New Year HD DVD Preview: Warner Bros. in 2008
by Pravin on January 3rd, 2008 in movies.
On the third day of our 2008 theatrical releases roundup we set our sights on Warner Bros. Like Universal, Warner has a huge catalog of titles to release from, and they’re also very active with their new releases. Like Paramount, Warner is part of a bigger entertainment empire which includes a few studios, like New Line Cinema who holds the keys to the Lord of the Rings.
Though a few of their titles are exclusive to HD DVD such as the Matrix trilogy and Batman Begins, Warner is actually format-neutral. Many speculate that if Warner was to choose sides, they’d end up deciding the fate of the format war rather quickly. That’s a dramatic statement to make, and there are supporters on both sides who would strongly disagree.
Putting the format war aside, let’s take a look at the trailers for the movies that Warner is scheduled to release this year in theaters. Just as with our Paramount preview and on yesterday’s Universal preview, remember that the information below only applies to theatrical releases. The prediction is that these movies are highly likely to be released for home consumption about five months later.
Provided below are trailers for these movies from Movieweb.com, as well as links to the official sites for the movies, which usually have the trailers, teasers available in high-def, and goodies to download.
One Missed Call, January 4
In this Japanese remake, a group of friends receive voicemails from the future which reveal the time and date of their deaths as well as sound from their last moments — and these voicemails are coming true.
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site)
Fool’s Gold, February 8
Just as divorce proceedings are starting up between them, two treasure hunters (Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson) come across an opportunity to find a half-billion dollar booty. These two actors seem to do well together, and I bet Fool’s Gold will continue that streak.
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site)
10,000 B.C., March 7
A young hero leads a group of warriors across treacherous prehistoric conditions, battling woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, when they stumble into a lost civilization, and ultimately do battle against a god. This seems like a movie that’s destined to show off a home theater really well.
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site)
Speed Racer, May 9
“Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer, he’s a demon on wheels…”
The Wachowski brothers bring their mad, crazy Matrix effects skillz to reviving the Mach 5 in Speed Racer. All I can say is that they’d better not screw this up, or they’ll kill a piece of my childhood. I watched reruns of this show on TV when I was just a lad, and I adored my Hot Wheels clone of the Mach 5, and I’m looking forward to inculcating my kids into the “cult” when the movie comes out this May.
“Go Speed Racer, Go!”
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site and its high-def trailers)
Second Half of 2008
The movies released later in the year are most likely to be in post-production right now. They’re being edited and cleaned up in time for release in a few more months. In many cases, it’s still too early for them to have trailers or websites.
Nights in Rodanthe, June 6
Richard Gere and Diane Lane are two guests at an inn. Each is escaping from things going on in their respective worlds, and start a new romance that continues for the rest of their lives. The story reminds me a little of Same Time Next Year, but it’s probably done in a less Broadway stage kind of style. In that movie, Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn have a years-long affair at a romantic inn, but only on one weekend each year.
Get Smart, June 20
This remake brings Steve Carell to the role of secret agent Maxwell Smart, and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, as Control agents working to dismantle the doomsday plans of KAOS. This is another one of those movies that they’d better get right or I’m gonna have another piece of my childhood destroyed. I watched reruns of this show almost religiously as a tyke, and for the longest time, I actually thought KAOS was the proper spelling of the word. I think Steve Carell is likely to do a great job in Don Adams’ famous role.
Here’s the teaser…
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site)
The Dark Knight, July 18
Director Christopher Nolan brings Christian Bale back as Batman in The Dark Knight. Nolan completely revived the character in Batman Begins, bringing the series back on track to making Batman the badass he really is, and this movie will give us a chance to see a very nice interpretation of The Joker.
(Click here if the video does not appear above — link goes to official movie site where they have high-def versions of the trailer)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, August 8
Four young women head out to start at separate colleges, relying on each other to get through their first year and beyond. No trailer or movie site yet, but you can check out the books by Ann Brashares at Amazon.
Whiteout, third quarter release date
Antartica’s first murder investigation begins as U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Bekinsale) was about to call it quits and go home. Bodies are piling up, and the mystery has to be solved before Antartica starts six months of darkness and she’ll be stranded with the killer.
RocknRolla, third quarter release date
London’s criminal underworld is buzzing as politicians, petty thieves, and mobsters scramble to get a piece of a lucrative land deal.
Where the Wild Things Are, fourth quarter release date
Proving that comics and old TV shows aren’t the only source of inspiration for remakes, Maurice Sendak’s classic book comes to the big screen!
Untitled Ridley Scott Movie, October 10
They don’t have an official name for this Ridley Scott movie, but it’s based on David Ignatius’ novel, Body of Lies, so I’m going to guess that the movie will be named the same thing. It looks to be a great spy thriller, perhaps 2008’s Bourne Ultimatum or better.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, November 21
Having read all of the books, we mainly watch these Harry Potter movies just for the entertainment value. Each book gets bigger, which means that even more gets left out of the corresponding movie. This book was particularly interesting because of what happened at the ending and the suspense of how the story would pick up in the last book of the series.
Yes Man, December 19
Jim Carrey signs up for a self-help program based on the idea that you just say “yes” to everything. Reminds me a little of Liar, Liar where Carrey played a lawyer who couldn’t tell lies.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Do you plan on also doing a New Line one as well? Even though New Line has thier “so called” issues.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I’ll need to dig that info up, but it may get bundled together with smaller studios. New Line’s delays of HD DVD discs because of region coding are inconvenient, but at least we do get the movies in the end.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
The good news is that although New Line delays the HD DVD releases, the delay only applies to new releases, so catalog releases such as “Lord of the Rings” will not be affected.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Warner announced they will be Blu-Ray exclusive in in May. Sad news.
http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,1700383,00.html
January 5th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Warner’s decision is very disturbing indeed. As someone who works in the industry and who had an “inside” track as to what was going on at WB prior to their announcement, their move to go Blu comes as a tremendous shock. It really did seem that up until Friday WB was all set to go HD DVD exclusive and announce it at the HD DVD Promotions Group press conference. From the facts I know and the things I learned from persons who work at WB in the Home Video Department, the choice to go Blu was done at the absolute last minute and it is highly probable that it involved an undisclosed amount of money. I could go into greater detail and depth in disclosing some of the insider information that led me to believe WB would go HD DVD, but I do not want to get anyone in trouble at WB and what’s done is done…it would just sicken everyone anyway. I am not saying I know for sure, or that I will ever know for sure, and Warner Brothers can go to the grave denying that any money changed hands between them and Sony, but given the knowledge I have there is no way I will ever be convinced that there was not some sort of pay off involved. Sadly, I must be forced to admit that this looks like the end for HD DVD, but with that said, I also strongly feel that because of cost and outrageous prices it will spell the end for Blu Ray as well. Prices on some of the discounted BR players have already shot back up to $500.00 after yesterday’s announcement from Warner Brothers, and given Sony’s pension for greed, I am sure by the introduction of their next gen BR players the prices will only continue to skyrocket. What Sony does not seem to realize of care about is that none of the “blue collar” middle class families who happily bought their HD DVD players for $100.00-$150.00 over the 2007 holiday season are in any position to now go out and spend an additional $500.00 on a BR player and this will lead to Blu Ray’s demise. Greed has always been Sony’s undoing and right now it may seem that their deep pockets are steering the course of the Hi Def format war, but I think because of their own deceptive practices and higher price tags, maybe the consumer will in fact ultimately decide their fate.
January 5th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I would have thought that Warner might wait until around March to see if all the new HD DVD owners since November managed to make any significant strides in disc purchases. They definitely did not give these people a chance to make their presence heard.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:08 am
It is obvious WB didn’t even wait to see the sales numbers from the 2007 holiday season. Most likely Sony paid them a huge sum of money for this move. WB was the most profitable media company and now they have stopped serving at least 1 million HD DVD customers. WB could have stayed neutral and made a lot of money. I don’t appreciate studio execs making decisions the consumer should be making. At the end of this year we might have seen HD DVD win if not for WB. I think the HD DVD group was planning on a great CES, but they did not plan on WB taking the money and running to BD just before the show.
For me nothing will change. I still have my HD-A2. I will still buy some HD DVD movies. I will continue to rent HD DVD from Netflix.
I won’t buy a PS3 which is losing the game console generation by a large margin. Media companies are betting on PS3 and it is firmly in last place. Gamers don’t buy many movies, and they didn’t buy PS3 for movies. I guess for studios even a market failing PS3 game console is better than trying to establish the replacement for DVD. A few HD early adopters have read enough to know PS3 is the best choice for BD right now which isn’t saying a lot for BD players so they buy PS3.
Years from now, if and when BD becomes the standard I will buy it for the same $99 I paid for my HD-A2 because as far as I am concerned that is all BD is worth.
I don’t buy DVD anymore because I have HDTV. I don’t buy BD because it is over-priced, and over-hyped. WB won’t get anymore of my money.
January 6th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Timing the announcement for the shock value certainly casts some doubts about the motives behind what happened in the last few days or weeks.
I’ve always thought the PS3 was an awesome console, but the game selection just never worked out for my household. We bought a 360 a few months ago only because my kids were already playing Halo 3 at their friends’ houses, and there are also a couple of kid-friendly games, and Xbox Live Arcade has some fun titles for them too.
I still have a large queue of HD DVD discs to get through on Netflix, and I’m probably good for most of this year with that alone. I’m sure a PS3 is an inevitable addition to our household, but it’ll be more because it suddenly got games that I couldn’t already get for the 360, and only partially because of Blu-ray.
If something came up and I really needed to get a Blu-ray player, I’d opt for a PS3 simply because it’s so upgradeable and I wouldn’t have to waste time and money on profile crapola.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Patrickster, it’s really hard to put blame on Sony if they did in fact pay off Warner. I mean, it was proven that our side paid a profound amount (150 million dollars) to secure Paramount. (and that was only for a little over a year). Bottom line…the war should have been over before Paramount. You can’t say that people are going to have to go and buy a 500 dollar blu-ray player now. Also your comment about prices going up after the announcment is completely false. If you can show me one website, citing before and after prices, I’ll believe you. I checked bestbuy, circuit city prices quickly as a glance, and the BR players cost the same they have cost for the past few weeks.
Blu-Ray has been more than doubling the sales of HD-DVD for over a year now. Whatever statistics you hear about “HD-DVD outselling Blu-Ray”, are manipulated statistics. HA, I think at one point they used some netflix statistic to say that HD-DVD was outselling Blu-Ray. If you take a look at the monthly sales figures…it’s really been a slaughter. I just want this war to end. Blu-Ray would have won by a large amount early on if Microsoft in a desperate move didn’t pay off Paramount. I really think that move just upsetted people more. Regardless…I also fail to see your indication that Warner was going to HD-DVD. It has been speculated for months that Warner might go to the Blu-Side. They had also spoken with people, and stated that they would pay close attention to the holiday season in evalutating a decsion to go exclusive. We all knew that Blu-ray would destroy HD-DVD, so this decision by Warner Bros. doesn’t come as a shocker.
In a way it’s kind of unfair. If Microsoft would have bundled the 360 with HD-DVD players from the get go…HD-DVD would have defintely won. But the PS3 provided people with Blu-ray players..and while the system didn’t sell well…it defintely sold better than any HD-DVD or current blu-ray product. That gave Blu-Ray a tremendous Hardware advanatage, and with that advantage came numerous softwar sales for the Blu camp. With 100 dollar system sales for HD-DVD…they are clearly losing huge amounts of money to hopefully create a market. After this news…it’s goign to be pretty hard for a bestbuy salesperson to reccomend to a customer an “HD-DVD” player when they come up to the employee and ask. PS3 will continue to sell, and the Blu-ray camp will grow. After HD-DVD dies…the “Early adaptors”, who have been sitting and waiting patiently, will jump to blu-ray…and similar to HD-Televisions…the “real” sales will start within the next couple of years. HD-DVD is dead.
January 6th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I keep reading every conceivable site looking for Toshiba to pull a “rabbit” out. This whole thing really annoys me because I was around for the original VHS Beta wars and Sony just will never give up. I waited and actually tested both systems before getting an HD player. I genuinely prefer HD and thought with the sales of stand alone players going up for HD would turn things around. I know with the recent sales of the HD-A2 players at 98.00 sent them through the roof. I truelly hope that something happens in favor of the HD camp.
January 7th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I was around for the Beta wars as well.
Beta was very much in the same position as HD-DVD. Limitied hardware manufacturer support.
Its sad, but the fact that players were being sold for 98$ and the fact no other hardware companies jumped on should of been a clue to the formats soon to be death. HDDVD and Beta have much more in common than Bluray and Beta.
A far as Sony never giving up quote by stinger. Well why should they give up? They were winning 2:1 US, 3:1 Europe and 9:1 Japan. Also, all Warner cares about is movies sold, not attach rates (who came up with this retarded stat?). So its easy to see why studios would make this decision.
It must be obvious to all here that Toshiba cannot win, at best its a stalemate. And a stalemate will kill the industry. The only logical thing would be for Toshiba to give up but they are to greedy to do so. They will take advantage of those to stubborn to admit defeat and take as much of HDDVD supporter’s money they can. Then, when its truely dead they will end of life the format and leave you out to dry. I feel bad for you guys is some ways, but I also resent you for trying destroying the HD industry.
January 7th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Why are we customers to be resented for trying to destroy the industry?
January 7th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Actually emdubs, you are completely wrong about what Warner Brothers cared about. If WB had only cared about movies sold, then they would have gladly gone HD DVD since that format was outselling their BR titles. I know for a fact that WB did not focus on the sale numbers, it all just came down to who had the deeper pockets and who was willing to pay them the most money (some $500 million so it would seem). Given the fact that the HD DVD Promotion Group had nothing new to announce at CES and that they canceled their CES press conference, obviously proves that HD DVD was all set to announce WB going HD DVD exclusive and was completely blind sided and stabbed in the back by unscrupulous Sony and the shear greed of Warner Brothers. And you speak of Toshiba’s greed? That is a joke since Sony is the greediest company of all charging outrageous prices for their sub-par 1.0 machines that are nothing more then $1000.00 paperweights, and it was Sony’s own greed that created this format war to begin with. If the Hi Def disc industry dies it will be because of Blu-Ray’s deceptions, Sony’s need to monopolize the industry and Warner Brothers spineless. cowardly actions. It seems now that the Emperor has no clothes, but nobody wants to tell him. At least if WB had gone HD DVD we all might have still had a Hi Def format on discs, but now both formats will become a thing of the past as digital Hi-Def downloads slowly take over. But no matter, whether you have Blu-Ray or HD DVD, now we all have obsolete machines.
January 8th, 2008 at 6:39 am
I have to agree with this aspect of what Patrickster said that if WB was only interested in movies sold, then they’d have stayed neutral for a lot longer. They have much more money to make by selling to two sides than selling to just one, especially considering the large number of HD DVD players that were sold in the last few weeks. And I’m sure they’d also have been wooed all the way by incentives like price breaks or who knows what, and a neutral position would have worked out ok for them.
It’s rare for any American company to plan so far ahead and make a pre-emptive move as WB claims to have made by deciding that they’d rather wait some months so that the profits from one format can eventually make up for whatever is lost in the shorter term by not supporting the other one.
It’s rare, but it can happen, and perhaps this is one of those cases.
I’m going to close comments on this posting because I can see that this is going to become a format war discussion, and that kind of thing can go on endlessly. An internet forum is the better place for that instead of the comments section on one blog posting.