Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther
cbr.com
cbr.com
It's long-standing Disney policy, and has effected films from the Fox film archives as well. (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...)
Am I right in thinking this policy started under Eisner, or has it been going on longer?
Nobody else locks their old content up like Fort Knox, Disney.
Eisner was mostly responsible for changing vault releases to home media sales (like VHS or DVD) instead of theatrical releases.
Disney does not generally grant licenses to theaters to show its films second-run (meaning after their initial box-office run) except as part of re-release initiated by Disney. They make extremely limited exceptions to this policy; the Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically the only film in the Disney/Fox vault that they allow to show second-run.
In this case, the theater announced they were going to show Black Panther without actually bothering to get the license ahead of time, and Disney did not make an exception to their policy.
I know when I clicked on the headline, that's what I expected, and the article didn't actually say why Disney did what they did, but my impression continued to be that Disney was doing something shady. The top comment in the HN comments points out that this is just normal Disney policy, and is entirely a non-newsworthy, non-event.
If you had a different expectation, cool, but I think many people probably expected there to be shenanigans going on, when it's really just long-standing Disney policy.
(A policy I personally think is lame, but that's neither here nor there.)
(Seems like this post is now flagged, so I guess the HN hive mind agrees this is a weak article.)
No, theaters can't just use any copy of a film to show a movie; those copies are jealously guarded by the distributors and are subject to strict controls, especially by Disney (and Fox too, before the acquisition). Generally, each copy of a film reel must be acquired from the distribution company and returned to it after the theater's second-run showings have ended. (For digital projectors, they use an online check-in/check-out system.)
Disney never gave the theater the film (or file, depending on the theater's projection setup) in the first place. The theater could not have shown the movie without affirmative action on Disney's part.
Disney could have simply done nothing at all, and the theater would not have been able to show the film.
Ok, they do do that by policy, not by exception. But the title is correct.
A lot of people want to give Disney some money; Disney refuses. The title is an apt description of that, and not misleading. It's a bit hyperbolic, but only if you are interested on the Disney's side, for any other point of view it looks reasonable.
They simply never gave them permission to do so in the first place.
It's especially pertinent here since the purpose of screening the movie was to commemorate the life of Chadwick Boseman, the lead actor of that movie. Disney didn't even make an exception by unvaulting a popular movie on the occasion of the lead actor's death.
But when it comes to the pedantry…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stop
… remember that "stop" used as a transitive verb means "to make impassable," or "to keep from carrying out a proposed action." There doesn't have to be an action in progress to stop it. The theatre proposed a course of action, Disney stopped that course of action by not giving access to the resources required to proceed.
There are eight senses of the word "stop" when used as a transitive verb, and your pedantic argument relies on choosing one sense of the word and ignoring the others.
If you are going to be pedantic, do it properly.
https://www.wesh.com/article/reedy-creek-firefighters-protes...
Rest in peace.