A new report from Deadline says work is underway on a Spider-Man: Brand New Day re-release. This obviously sounds absurd because the movie is still in theaters. It’s currently “released.” So what the hell could Disney and Sony be re-releasing? :deep sigh: A version that features extra footage, same as Avengers Endgame: Encore, which just arrived in theaters. And that’s why this news feels like an ominous sign. Cinema could be ushering in a terrible new era: the DLC-ification of movies.
According to Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro, a Spider-Man: Brand New Day version that includes the cut scenes of Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple will be coming to theaters. The bonus footage will also feature “more surprises.” This news comes immediately after Avengers Endgame: Encore‘s “opening weekend,” which pulled in $86 million at the global box office. Would Disney be considering an immediate second dose of Spider-Man: Brand New Day if not for Avengers Endgame: Encore‘s success? It’s easy to say “no,” but that misses the point. This Spider-Man: Brand New Day re-release is nonsense no matter what!
Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing is still doing gangbusters at the box office. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is sitting at nearly $2.5 billion globally, and that number is only going up since it’s still screening everywhere. How much more radioactive spider blood do the studios want to squeeze out of moviegoers? To attend this Spider-Man: Brand New Day re-release, fans will need to buy a whole other ticket, along with whatever drinks and snacks they want, and give up their whole night to see a few extra minutes of scenes that literally weren’t important enough to include originally?
It’s not like Disney is planning to do this in five or ten years when it might be fun to see the movie on the big screen again. While there’s no date for “Bonus New Day,” it sounds like the Spider-Man: Brand New Day re-release could be imminent. And, again, you can see the movie in theaters right now. All of which makes this seem like an absolute, shameless money grab. This is a way to get fans to pony up even more money for a film they might have already seen multiple times. Only this is somehow so much worse than Avengers: Endgame: Encore, because that at least had the gimmick of “connecting to Avengers: Doomsday.”
(Even then, not everyone who saw it got every scene! The most important addition was only included in premium format screenings, which only adds to our worries about what all of this portends for cinema at large.)
A quick theatrical re-release with bonus scenes is not entirely new. Films like Napoleon Dynamite and 28 Days Later both started showing screenings with extra or deleted scenes before the original cuts left theaters. (I know, because I saw both.) But both were also much smaller, standalone films that most people still hadn’t seen at the time of the re-release. (I hadn’t.) They weren’t multi-billion dollar juggernauts clearly targeting diehard fans. Those movies were trying to entice new viewers. Blockbusters, like Spider-Man: Brand New Day, are preying on those who will feel as though they’re missing out if they don’t see the “extra” scenes in the re-release immediately.
For a movie at this scale, this is the equivalent of downloadable content. This is like selling gamers the base game, but then immediately telling them they now have to pay for a whole bunch of extra things if they want to fully enjoy the experience. (Ask older gamers if they prefer life before DLC and microtransactions, and they’ll turn into Grandpa Simpson.) It’s pure greed. It’s taking advantage of the very people who just helped Spider-Man: Brand New Day set box office records. (Those people also might have held off on a second showing if they had any inclination that a longer version was just weeks away, which makes this even worse.)
And for all that extra money, what are audiences even getting? The kind of bonuses appended to the Avengers Endgame: Encore or Spider-Man: Brand New Day re-releases used to be standard fare on DVD and Blu-rays. Extended scenes, deleted scenes, and commentaries used to be some of the best reasons to buy home releases. And that was part of the deal. You paid for a movie ticket to see a single, finished film in a theater, and then the studio got a second bite of the apple by selling you a copy full of extras you owned. Instead, this time you’ll get to buy a ticket for a movie you were falsely told was finished, then you buy a second ticket for more scenes that will barely increase the run time and won’t change the film in any meaningful way, all before you pay a monthly fee for Disney+ so you can watch it at home.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s re-release will probably be successful, same as Avengers Endgame: Encore. No one is being forced to spend their money on an immediate re-release, either, so what’s the problem? The problem is that just because something makes money, or is technically, “allowed,” it doesn’t mean it’s ethical. But even if you don’t care about this one re-release or Avengers Endgame: Encore, you should care what the future might look like. From streaming blurring its own lines to the 35th version of the same album being released in the world of music to these theatrical “re-releases,” all over, consumers seem to be getting charged more to receive less. If this trend continues, you won’t even be able to go see a movie without wondering if you’re wasting your money by not waiting to see how much the film’s theatrical DLC will cost.
The post SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Re-Release and the DLC-ification of Movies appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Fady Askharoun Samy Askharoun
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