French Cinema Owner Destroys Mulan Display After Disney Announced Film Is Skipping Theaters
During The Walt Disney Company’s earnings call on Tuesday night, the company announced that their live-action version of ‘Mulan’ would be skipping theaters entirely due uncertainty around the COVID-19 virus. Instead, the film will be heading to the Disney+ streaming network making it exclusively available to subscribers. However, for the first time Disney+ is marketing it as a premium feature and will be charging already paid subscribers and additional $29.99 to watch the film.
Earlier in the week, we shared with you that the topic was trending on Twitter with many users not pleased with Disney’s decision to charge $30 to view the film. Today, it seems like theaters are also upset as they count on major motions pictures with lots of buzz like Mulan to generate income. With that in mind, a video started going viral today of one angry cinema own in France destroying a promotional display for the film in reaction to the news.
You can check it out below:
https://twitter.com/destinationcine/status/1291279337191346177
According to a recent piece in Deadline, the cinema owner is Gerard Lemoine who owns an indie cinema outside of Paris. He said of the video, “My video exceeds my expectations a little.” Lemoine went on to say that as of going to print the tweet has over 150K views on Twitter and counting, and received countless replies.
The owner explained that he decided to make the video to express his frustration after hearing about Disney’s decision. He was frustrated that his theater had been promoting Mulan “for months” and that he and his fellow operators had hoped that the film would be one of the first to help boost their ailing theaters.
Image Credit: Disney
Cinemas began reopening in France in June but Lemoine told Deadline that it has been an uphill battle to attract audiences. He added, “It’s really a huge effort to stay open right now for most of us, but we were assuming there would be some ambitious movie releases in the coming weeks.” He continued,. “By losing Mulan, we lost the possibility of offering our audiences a long-awaited film that would have helped us after these past hard weeks. It is also a bad message to send to the public [who had been expecting a theatrical release].”
Now theater owners like Lemoine are holding out for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet which is slated to open in France at the end of this month. Lemoine said of the upcoming release, . “We thank Warner a lot for releasing Tenet in late August. But it’s not enough. Studios need to understand that if they cancel these films or put them on platforms, I won’t be able to last very long. I have devoted my life to showing movies and I don’t want to die!”
This is a story that we’ll continue to follow closely here at MickeyBlog. Readers are encouraged to keep checking in with us for further Mulan-related news and updates.
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Source: Deadline
