Disney's Peter Pan and Wendy (Live-Action)

[Daniel]

Yara Shahidi to play Tinker Bell.



Not familiar with her. Wonder if Tink will talk like in her spin-off movies.

[Ben]

Wait...shouldn’t they get a white blonde woman to play Tink...?

[EricJ]

Not familiar with her. Wonder if Tink will talk like in her spin-off movies.

Bet on it. Although, if Disney remembered they still had a Disney Fairies franchise, they'd have remembered they already HAD a token black Tink-friend fairy:

[Ben]

You can bet she will talk. And she’s gonna be sassy!

[Daniel]

Alyssa Alook has been cast as Tiger Lily:



She's really pretty!

[Daniel]

Same as Pinocchio, off to Disney+!

[Ben]

No surprise.

[Daniel]

Yep, real shame.

[EricJ]

...A shame that it's NOT going to theaters?

(And you were hoping Lady & the Tramp would??)

[James]

...A shame that it's NOT going to theaters?

(And you were hoping Lady & the Tramp would??)

Ouch!

[Ben]

Well, what’s the point in that?

We knew L&TT was destined for D+ when it was announced! There was no hope or intention of it going to cinemas, because it was made for the service. The big question there was whether it would be big-screen quality or made for TV. Truth is, it kind of fell somewhere in the middle. It could have been released in cinemas and been very respectable, but it wasn’t, and never was intended to. So, silly to say that, and even sillier more than a year after the fact...

[Daniel]

I never "hoped" Lady and the Tramp would go to theaters. That would be ignorant. After seeing the second trailer I wrote:

Now I kinda wish this was coming to theaters...

And I stand by that. If you're going to shoot your mouth off at least get your facts straight. A difficult task I know.

[EricJ]

We knew L&TT was destined for D+ when it was announced! There was no hope or intention of it going to cinemas, because it was made for the service. The big question there was whether it would be big-screen quality or made for TV. Truth is, it kind of fell somewhere in the middle. It could have been released in cinemas and been very respectable, but it wasn’t, and never was intended to.

L&TT symbolized the new downgraded (post-Dumbo) image of the LA's at the studio that the only ones that "deserved" theaters were those with expensive CGI budgets, expensive directors, or expensive stars that had to sing for their supper to recoup the budget.
Or kiss up to China, like Mulan.

So, apart from the features strategically aimed at March theatrical to fill Beauty/Beast's "magic" weekend slot, those LA's that didn't have Tim Burton, Will Smith or Jon Favreau's CGI to pay for, and were just there as marketing placeholders to jumpstart house or low-selling properties, were always intended to be direct to streaming, where shameless corporate plugs are supposed to happen anyway.
Even without the pandemic, I think we know where Teen Lilo & Stitch was headed...

[Ben]

Obviously, this is all factored in to if a film gets a greenlight in the first place, but Covid has managed to throw a lot of this up on the air once some of these films sit on the shelf. But a lot of these films won't or don't need expensive CG, stars or directors, and those are the ones that sit firmly as D+ premiers, and likely wouldn’t benefit much from having a bit theatrical budget anyway. The real sting is in those films that were designed and deserve big screen outings...but won’t get them.

[Daniel]

Which is precisely what I was getting at. Before it was ignored to bring up something that wasn't true.