Disney aren't having the easiest time at the moment when it comes to navigating the choppy waters of the theatrical industry, with several of the studio's recent marquee releases experiencing vastly different fortunes in terms of both personnel and audience reactions.
Ben Affleck was born exactly 49 years ago today, and his professional career has experienced plenty of major ups and downs since he first shot to mainstream prominence by winning an Academy Award in 1998 for Best Original Screenplay after co-writing Good Will Hunting with childhood friend Matt Damon.
We all take the Marvel Cinematic Universe for granted these days, but what Kevin Feige has achieved since he was first named as Marvel Studios' President of Production at the tender age of 33 in March 2007 is unprecedented. A sprawling series of individual big budget blockbusters that all combine to form one overarching story was as ambitious as it was game-changing, and the MCU has forever changed the complexion of blockbuster cinema.
The first episode of Marvel's What If...? premiered this past Wednesday on Disney Plus, and it set out the show's stall pretty neatly. For the most part, it was a relatively straightforward rehash of Captain America: The First Avenger, albeit with a couple of major substitutions.
Any self-respecting blockbuster sequel is obligated to up the ante significantly, and we already know that Venom: Let There Be Carnage is planning to do that by at least tripling down on symbiotes. The first installment only featured Tom Hardy's title hero and Riz Ahmed's Carlton Drake morphing into Riot, but the most recent trailer promised that the ante is going to be upped significantly.
David Ayer may have recently posted a social media statement explaining that he's no longer going to speak publicly about the behind the scenes machinations which effectively saw Suicide Squad taken out of his hands in post-production, but he's clearly more than happy to thank the fans who continue to have his back.
We're only one episode into Marvel's What If...?, but there's already been plenty of talk about what the future holds for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first foray into animation, which isn't that much of a surprise when a second season was confirmed to be in development a long time ago.
The constant churn of content means that subscribers are gifted with plenty of new movies and TV shows to choose from on a weekly basis, whether they be in-house originals or established titles. Variety is the spice of life as the old saying goes, something the masterminds behind Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max and Prime Video have taken to heart when it comes to deciding which projects to drop when.
One thing you can always guarantee from Netflix is that regardless of what the streaming service's latest in-house genre film is, it'll always spend its first weekend nestled at the upper end of the Top 10 most-watched list. It doesn't matter whether it's action, thriller, horror, sci-fi or anything in between, it's a fact of life that subscribers crave something new on a Friday.
Due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad never had a hope in hell of coming anywhere close to the $746 million earned by David Ayer's first installment, but with each passing day the box office prognosis for the R-rated superhero blockbuster continues to get worse and worse.