:

She edited together clips she found on the internet to make what is basically a high school level feminist propaganda short, but then claimed it was a "sizzle reel" of her version of the film.

According to The New Yorker, Yan created her sizzle reel using video clips that exhibited misogynistic behavior, with a remix of the song "Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend" played in the background. "Like, scenes from 'Bachelor' proposals, the De Beers diamond commercial, Kim Kardashian’s vampire facial, Fox anchors talking about women, Trump saying ‘Grab ’em by the pussy’ --stuff that might make a girl want to smash the patriarchy," Yan said of the clips she included in the reel. "After I showed the video, there was just silence."

I imagine so. I imagine so.

You were brought in to pitch a movie, and instead showed them a cobbled-together Feminist Frequency blooper reel.

And yet you walked out of there with the job of directing a $90-100 million tentpole movie.

So oppressed!

I know a lot of men who would kill or die to be so "oppressed."

That via HeelvsBabyface.

Below, Midnight's Edge reports claims from "sources" that say that a test screening of the Bond film "did not go well," and that they're using the outbreak as cover while they film reshoots to try to make the move palatable.

I heard other rumors that some of the material they were looking to trim/soften was the social justice warrior bullshit, that maybe they got spooked by the repeated box office disasters of #Woke movies like Terminator Dark Fate, Charlies Angels, and Birds of Prey.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing what rumors, if any, are true.

I will say that most of the rumors I hear from the YouTube/Reddit rumor-mills has been... very accurate. I mean, I knew every stupid storybeat in Rise of Skywalker a year ago, from Doomcock. I knew about Doctor Who claiming the Doctor had always been a woman over a year ago (via Nerdrotic).

I knew they were going to kill John Connor in the opening two minutes of Terminator Dark Fate months before that movie was released.

Spoiler alert: The movie sucks and is unspoilable.

So... yeah I don't know, and even the people claiming this can't confirm. This sounds very unlikely to me -- if you were going to do reshoots, you would have done them months ago.

But still, these rumors have a nasty habit of being true.

Long distance dedication to Hollywood, Queen of Whores:

&bodytext=Update: The South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) has been cancelled. Awww! And I think David Frenchie-poo was going, and all psyched to meet liberals from Vox and stuff! Will you be at @sxsw next week? I'm looking forward to...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 04:42 PM

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