A brief thread on the Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros and the absurd news cycle Hollywood enters this week.

Warner Bros., long Hollywood’s most talent-friendly people, has pissed off a bunch of talent by dropping all its movies on HBO Max.

Why exactly is talent upset?

"Sources say" talent is mad because they weren’t consulted, and because this costs them back-end profits.

Translation: Agents + financiers are worried about their share of the $$ being diluted. Some reasonably so, and some greedily so.

Every story you read this week will be part of a negotiation where sources try to get more $$ out of Warner Bros. Could a company sue? Sure! But good luck. Most talent is not guaranteed a theatrical release, and many of those clauses will be invalidated because of… the pandemic.

There is no back-end when you can’t profit.

To wit: Tenet. Christopher Nolan insisted on this movie being released in theaters. Warner Bros. was willing to experiment, both as a favor to Nolan, one of its most cherished relationships, and as a test with theaters.

What happened with Tenet? It lost Warner Bros A LOT of $$. The movie made $60M in the biggest market in the world. Inception made $292 in the US. Interstellar made $188M

Nolan is the one guy who has stepped forward to publicly criticize WB. You can guess his next movie won't be at Warner Bros, but he won't have a ton of alternatives if he hates streaming.

Should Warner Bros have been more communicative? Maybe. Buy you know what will solve that? Success. If these movies drive subs for HBO Max, Warner Bros will reward talent and talent will go back to Warner Bros.

If it fails, Warner Bros. wouldn't be an appealing place anyways.

Remember when talent didn’t want to work at Netflix because of its stance on theaters? Look at the murderer’s row of directors working with Netflix this year.

Props to the first actor/filmmaker who acknowledges being excited about their movie actually getting released.

Addendum: There are people who are genuinely upset their movies won't be on a big screen and/or that they weren't consulted.

But I would ask them how comfortable they would feel going to a theater, and whether they are excited to now guarantee their movie's release next year.