Dennis Villeneuve, director of one of the biggest pending releases of 2020 Dune, is not thrilled with Warner Bros. decision to release the film on its streaming platform HBO Max at the same time as its theatrical release.
Penning an article for Variety, Villeneuve slammed the studio for not being on the same team, sharing how he found out about the decision on the news. “With this decision AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history,” he wrote.
According to Villeneuve, AT&T is currently under a staggering debt of more than $150 billion, and the decision was only made to ensure its survival. “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.”
He also called Warner Bros. out for switching up from being a ‘legacy home for filmmakers’ to having a clear disregard for them. He also pointed out that while streaming is a positive addition to the entertainment world, it can’t sustain the film industry on its own. ” Streaming can produce great content, but not movies of Dune’s scope and scale.”
The Arrival filmmaker went as far as to claim that “Warner Bros. might just have killed the Dune franchise.”
He added that for him, public safety does come first which is why the team chose to push the release of Dune by almost a year – the film was originally slated for a Nov. 2020 release but was pushed to an Oct. 2021 release.
“Dune is by far the best movie I’ve ever made. My team and I devoted more than three years of our lives to make it a unique big screen experience. Our movie’s image and sound were meticulously designed to be seen in theaters,” wrote the director, adding that he stands in solidarity with the sixteen other filmmakers whose films face the same fate.
“Please know I am with you and that together we are strong. The artists are the ones who create movies and series. I strongly believe the future of cinema will be on the big screen, no matter what any Wall Street dilettante says,” he concluded.
Other titles affected by Warner Bros. decision include Wonder Woman 1984, The Matrix 4, and DC’s The Suicide Squad.
