Right, we'll take off that Man In Black outfit for now, because it was probably starting to grate a bit. No, it was, you don't need to be polite. That doesn't mean our proclamations are going to get any less pessimistic, however, especially when we've got total screw-ups like this to go over. There's not much debate over whether Tim Burton's 2010 take on Alice In Wonderland was anything approaching a cinematic masterpiece, but it did make what they call in the industry a "buttload" of money for Disney, and precipitated the current trend for the studio to put out dark reimaginings of their classic animations. Disney very nearly missed out on that $1 billion box office, however, with their greedy release strategy for the film on DVD and Blu-Ray. Usually there's a minimum of 17 weeks between a film being shown at cinemas and coming out on home video, but Disney wanted to shorten that to just three months. The three major UK cinema chains - Odeon, Vue and Cineworld - all vowed to boycott this plan, since it would eat into their profits considerably. Eventually the cinemas were strong-armed by public demand into showing the film, which set a dangerous precedent and showed just how little major studios care about keeping cinemas alive. So long as they can make a quick buck, they couldn't give a monkey's what happens in the future. Which is not a game they should be playing, considering the dire straits they find themselves in most of the time...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
