The brain trust of evil over at Warner Bros. has just announced a move that is so evil, I almost can’t believe they did it. They’ve just announced that from now on, based on their fabricated lies and public misinformation, they will no longer have advanced screenings of their films in Canada. They call it a move to “fight piracy”.
Listen to this nonsense from a Warner Bros. rep (taken from Yahoo News)
“We regret having to cancel our screenings in Canada, but our studio must take steps to protect not only our branded assets but our commitment to our filmmakers and to our distributors,” Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman said.
**I’m sorry… but didn’t your own organization (The MPAA) just say that 40% of all illegal movie copies floating around come directly from New York City alone?!?!?! 1 city. 40% of all illegal movie copies. That’s not to mention all the other cities in the USA. Are you banning advanced screenings from New York city as well???**
This is nothing but another member of the MPAA trying to bully it’s will on the Canadian government to make them pass laws as the MPAA sees fit. That’s all this is. And they (Warner and the MPAA) don’t care if they have to lie and use bully tactics to do it. “How dare government think THEY have the right to make and pass laws? We’re the MPAA! We should be telling them what laws to make and pass!”
As one of my readers said… “For shame”
On a personal note… and I know I’m going to sound whiny here… but this sort of evil bullshit, lying studios, ect… really makes it hard to be a film fan some days. I just want to throw my hands in the air and say “Fuck you all” sometimes and just encourage everyone out there to take up piracy just to stick it to these assholes. I seriously just feel like boycotting all of them… all these liars and power mongers. Yup… today it doesn’t feel very good to be a film fan… not today.
Down on movies, support comics! All the same characters are there, you get to read the stories YEARS in advance, before they’re spoilers on the internet. If you don’t like crowds, you choose where to read your comics! Don’t like actors dragging out the talky parts just to keep their face on screen, read at the pace of your choosing!
THEN, if you start liking movies again, you could be richly rewarded to see a comic you loved come to life, like 300.
Or feel punished that a character you felt bludgeoned with after his first gazillion foiled cover guest appearances in every title Marvel had, had to have the face and voice of the 70’s show guy.
The talking action figure of Venom (from the early 90’s three buttons on the backpack…) had a better voice!
During all this hub hub and complaining by all of us, the simple fact is that pulling their promotional screenings means almost nothing…next to zero…so what if a few hundred people can’t see a free movie one night. WB are the only losers. THey wish to give up their word of mouth, so what. People will go to see or not go to see their movies based on publicity, so who cares about these promotional screenings.
These people are paranoid to such a point that when we go to exhibitor screenings, we get searched, wanded and and asked to bend over. Guys walk around with night scoops. Right, the guys who make money by showing these movies in their theatres are suspected of going in with cameras to release them on the internet so that fewer people will go to their theatres. That really makes sense doesn’t it?
Meanwhile when WB’s 300 was released, a beautiful dvd copy was released on the internet with the editing timing codes on it. I guess that came out of Canada as well.
They just rather blame every other country, other than themselves. Americans are like that. So who cares.
Just in case you didn’t know it but film industry will be trying to solve the camera piracy issue by going totally 3-d soon. Dreamworks, I believe will be releasing all it’s films in 3-D starting next year so it will make it impossible to film. I still need to find out more about this. John might want to find out more info.
In the meantime, if this pisses you off, let theatres know that you will not be going to see WB films.
Kinda hard to rail against them and then take their advance screening passes and free trips to the set of their moves, John. :rolleyes:
One day these movies will be released only in the US. They will be delayed everywhere else in the world (including Canada).
Still their movies will be pirated from the inside.
This is a good idea by WB, because we all know Cananda is the blame for piracy *rolls eyes*.
I am a huge movie buff, but I have never gone to an advance screening to any movie and I live in Los Angeles. Are there stats of how often regular/casual movie-goers even go to advance screenings? Everyone I know sees movies on or after the actual release date.
Of course I do see this effecting Canadian critics and to people who attend universities that are able to get the films in advance, but we are talking about 1 or 2 weeks in advance, right?
If this action was taken in L.A., would this effect me as a movie-goer? No.
The problem is WB’s reason to do this to Canada. This will not stop or even curb movie piracy in any way. Your excluding an extremely small percentage of people here. They might as well stop all advance screenings all around the world to see if this is a good idea. This way you’ll see less internet buzz about the movie leading up to the release date.
Warner Bros Exec: “Lets all point our fingers shall we…hmm…Canada..”
Bob,Another WB Exec: “Or how bout we look at why people buy or download pirated movies..do you really think people want to spend 10 bucks to spend 45 minutes to watch Honda and Yahoo commercials just to see a movie that chances are they wont enjoy anyway.”
Warner Bros. Exec:”Bob..You’re fired”
I am in no way defending Warner Bros or anyone in Hollywood, but I repeat what i said in an earlier post… the problem here is European openings. Why???
1. A film opens in the US and Canada and often doesn’t come out in French Speaking countries until well later.
2.Often (though not always) the DVD of this film is available in the US and Canada before or while the movie is in the cinema in Frecnh Speaking countries
3. The only place where French versions of the films can be bought (legaly) and shipped to Europe (legaly) and rented from video stores (illegaly but unchecked) is Quebec. And trust me, there are THOUSANDS of them.
4. stores are not allowed to sell canadian dvds in europe, but they do it anyway. i am not talking about joe’s dvd shop either, i am talking massive corperations here like FNAC (for those of you in france and switzerland, you know waht i am talking about)
thus, in this way, canada indirectly is hooking us up with the goods. like i said, i am not defending hollywood, i am just giving another way to look at the story. this is their own fault. if they gave us the movies when they should, it wouldnt be a problem.
Now you know what it feels like to be European! Why they don’t just release films at the same time has always been utterly beyond me.. Surely giving someone the legal option is the best way to fight piracy?
great, another reason for me not to see movies in the theatres!
You’re absolutely right John, this has nothing to do with Piracy and everything to do with putting fear into Canadian politics to push for strict laws, like NYC just did.
See, if they comply, they won’t target you for rediculous things like no advance screenings and no bad press for you.
This term gets tossed around way to loosely nowadays, but the MPAA are basically Film Terrorists, anyone who uses fear tactics to make another comply to their will is a terrorist. They is rediculous, but thats nothing new from the MPAA.
Nord
“Today it doesn’t feel very good to be a film fan… not today.”
LOL.
John, I completely agree with you. What the MPAA is trying to do is stupid on many levels, and it doesn’t address the real problem that they’re having with piracy.
All I can say is:
Thank god not all industries are trying to tell governments what they should do. You know… like the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry…
…uhm…nevermind….
Well, if I can just bring up a point. John I don’t know how you feel about this but I am going to bring up a painful topic of conversation here that ties several ideas together.
We all know how we feel when a studio attempts to do something like this. It is terrible.
We also know how we feel when a studio DOES NOT RELEASE a film prior to release. Now I know that this is supposed to only affect promotional screenings, but people who attend these films, chances are that 80% of these people have blogs or some sort of online presence. In this day and age, word of mouth spreads like wildfire.
What if WB just THINKS (or better, wants its STOCKHOLDERS to think) it is losing money because of piracy and is actually losing money because they are making shitty movies? Granted this isn’t the only studio guilty of such things, but these are the people who gave us “Battlefield Earth” and the incredibly visually subpar “Matrix” sequels.
It would be interesting to see some of their financials.
Oh hey didn’t they sell off all the old Warner Bros cartoons to Disney? Oh hey, didn’t they just rebrand (or sell) the WB network? Just curious.
Maybe the whole country can have something like “do not go to the movie theaters” day heh when one of the Warner movies comes out
I think you echo how a lot of us are feeling John. I think maybe I’ll look into this bit torrent thing my brother keeps talking about.
Of course they won’t put the blame in NYC. It’s the center of their universe. If there is a way to blame another country, they will.