As reported by Sight & Sound: “Zhao seems well positioned to comment on where on earth — or elsewhere — the medium might be heading. Not that she’s at all decided on the matter. ‘I’m both really hopeful and also really terrified,’ she says, ‘so it varies every day.’ The day we speak, she’s on the hopeful end. She’s just come from an early screening of Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi spectacle ‘Dune,’ and it has her feeling pretty bullish on the current state of cinema — artistically, at least.”
“It gives me hope that a filmmaker like Denis is able to really harness his vision and put together something that’s so incredible, so cinematic,” Zhao told the magazine. “I’m just blown away by the experience I had in that room. But I’m terrified about how many people are or aren’t going to have that experience like I did, in a theatre, and what that means for the future.” Warner Bros. is opening “Dune” in theaters October 22, and it will be available to stream starting the same day on HBO Max. Zhao is clearly on the side of debate arguing against streaming “Dune,” as is Villeneuve himself. After Warner Bros. announced last December it was moving its entire 2021 theatrical slate to the hybrid theaters-HBO Max release model, Villeneuve penned an essay bashing the decision. “There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here,” Villeneuve wrote. “It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion. Therefore, even though ‘Dune’ is about cinema and audiences, AT&T is about its own survival on Wall Street. With HBO Max’s launch a failure thus far, AT&T decided to sacrifice Warner Bros.’ entire 2021 slate in a desperate attempt to grab the audience’s attention.” Villeneuve added at the time, “Streaming can produce great content, but not movies of ‘Dune’s’ scope and scale. Warner Bros.’ decision means ‘Dune’ won’t have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph. Warner Bros. might just have killed the ‘Dune’ franchise. This one is for the fans. AT&T’s John Stankey said that the streaming horse left the barn. In truth, the horse left the barn for the slaughterhouse.”
Zhao herself is stepping into the world of studio tentpoles with her Marvel Cinematic Universe entry “Eternals,” arriving in theaters after “Dune” on November 5. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
