As more industry events, including South by Southwest (SXSW) and the MIPTV Global Content Market, close down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major motion picture has decided to play it safe and push back its release date. In lighter news, HBO is getting into video game adaptations and we may all be secretly desensitized to torture.

JAMES BOND RETREATS TO NOVEMBER

No Time To Die, the newest and possibly last Bond film in the Daniel Craig canon, has pushed back its worldwide release date from April 10th to November 25the because of COVID-19. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that the move will cost MGM $30 million dollars—but that’s nothing compared to how much the studio would have lost if it went ahead with the original release date. With theaters temporarily shuttering their doors around the world (including in very profitable China) nobody knows what the world will look like in another month. Maybe things will calm down, but there’s a chance things get worse first and people won’t want to leave their homes to watch a movie shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. The change must have been awkward for Daniel Craig on Saturday, as he hosted Saturday Night Live to promote a movie that is now almost nine months away. The move also pits Bond against his biggest threat to date: Cinematic Universes. November sees The Eternals continuing the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Godzilla vs Kong entering a new chapter in the Giant Monsters Fight Each Other Cinematic Universe. The move is good news, however, for the constantly delayed New Mutants, because now it has that weekend, and much of April, to itself. Only time will tell if there’s an audience willing to watch it.

ARE MOVIES DESENSITIZING US TO TORTURE?

The University of Alabama studied torture in movies and discovered that not only did almost all popular movies have a torture scene, but most of the torturers achieve their goals. You may be thinking that most adults know better than to be influenced by movies, but only 27 torture scenes were in R-rated movies, compared to 58 in PG-rated movies—and a staggering 108 in PG-13 rated movies. There were only seven scenes depicting torture in G-rated movies, which is a sentence I never thought I would write. The article goes into the science behind how influential these sequences may be and discusses the fact that while real-world torture has proven ineffective, it’s overwhelmingly successful in movies. I’m not here to talk about any of that. I’m here to pose the question that if almost every movie has a scene where somebody is tortured for information, maybe it has become an overworked trope that should be retired. So ask yourself, how else can your character get the information they need without resulting to torture? How about some detective work? Maybe they create a fake identity and go undercover to lure the information out of their target? I’m sure you can think of better options that can help your project stand out by not resorting to the same plot points as seven G-rated movies.

HOLLYWOOD IS TRYING OUT VIDEO GAMES… AGAIN

When The Walking Dead became the most popular show on television, every studio and production company turned to comic books to try and grab some of that success for themselves. The idea was that comic books have decades of source material to mine along with a built-in fan base that’s guaranteed to try the show out. At the time, I kept wondering when this eye would turn to video games, which have entire fleshed-out worlds behind them and massive fan bases. It turns out Hollywood had the same idea and tried repeatedly to turn video games into movies and TV shows. The problem was, video game developers wanted to stay involved creatively, which is something studios were hesitant to agree to. But with the success of The Witcher and Sonic the Hedgehog, studios are now willing to work with video game developers to adapt their materials. And nobody’s going bigger than Sony TV, bringing The Last of Us writer Neil Druckmann on board to work with Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin to adapt the PlayStation game for HBO. If this show is a success, you should look forward to studios giving video game developers more creative control over their IP.

DISNEY+ ORDERS MORE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Not long after shutting down an Aladdin spin-off series because of the backlash over choosing the only white character in the movie to star in it, Disney is shifting its focus to mine a different live-action remake for its streaming service. ABC Signature Studios has teamed with Once Upon A Time creators Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis to develop a musical prequel series about Gaston and LeFou, with Luke Evans and Josh Gad reprising their roles from the 2017 film. Disney quickly shifted the focus of its streaming service from all ages to family down to children, making it clear that nothing should air on the service unless a kid can watch it alone. This resulted in the Lizzie McGuire remake shutting down and High Fidelity and Love, Simon moving over to Hulu. The most interesting aspect of this show will be LeFou’s portrayal. Disney has taken great strides to pat itself on the back for including LGBTQ characters in its movies without actually acknowledging it in the movies. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene showed LeFou and another male character smile at each other during a dance. With the Love, Simon show being pulled from the service, it’ll be interesting to see if LeFou’s sexuality is ever mentioned in the series and how the writers, which include Josh Gad, choose to portray the character moving forward.

NETFLIX IS “KING OF THE GATEWAY SUBSCRIPTIONS”

A new study on streaming services by research firm Kantar found that, while Netflix and Hulu were in a tight race for new subscribers, Netflix takes a very interesting crown from all other services. It turns out that almost a third of all subscribers were trying streaming services for the first time—and they all chose Netflix for their first one. While studies about streaming services are a dime a dozen these days as research firms try to drum up business, this is an interesting wrinkle because it shows the major benefit Netflix’s name gives it in the upcoming streaming wars. With Disney+, Apple+, Peacock, Quibi and HBO Max all launching within a year of one another, it will never be more tempting for people to cut the cord. But where do they go when they do, especially when they’re new to streaming and there are so many choices? Thankfully for Netflix, they want to go where everybody knows your name. That’s a Cheers reference. A show that is currently on Netflix and Hulu. But may be pulled now that new owner ViacomCBS wants to create its own mega-streamer. And that’s exactly the problem; it appears that many new subscribers will choose the safety of Netflix over having to scour dozens of services to try and find their favorite show.