This past weekend The Fall Guy hit theaters. It ended up making a bit under $28 million--under the bottom end of the range projected by Boxoffice Pro, and well under the $35 million that seems to have been conventionally projected for it.
That is to say it performed below even the very low expectations held for the film--with the result that the movie was not only outgrossed by 2005's Kingdom of Heaven, but by every first weekend of May release going back to the 1990s, back when the blockbuster season properly began only a little later. (Consider, for instance, how things stood in 1998, when the first real summer release was Deep Impact--which appeared the second weekend in May, and collected $41 million then, as that first weekend of May was left to a Spike Lee movie.*)
Of course, one can counter that the film's being given this release date was not quite what was never Plan A, that this would never have happened but for last year's strikes, that it is unfair to judge it by big summer movie standards. (Indeed, as Anthony D'Alessandro remarked, "it's a movie you find either in August, the second weekend of June or even the off season, which is where this was originally scheduled on March 1.") However, no one forced the studio to opt for that release date--they had plenty of other choices over the course of this so far very weak year, while one can add that the Ryan "Kenough" Gosling hype may have conduced to more optimism than was warranted. Moreover the money they sank into it (which has had some analysts scratching their heads) is not dump month money but summer month money, such that the studio hoped the prime stretch of year in which it launched it would give the studio a better chance of recouping a considerable investment than otherwise.
Alas, the movie will have to have a lot of staying power at the box office to do that--enjoy very good week-to-week holds again and again. Where this is concerned the fact that those bothering to show seem to like it (the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 87 percent, not rapturous but not bad), and the weakness of the competition in coming weeks, may make this a possibility. Still, it is an inauspicious opening for the movie--and for the summer season that was so thinned out as to make this one look like it "coulda been a contender," and as yet all too likely to end up looking like 2023 would have, minus its eleventh hour rescue by Barbie and Oppenheimer.
* Of course, that $41 million is, before inflation, about 50 percent more than The Fall Guy picked up, and adjusted for 2024 dollars $79 million, or almost three times as much.
Thursday, May 9, 2024
Centrism and the Mainstream News Media's Complete Incapacity for Substantive Self-Criticism
A couple of years ago I took up the issue of "media bias", and identified six traits of the mainstream news media's modus operandi that seemed to me to be caused, or at least rationalized, by its centrist political tendency, namely:
1. A tendency to deluge audiences with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information.
2. A tendency to treat experts, and especially "Establishment" experts, as authorities, and make a reliance on their judgments the alternative to coping with the disconnected bits of information.
3. A deference to--and promotion of--Establishment sources, experts and figures generally (and disregard of those who are not), translating to a deference to Establishment opinions (and disregard of other views).
4. The drawing of the boundaries of the acceptable spectrum of political opinion so that they extend much further to the right of center than they do to the left of center.
5. A tendency to "both sidesism" within the above parameters over striving for the truth about a contentious matter.
6. An emphasis on politics over policy.
One may debate whether the tendencies above really are problematic. Certainly from the standpoint of centrist ideology they are not wrong. That the news media gives audiences disconnected bits of information, or Establishment expert opinions, rather than endeavoring to explain the issues to them; that it is more prone to provide a platform to the right than the left, and to treat many a subject as a "both sides" matter; that it devotes so much attention to politics over policy; can, from the standpoint of a centrist deeply pessimistic about the public's capacity to understand complex issues; deferential to Established expertise and its judgments as the sole alternative to being overwhelmed by a confusing reality; viewing the right as legitimate but the left as not on the grounds that they are "ideologues"; and stressing the formation of consensus rather than truth-seeking, and on the political process rather than the ends they treat as generally and appropriately only small adjustments; as quite appropriate.
However, not all will agree with that judgment--that the media has a responsibility to attempt to explain the issues to the public, the more in as there is no understanding of democracy which does not require that the public be given the opportunity to educate itself and make informed decisions about the matters set before it--the more in as Authority has been an imperfect guide in the past, wrong again and again. (Just consider, for instance, how Authority said that a financial crisis like 2007 was impossible; and then when it did happen said "No one could have seen it coming"; and then after the impossible and unforeseeable happened said that the world got over it quickly, when in fact, as Adam Tooze realized, the crisis "broke the world," and we have been living with the aftermath ever since; Authority was wrong, disastrously wrong, at every turn.)
However, within the media respect for authority prevails, with the result that those who are authorities can never be held to account for being wrong, and command the same respect as ever they did as a result, while those who do not enjoy standing as authorities can never be given credit for being right when they were right, period, such that they can never win a way into the conversation. According to the same logic the media has not been wrong in covering these matters in the manner that it has, those among the public questioning it are instead the ones who are wrong from the centrist's standpoint--while the media's feeble shows of self-criticism when the undesirability of what it is doing appears undeniable only underscore this in such self-criticism generally ending in a declaration that someone else was really at fault. (Thus, as Hiram Lee noted, amid its breathless coverage of O.J. Simpson the talking heads "occasionally pose the question 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?'"--blaming the public for "forcing" them to attend to tabloid idiocies when the reality was the other way around.)
Given what in the view of anyone not blinded by its ideology are the news media's colossal failings it seems less implausible that those discontented with the quality of the news coverage available to them should look beyond the most mainstream sources--to which course of action the media, in line with all that brought everyone to this point, respond not by endeavoring to do better, but by screaming for the gatekeepers. Ironically, the mess that the Internet is means that the alternatives people are most likely to find are the ones that the mainstream media itself has promoted in ways from abundant mention of them in its coverage to mainstreaming their views and even their personalities, even as they put on a big show of criticizing them and all they do, the Establishment media never worrying about their massive role in the relentless manufacture of "fake news" in which we are all drowning.
1. A tendency to deluge audiences with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information.
2. A tendency to treat experts, and especially "Establishment" experts, as authorities, and make a reliance on their judgments the alternative to coping with the disconnected bits of information.
3. A deference to--and promotion of--Establishment sources, experts and figures generally (and disregard of those who are not), translating to a deference to Establishment opinions (and disregard of other views).
4. The drawing of the boundaries of the acceptable spectrum of political opinion so that they extend much further to the right of center than they do to the left of center.
5. A tendency to "both sidesism" within the above parameters over striving for the truth about a contentious matter.
6. An emphasis on politics over policy.
One may debate whether the tendencies above really are problematic. Certainly from the standpoint of centrist ideology they are not wrong. That the news media gives audiences disconnected bits of information, or Establishment expert opinions, rather than endeavoring to explain the issues to them; that it is more prone to provide a platform to the right than the left, and to treat many a subject as a "both sides" matter; that it devotes so much attention to politics over policy; can, from the standpoint of a centrist deeply pessimistic about the public's capacity to understand complex issues; deferential to Established expertise and its judgments as the sole alternative to being overwhelmed by a confusing reality; viewing the right as legitimate but the left as not on the grounds that they are "ideologues"; and stressing the formation of consensus rather than truth-seeking, and on the political process rather than the ends they treat as generally and appropriately only small adjustments; as quite appropriate.
However, not all will agree with that judgment--that the media has a responsibility to attempt to explain the issues to the public, the more in as there is no understanding of democracy which does not require that the public be given the opportunity to educate itself and make informed decisions about the matters set before it--the more in as Authority has been an imperfect guide in the past, wrong again and again. (Just consider, for instance, how Authority said that a financial crisis like 2007 was impossible; and then when it did happen said "No one could have seen it coming"; and then after the impossible and unforeseeable happened said that the world got over it quickly, when in fact, as Adam Tooze realized, the crisis "broke the world," and we have been living with the aftermath ever since; Authority was wrong, disastrously wrong, at every turn.)
However, within the media respect for authority prevails, with the result that those who are authorities can never be held to account for being wrong, and command the same respect as ever they did as a result, while those who do not enjoy standing as authorities can never be given credit for being right when they were right, period, such that they can never win a way into the conversation. According to the same logic the media has not been wrong in covering these matters in the manner that it has, those among the public questioning it are instead the ones who are wrong from the centrist's standpoint--while the media's feeble shows of self-criticism when the undesirability of what it is doing appears undeniable only underscore this in such self-criticism generally ending in a declaration that someone else was really at fault. (Thus, as Hiram Lee noted, amid its breathless coverage of O.J. Simpson the talking heads "occasionally pose the question 'Why are we so interested in O.J. Simpson?'"--blaming the public for "forcing" them to attend to tabloid idiocies when the reality was the other way around.)
Given what in the view of anyone not blinded by its ideology are the news media's colossal failings it seems less implausible that those discontented with the quality of the news coverage available to them should look beyond the most mainstream sources--to which course of action the media, in line with all that brought everyone to this point, respond not by endeavoring to do better, but by screaming for the gatekeepers. Ironically, the mess that the Internet is means that the alternatives people are most likely to find are the ones that the mainstream media itself has promoted in ways from abundant mention of them in its coverage to mainstreaming their views and even their personalities, even as they put on a big show of criticizing them and all they do, the Establishment media never worrying about their massive role in the relentless manufacture of "fake news" in which we are all drowning.
The "Americanness" of the Superhero: A Few Thoughts
As any decent history of the superhero will tell you--not just the superhero in a broad sense going back to Gilgamesh but the comic book-based superhero tradition defined by Superman, the concept of the superhero has not been exclusively American, nor without its popularity outside the United States. (Indeed, just consider how much Marvel owes to the international markets, with these providing 69 percent of the nearly $3 billion gross of Avengers: Endgame.)
Still, it is common for observers to remark the idea of the superhero--the costumed, public persona-possessing comic book superhero--as having struck a particular chord in the United States, to somehow appeal more widely and deeply here than in many other places. I can think of at least two reasons for that, both suggested by my reading of Umberto Eco's essay "The Myth of Superman" (which I previously discussed here):
1. In the aforementioned essay Umberto Eco treated Superman as a myth--while noting that this myth differs from other myth in being a myth of the present-day rather than the past. The idea of a present-day myth seems to me to befit a country that, as the clichés have had it, has always been less preoccupied with the past than other countries, and more preoccupied with the present and future.
2. The attraction of the superhero is for many a sort of vicarious grandiose compensation for the mediocrity, inferiority, frustration that characterize the lot of most in this world, for many reasons. Of course, the desire for such compensation is universal, but again, in a society so atomized, individualistic, unequal, restless, insecure; so saturated with aspirationalism and thwarted aspirationalism, and the blame and self-blame of the thwarted for what they suffer; and offering so little else to hope for, ever fixing their eyes ever on individual "success," ever encouraging identification with such success and those who have it in that way that C. Wright Mills wrote about in White Collar; the desire, and the superhero as a way of gratifying it, seems likely to be the stronger. Indeed, if it is really the case that poor Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," this is probably an easier sell--habituating people to the thought that they are exemplary in some way temporarily unrecognized by others, as if the real them is some more glamorous self behind the mundane surface and its unenviable treatment by others, or that the transformation of their situation is somehow always very close at hand, that they are ever just a radioactive spider bite away from greatness.*
* In light of inflation we should probably revise that to "temporarily embarrassed billionaires." I put the reader on notice that that is the form I will use from here on out.
Still, it is common for observers to remark the idea of the superhero--the costumed, public persona-possessing comic book superhero--as having struck a particular chord in the United States, to somehow appeal more widely and deeply here than in many other places. I can think of at least two reasons for that, both suggested by my reading of Umberto Eco's essay "The Myth of Superman" (which I previously discussed here):
1. In the aforementioned essay Umberto Eco treated Superman as a myth--while noting that this myth differs from other myth in being a myth of the present-day rather than the past. The idea of a present-day myth seems to me to befit a country that, as the clichés have had it, has always been less preoccupied with the past than other countries, and more preoccupied with the present and future.
2. The attraction of the superhero is for many a sort of vicarious grandiose compensation for the mediocrity, inferiority, frustration that characterize the lot of most in this world, for many reasons. Of course, the desire for such compensation is universal, but again, in a society so atomized, individualistic, unequal, restless, insecure; so saturated with aspirationalism and thwarted aspirationalism, and the blame and self-blame of the thwarted for what they suffer; and offering so little else to hope for, ever fixing their eyes ever on individual "success," ever encouraging identification with such success and those who have it in that way that C. Wright Mills wrote about in White Collar; the desire, and the superhero as a way of gratifying it, seems likely to be the stronger. Indeed, if it is really the case that poor Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," this is probably an easier sell--habituating people to the thought that they are exemplary in some way temporarily unrecognized by others, as if the real them is some more glamorous self behind the mundane surface and its unenviable treatment by others, or that the transformation of their situation is somehow always very close at hand, that they are ever just a radioactive spider bite away from greatness.*
* In light of inflation we should probably revise that to "temporarily embarrassed billionaires." I put the reader on notice that that is the form I will use from here on out.
A Closer Look at How Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Did in Deadline's 2023 Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament
Previously when speculating about the outcome of Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament this year I guessed that Oppenheimer would make the top five--and indeed it did, making exactly the #5 position.
How did the economics of that work out? Deadline reports that the production cost $100 million. But, as is the case when a movie does really well, participations and residuals were hefty--making the eventual outlay over five times that. At the same time the revenue from ticket sales was lower than one might have thought given the near billion-dollar gross, just $422 million (43 percent of the worldwide gross, where often it approaches 50 percent). This may have been a function of the high share of international sales (the movie did two-thirds of its business internationally, which has been known to skew the cut downwards), and the film's "legs" (the usual arrangement with leggy movies being the studio keeping less and less of the take in return for theaters running the movie longer). All the same, if the participations and residuals took a big bite out of revenue that might have been a bit lower than one might have guessed from the gross, it still worked out to an over $200 million net on the production, an extraordinary sum for a film such as this one.
How did the economics of that work out? Deadline reports that the production cost $100 million. But, as is the case when a movie does really well, participations and residuals were hefty--making the eventual outlay over five times that. At the same time the revenue from ticket sales was lower than one might have thought given the near billion-dollar gross, just $422 million (43 percent of the worldwide gross, where often it approaches 50 percent). This may have been a function of the high share of international sales (the movie did two-thirds of its business internationally, which has been known to skew the cut downwards), and the film's "legs" (the usual arrangement with leggy movies being the studio keeping less and less of the take in return for theaters running the movie longer). All the same, if the participations and residuals took a big bite out of revenue that might have been a bit lower than one might have guessed from the gross, it still worked out to an over $200 million net on the production, an extraordinary sum for a film such as this one.
Martin Caidin's Steve Austin, and TV's
In adapting Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man was rather more faithful to the original material than I had guessed before picking up the first of those books. Steve Austin's accident as a test pilot of a prototype shuttle; his physical reconstruction with all its mental as well as physical agonies; his promptly being packed off on missions to South America and the Middle East--we see all this in the TV movies, with most of the modifications probably understandable given censorship, budgetary constraints and the like. However, some were clearly more deliberate choices, not least the reimagining of Austin himself. Caidin, who could be very much the edgelord, had a fondness for extremely unlikeable protagonists--and while Austin is no Doug Stavers-like supervillain, the runners of the show took it on themselves to considerably humanize him. Given that the intent was a weekly TV series people could enjoy as easy viewing it seems to me that it was a sound decision--one that has probably helped to give the show its extremely long life in reruns.
Remembering The Six Million Dollar Man
One of the ironies of there being a Fall Guy movie is that we had for so long heard about a movie based on Lee Major's other, more successful, TV series The Six Million Dollar Man being in the works--but as yet to no result.
That show was an adaptation of Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels--initially as a trio of made-for-TV movies, and then a weekly series that ran for 99 additional one-hour episodes over five seasons, while launching a successful spin-off in The Bionic Woman, both of which can be credited with lingering in pop cultural memory to a far greater degree than The Fall Guy did. (I remember how those reruns were a staple of what became the Syfy Channel back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they still seem to get a fair amount of play on the classic TV-oriented broadcast and streaming channels, while The Bionic Woman got a short-lived remake on NBC starring Michelle Ryan in the lead back in '08.)
Of course, even if it was being talked about in Hollywood offices the idea only became increasingly implausible. The salability of classic TV show-based feature films has only declined since the '90s, for many reasons, while in this case even the title came to seem dated, not least due to inflation, above all in the medical realm. (The Social Security Part B premium was $6.30 back in 1973; it is $174.70 this year, a 28-fold surge over the last half century. And never mind that the New York Times will tell us "Don't worry. Be happy" regarding the skyrocketing of prices.) Given that no one is becoming a Steve Austin-type cyborg on the basis of six million dollars even the title of the show and its associated brand name recognition would have to be dispensed with--which is all that the kind of people who run the studios really care about in the end.
That show was an adaptation of Martin Caidin's Cyborg novels--initially as a trio of made-for-TV movies, and then a weekly series that ran for 99 additional one-hour episodes over five seasons, while launching a successful spin-off in The Bionic Woman, both of which can be credited with lingering in pop cultural memory to a far greater degree than The Fall Guy did. (I remember how those reruns were a staple of what became the Syfy Channel back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and they still seem to get a fair amount of play on the classic TV-oriented broadcast and streaming channels, while The Bionic Woman got a short-lived remake on NBC starring Michelle Ryan in the lead back in '08.)
Of course, even if it was being talked about in Hollywood offices the idea only became increasingly implausible. The salability of classic TV show-based feature films has only declined since the '90s, for many reasons, while in this case even the title came to seem dated, not least due to inflation, above all in the medical realm. (The Social Security Part B premium was $6.30 back in 1973; it is $174.70 this year, a 28-fold surge over the last half century. And never mind that the New York Times will tell us "Don't worry. Be happy" regarding the skyrocketing of prices.) Given that no one is becoming a Steve Austin-type cyborg on the basis of six million dollars even the title of the show and its associated brand name recognition would have to be dispensed with--which is all that the kind of people who run the studios really care about in the end.
Martin Caidin's Cyborg as Proto-Techno-Thriller
Cyborg's military-espionage, technological and geopolitical themes, and its action-adventure-oriented and action-packed treatment of them, not least in its technically detailed flying sequences, are certainly consistent with the military techno-thriller's character. Still, there are reasons for thinking of the book as less techno-thriller than proto-techno-thriller. After all, if the flying scenes would do a later techno-thriller credit the real star of the show technologically is Austin's bionics, not a major theme of that form, not least because they are more than usually futuristic for the genre--science fiction-al, in a way that subsequent Steve Austin adventures were. Thus did the third book in the Cyborg series offer crypto-history involving "ancient astronauts," the fourth an artificially intelligent computer. such details Cyborg and its sequels look a lot more Clive Cussler than Tom Clancy, even if representative of the trend leading to the latter.
Saturday, May 4, 2024
The First Weekend of Summer is Upon Us. How Will The Fall Guy Do?
These days Boxoffice Pro seems to be out of the long-range forecasting business, and so all we had to go on from the first week of April up until now in regard to The Fall Guy has been its initial prediction of a $20-$40 million opening weekend for the movie, without the usual updates. The weekend forecasts, if less comprehensive than before, still appear, however--and the estimate they published Wednesday has that movie pulling in $30-$40 million, suggesting that the outlook has become a little more bullish over the past month, with regard to the bottom end of the range if not the top. Still, the publication's staff are not unmindful of the film's disadvantages, noting here that even compared with projects like Charlie's Angels (which did not do so well in 2019), the original "The Fall Guy did not leave a substantial cultural footprint," that indeed "[a] vast majority of audiences under the age of 30 probably wouldn't remember who Lee Majors was," while those who were actually fans of the original "may be put off" by what they have done with the material (certainly I think they would not care for "Kenough" crying in his truck to Taylor Swift, among much, much else in just the few bits of the film we saw in that "Everything" trailer), such that this movie "may be one of those cases where the filmmakers wind up pleasing no one in trying to please everyone."
Of course, the critics loved it--but then claquing is their job. The audience gets its say now, and we will see if the film's strengths will outweigh its all too numerous and obvious disadvantages. But where the bigger picture is concerned one does well to remember that even the $40 million of the high end of this film's range will still work out to the weakest opening for the first big movie of the summer in nearly two decades, making for an inauspicious beginning to this hugely important season for the industry.
Of course, the critics loved it--but then claquing is their job. The audience gets its say now, and we will see if the film's strengths will outweigh its all too numerous and obvious disadvantages. But where the bigger picture is concerned one does well to remember that even the $40 million of the high end of this film's range will still work out to the weakest opening for the first big movie of the summer in nearly two decades, making for an inauspicious beginning to this hugely important season for the industry.
The North American Box Office During the First Third of 2024
During 2015-2019 the first third of the year--the January through April period--the North American box office averaged $4.4 billion in 2023 dollars. In 2023 the figure was a comparatively meager $2.6 billion--about 59 percent of that total.
By contrast the North American box office just barely broke $2 billion (taking in $2.04 billion by April 30, or more like $1.97 billion when we adjust for inflation)--a more than one-fifth drop from 2023 for the same four-month period, and an even larger, more than halfway, drop, from the 2015-2019 average. Putting this situation more fully into context one may say that it continues the pattern from the last third of 2023, which had similarly been depressed--or, rather, the pattern evident for the last year. (The twelve month May 2023-April 2024 period saw just $8.25 billion collected in 2023 dollars--as against $14 billion for the equivalent periods between May 2014 and April 2019, with even that including the bump from the extreme overperformances of Barbie and Oppenheimer.)
Thus do the hard times continue.
By contrast the North American box office just barely broke $2 billion (taking in $2.04 billion by April 30, or more like $1.97 billion when we adjust for inflation)--a more than one-fifth drop from 2023 for the same four-month period, and an even larger, more than halfway, drop, from the 2015-2019 average. Putting this situation more fully into context one may say that it continues the pattern from the last third of 2023, which had similarly been depressed--or, rather, the pattern evident for the last year. (The twelve month May 2023-April 2024 period saw just $8.25 billion collected in 2023 dollars--as against $14 billion for the equivalent periods between May 2014 and April 2019, with even that including the bump from the extreme overperformances of Barbie and Oppenheimer.)
Thus do the hard times continue.
How Did April 2024 Go For the Box Office?
In 2015-2019 movie ticket sales in North America during the month of April averaged $1.1 billion in 2023 dollars. Admittedly the number was bumped up by summer beginning early in 2018-2019 with the release of the two parts of the big climax to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Three with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but the average for 2015-2017 is still $1 billion without them. In 2023 April did fall a bit short of that, but not by much--the mega-hit that The Super Mario Bros. Movie was raising the total to $900 million in the same terms--90 percent of the 2015-2017 figure. (Had the rest of the year gone as well we would have spoken of a near-complete recovery of the box office to its pre-pandemic level, rather than a "new normal" for it such as I am discussing now, with North Americans going to the theater a couple of times a year instead of four times a year as before.)
As I remarked a few weeks ago, while after a depressed fall, and January-February period, March saw the box office finally improve on the prior year's performance (largely thanks to Dune, with a little help from Ghostbusters and Godzilla), I expected that April would bring with it a return to the earlier, depressed condition. And indeed, while Godzilla performed more or less in line with reasonable expectations for the film, Ghostbusters less well than some hoped though far from the total flop some might also have feared in light of how unimpressed people were with it, it was far from enough to carry the month the way the releases of prior years have. Ending up with a mere $427 million grossed (assuming the 3.2 percent inflation seen over the past year, $414 million in 2023 dollars), this makes for a take about 38 percent of the 2015-2019 average, and 43 percent of even the more modest 2015-2017 average. The result is that the year continues to see the box office take run far behind that of the equivalent period in 2023, never mind the pre-pandemic years--with, for the time being at least, May not seeming to offer much respite, certainly going by the numbers I have seen for The Fall Guy, the next Planet of the Apes film and the plausible prospects of the next Mad Max movie.
As I remarked a few weeks ago, while after a depressed fall, and January-February period, March saw the box office finally improve on the prior year's performance (largely thanks to Dune, with a little help from Ghostbusters and Godzilla), I expected that April would bring with it a return to the earlier, depressed condition. And indeed, while Godzilla performed more or less in line with reasonable expectations for the film, Ghostbusters less well than some hoped though far from the total flop some might also have feared in light of how unimpressed people were with it, it was far from enough to carry the month the way the releases of prior years have. Ending up with a mere $427 million grossed (assuming the 3.2 percent inflation seen over the past year, $414 million in 2023 dollars), this makes for a take about 38 percent of the 2015-2019 average, and 43 percent of even the more modest 2015-2017 average. The result is that the year continues to see the box office take run far behind that of the equivalent period in 2023, never mind the pre-pandemic years--with, for the time being at least, May not seeming to offer much respite, certainly going by the numbers I have seen for The Fall Guy, the next Planet of the Apes film and the plausible prospects of the next Mad Max movie.
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