10 Major Concerns About Upcoming Movies
3. It Could Be 2021's Biggest Bomb - Dune
Though there isn't much doubt that Dune will be yet another epic sci-fi triumph from director Denis Villeneuve - at least where quality filmmaking is concerned - the state of the movie's box office potential is far trickier.
Even before Warner Bros. decided to release their entire 2021 slate on HBO Max day-and-date, and even before a pandemic swept the world, Dune's commercial prospects were dubious at best.
After all, it's a mega-budget adaptation of a deeply weird sci-fi novel which bombed the first time Hollywood tried to adapt it to the big screen back in 1984.
Pre-pandemic, it was easy to imagine a scenario where Dune pulled similar figures to Blade Runner 2049 - somewhere in the $200-300 million range - which would surely result in the cancellation of a planned sequel intended to adapt the second half of Frank Herbert's opus.
The vagaries of the HBO Max deal, however, make it unclear exactly how its success will be measured, and what Warner Bros. expects out of the movie's performance in order to greenlight the sequel.
The simultaneous release on streaming will unavoidably dent its already questionable box office hopes, and while tens of millions of new HBO Max subscribers would certainly represent a strong value proposition, is Dune really going to be capable of stimulating such growth?
Though Dune may well have bombed in cinemas with a conventional release in "normal" times, the ambiguity of the HBO Max deal means fans have no idea when, or if, a Dune sequel will get the go-ahead.
And so, it's a little dispiriting going into the movie already anxious that the second half of the story will never be told - all the more so if it turns out as great as it looks.