'Dune' director slams Warner Bros. over decision to release his movie on HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously
- Denis Villeneuve has slammed HBO Max and Warner Bros. over their 2021 movie release deal.
- The "Dune" director said he wasn't told by Warner Bros. that his film would premiere on HBO and only found out when the news was made public.
- "There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here," he said. "It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion."
Denis Villeneuve has slammed Warner Bros. over the decision to release their entire slate of 2021 films both in theaters and on HBO Max.
In a new essay written for Variety, the acclaimed filmmaker says that the move to a hybrid streaming release model is a "desperate attempt to grab the audience's attention," and he wasn't given any prior notice of the move and only found out when Warner Bros. made their decision public.
"I learned in the news that Warner Bros. has decided to release 'Dune' on HBO Max at the same time as our theatrical release, using prominent images from our movie to promote their streaming service," he wrote.
"With this decision, AT&T has hijacked one of the most respectable and important studios in film history. There is absolutely no love for cinema, nor for the audience here. It is all about the survival of a telecom mammoth, one that is currently bearing an astronomical debt of more than $150 billion."
Villeneuve, whose "Dune" adaptation was originally scheduled for a December 2020 release, but was pushed back until 2021 due to the pandemic, continued: "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 added that streaming services are a "positive and powerful addition to the movie and TV ecosystems," but they alone cannot "sustain the film industry."
"Streaming can produce great content, but not movies of 'Dune's' scope and scale," he said. "Warner Bros.' decision means 'Dune' won't have the chance to perform financially in order to be viable and piracy will ultimately triumph. Warner Bros. might just have killed the 'Dune' franchise."
Villeneuve is the second high-profile Warner Bros. filmmaker to criticize the studio for the controversial move to same-day streaming after Christopher Nolan spoke out earlier this week.
During an interview with ET, Nolan said Warner Bros.'s move was "very, very, very, very messy. A real bait and switch" and later during a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the "Tenet" filmmaker described HBO Max as "the worst streaming service."
The Warner Bros. and HBO Max streaming deal means that many of the studio's highly anticipated titles such as "The Suicide Squad," "Dune," and "The Matrix 4" will all debut on HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. They will be available on HBO Max for one month, after which they'll leave the streamer and continue to play in theaters.
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