Could Live-Action Mulan Skip The Theaters After All?
One Wall Street analyst suggests that Disney might be better off skipping the theaters with live-action Mulan. The film which was originally slated to be released in March was moved to July 24th by the studio due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Disney rescheduled the film for July assuming that theaters would be up and running by that time. But according to Wall Street analyst Michael Nathanson, the film heading to theatres isn’t a given.
As a recent piece in ScreenRant tells us, though the studio remains optimistic that Mulan will be heading to theaters, as we inch ever closer it looks less and less likely. The film would need nearly 80% of theatres worldwide to reopen in order to make a profit on the film. This would need to include big markets Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
That, combined with other factors is why Nathanson, during a recent chat with DEADLINE isn’t optimistic that Mulan will hit theaters. As Nathanson points out, Disney would have to unfurlough marketing teams and distribution departments to start promoting the film again in time for a Summer release. Nathanson suggests that rather than spending money on another round of marketing the company may be better off skipping theaters and heading to On-Demand before an eventual release on Disney+.
As ScreenRant points out, Mulan is less than 60 days out before its release date. The company already dropped quite a hefty marketing budget the first time around so it’s easy to see their reluctance to commit more money to the July release. It’s certainly easy to understand the trepidation given that places like San Francisco have already said it’s unlikely that they’ll reopen theaters before August.
Though the idea of a big-budget live-action remake going directly to streaming might seem odd, it might actually be the best option in the long run. And it is possible to do that successfully, Trolls World Tour which broke streaming records and earned over $200 million has shown that a film can earn decent money on demand.
It remains to be seen what the future holds for Mulan but we expect to find out soon. Keep following along with MickeyBlog for the latest updates!
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Source: ScreenRant