Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

cbr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 48 posts

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#31

Post by gamblor956 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #27
majewsky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, what would be a good reason to have a majority black cast in a big-budget movie?

I misspoke and your post made me realize it, thank you. I edited the comment. I somewhat understand a majority black cast. The target demographic may be black, and people like to see people like themselves in movies. On top of that, they may be trying to be accurate to historical or regional details. But to have both cast and crew as almost entirely black? I don't see the utility in that other than to make a politica…

One of the main villains, and two of the supporting characters are white.

While the director and screenwriter were black, the film's producers and editors were white, and the rest of the crew itself was made up of the usual assortment of Hollywood crew members, without regard to race. (I have several non-black friends who worked on the movie in the camera, prop, makeup, 2nd unit aka "stunt" unit, and VFX departments.)

If you're going to be racist, at least have the intelligence to look up the cast and crew and IMDB before you spout your Trumpian nonsense.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#32

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

gamblor956 wrote: post #31
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I misspoke and your post made me realize it, thank you. I edited the comment. I somewhat understand a majority black cast. The target demographic may be black, and people like to see people like themselves in movies. On top of that, they may be trying to be accurate to historical or regional details. But to have both cast and crew as almost entirely black? I don't see the utility in that other than to make a politica…

One of the main villains, and two of the supporting characters are white. While the director and screenwriter were black, the film's producers and editors were white, and the rest of the crew itself was made up of the usual assortment of Hollywood crew members, without regard to race. (I have several non-black friends who worked on the movie in the camera, prop, makeup, 2nd unit aka "stunt" unit, and VFX departments.…

If this is true, then I learned something and I appreciate you telling me. I'll verify in a couple hours, and will probably change my perspective of the movie because of it.

What I don't like is the personal attack. I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that's how I remember it). I made the post I did because I wanted to push back against racism.

Again, thank you for the productive portion of your comment. I will learn from it.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#33

Post by marcosdumay »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #20
marcosdumay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is stopping theaters from screening the movie. Ok, they do do that by policy, not by exception. But the title is correct.

OP’s point was that while the title is technically correct, it’s a bit clickbaity

A bit, but not much.

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.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#34

Post by manicdee »

gamblor956 wrote: post #26
monadic2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elucidate the material difference?

Theaters require a license to show a movie. 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 a…

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#35

Post by ykevinator »

hinkley wrote: post #11
gamblor956 wrote: post #8

Disney didn't "stop" theaters from screening Black Panther this past/upcoming weekend. Like most Disney films, it's not available for second-run showings. 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... )

I hate the term, "The Disney Vaults". 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.

This is why there's pirating

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#36

Post by kelnos »

manicdee wrote: post #34
gamblor956 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theaters require a license to show a movie. 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 a…

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so.

I think the point is that the headline makes it sound like a theater showing any random movie it wants is a normal, accepted practice, and that Disney was somehow doing something nefarious by stopping them from showing it. In essence, a clickbaity headline.

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.)

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#37

Post by gamblor956 »

manicdee wrote: post #34
gamblor956 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theaters require a license to show a movie. 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 a…

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so.

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so.

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.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#38

Post by gamblor956 »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #32
gamblor956 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main villains, and two of the supporting characters are white. While the director and screenwriter were black, the film's producers and editors were white, and the rest of the crew itself was made up of the usual assortment of Hollywood crew members, without regard to race. (I have several non-black friends who worked on the movie in the camera, prop, makeup, 2nd unit aka "stunt" unit, and VFX departments.…

If this is true, then I learned something and I appreciate you telling me. I'll verify in a couple hours, and will probably change my perspective of the movie because of it. What I don't like is the personal attack. I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that…

I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that's how I remember it). I made the post I did because I wanted to push back against racism.

Citations required. I read the mainstream media sources too, and I don't know of any that characterized the Black Panther crew as almost all black. The majority of the cast was black, simply because the majority of the characters of the underlying comic are black.

What's next? Are you going to complain if David Copperfield is played by an Indian guy?

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

gamblor956 wrote: post #38
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, then I learned something and I appreciate you telling me. I'll verify in a couple hours, and will probably change my perspective of the movie because of it. What I don't like is the personal attack. I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that…

I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that's how I remember it). I made the post I did because I wanted to push back against racism. Citations required. I read the mainstream media sources too, and I don't know of any that characterized the Black Panther cre…

Yeah, the usual thing being noted was that it was a predominantly black cast in a major Hollywood film being marketed as a general blockbuster and not as a “black film”.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#40

Post by orloffm »

gamblor956 wrote: post #29
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a good point, except for the double standard that is being applied to most movies nowadays. Almost all big movies based sometime in the past are being cast with a cast that is not representative of the racial outlook of the times. New WW2 movies are extremely diverse(edit: er maybe not). This wasn't some small movie trying to be historically accurate. This was a massive big-budget movie that made the co…

Trying to remember the diversity in the most recent Hollywood WW2 movies: THERE WASN'T ANY. 1917 was completely white. Dunkirk had two minority characters, both in extra roles. Jojo Rabbit had no minorities, though Hitler was played by a New Zealander of 1/4th-Maori ancestry. Overlord had 1 black character in a supporting role. Midway's cast was 1/4th Asian, and only because 1/4th of the movie is told from the Japane…

1917 wasn't completely white. There were multiple black soldiers in the trenches here and there, which was obviously done just because someone was uncomfortable with "completely white" cast. There is no other reason to do that. With the same logic there should be a white guy somewhere in the background in Wakanda, but there weren't any. That's what the parent comment wants to say.
Post reply on HN