This weekend may end up being an incredibly important one in the history of cinema. Why, you ask? Well, Trolls World Tour opted to skip a theatrical release entirely (as opposed to delaying and coming out later in the summer or the fall, once the Coronavirus pandemic subsided), debuting as a rental in homes. For years, theaters have fought the day and date model, suggesting it could be an end to the cinematic experience. That’s led to some of their battles with Netflix, etc, as streaming services make inroads into the film world. Today, we can look a bit into whether this movie is truly the canary in the coal mine… For those unaware, the film is a sequel to the surprise hit (and Academy Award nominee) Trolls. Here is the storyline, according to IMDb: “Poppy and Branch discover that they are but one of six different Troll tribes scattered over six different lands devoted to six different kinds of music: Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop and Rock. Their world is about to get a lot bigger and a whole lot louder. A member of hard-rock royalty, Queen Barb, aided by her father King Thrash, wants to destroy all other kinds of music to let rock reign supreme. With the fate of the world at stake, Poppy and Branch, along with their friends, set out to visit all the other lands to unify the Trolls in harmony against Barb, who’s looking to upstage them all.” Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake return as the leads, with other members of the voice cast including Mary J. Blige, Rachel Bloom, Kelly Clarkson, James Corden, Zooey Deschanel, Jamie Dornan, Ron Funches, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Ozzy Osbourne, Sam Rockwell, Keenan Thompson, and more. Walt Dohrn and David P. Smith share directorial duties, while the script is by Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, Maya Forbes, Elizabeth Tippet, and Wallace Wolodarsky. Theodore Shapiro composed the score. Now, on the one hand, you can point to this as a warning sign for the traditional theatrical distribution model. If a studio can skip having to share profits with a theater company, why would Universal need to deal with AMC, for example? I don’t think this is going to be the case, as there will always be a hunger, at least on some level, for the theatrical experience, but there’s a possibility that this could be a warning sign. Especially if a […]