Theory Time: 'Amusement Park' Director Fired

Those of you are probably asking, what the heck is Amusement Park?

For those who are not in the know, Amusement Park is an upcoming animated film about what appears to be an abandoned amusement park located in some kind of enchanted forest. Distributed by Paramount Pictures and produced by Nickelodeon Movies & Ilion Animation Studios(Planet 51, remember that?), the film is set to star Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Garner, Jeffrey Tambor, Kenan Thompson, Ken Jeong, Mila Kunis and John Oliver. The current plan is to release it to the public on March 15, 2019, with a Nickelodeon television series set to debut later on in the year.

However, just recently, the film's director - Dylan Brown - was fired by Paramount due to sexual advances towards women. Of course, this is nothing new in our current times. Celebrities left and right are being accused of sexual misconduct, even those who work in animation! Some notable examples include The Loud House creator Chris Savino and Pixar CCO John Lasseter. When the news came out, I began to ponder about something...

If you remember back in November 2017, I did a piece talking about why I think Illumination Entertainment pushed their Secret Life of Pets sequel back a year. I had said that they probably did it because they low-key knew about Max's voice actor, Louis C.K., and all of the sexual allegations against him. Later on - and by that, I mean the last blog post I did - I chalked it up to them just wanting to hype it up to the general public who normally wouldn't follow film slates and such.

In that article, I had also mentioned that Paramount was simply trying to hype up Amusement Park when moving it away from the March 2019 release window.

Context: Paramount originally had this movie slated for March 22, 2019. The film was then bumped up to July 13, 2018. It was then moved to August 10, 2018, to avoid competition with Sony Pictures Animation's Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. Many months later, Paramount moved the film back to March 15, 2019, a week before its original release date.

At this point, I'm beginning to think that Paramount actually somewhat knew about what Dylan Brown had done to these women back in August 2017 when they decided to move Amusement Park back to March 2019. I'll bet they had only waited until now to reveal that Brown was fired.

I mean, think about it! Why else would they move it up to Summer 2018 before putting it back where it used to be? They're probably using that extra time to find a new director! Plus, who had that July 13, 2018 slot first? The Secret Life of Pets 2. Paramount moved Amusement Park to that date immediately after Universal moved their talking animals sequel back to 2019.

Of course, this is all just speculation on my part. If Paramount only found out about these allegations now, and are planning to delay the movie again, then I think it'll go to May 15, 2020. That date is currently being used for an untitled Paramount Animation movie.

Consider this for a moment. Whenever Paramount stakes out dates for untitled Paramount Animation movies, they always place in something that had a release date beforehand. 3/22/2019 went off the calendar since Amusement Park moved to the week before(I know, I know, not the same date, but still the same month!), and 7/31/2020 is now occupied by former 2019 release SpongeBob SquarePants 3.

If anything, I can see this happening:

03/23/2018-Sherlock Gnomes
02/07/2020-The Loud House Movie
05/15/2020-Amusement Park
07/31/2020-SpongeBob SquarePants 3
03/19/2021-Luck

I think 2019 will be a Paramount Animation-less year much like 2016. No worries, for they still have the Nickelodeon Movies-branded Are You Afraid of the Dark? reboot slated for October 11, 2019. Maybe they'll add something else Nick-related to that year. Current candidates, I think, are the Henry Danger movie and the Michael Bay-produced Dora the Explorer live-action feature(I'm not kidding!), the latter of which is actually aiming for a unspecified 2019 release.

My two cents? I think Paramount will push for the Henry Danger movie to come out first, since the show that it's based off of stars child actors and they probably want to belt the movie out before the likes of Jace Norman and such get any older. Dora the Explorer can wait until 2020, when the franchise turns twenty years old(do you feel old yet?). That'll make for FOUR Nickelodeon Movies productions that year if my predictions come true, what with Loud House, Amusement Park, and SpongeBob 3 accompanying the Hispanic adventurer.

Enough rambling about release dates, what say you on this development?

Hyping Up

One thing that's all too common in movieland is that when a studio sets a release date for a film, it may or may not make said date. Animated films are no stranger to this. Remember when Pixar's The Good Dinosaur had to be restarted eight months before its intended 5/30/2014 release date? They pushed it back to 11/25/2015, pushing original slot holder Finding Dory to the 6/17/2016 slot they had staked out months prior, so that they could churn out something good. That may be one of the reasons why a film can get delayed, along with scheduling conflicts between the director, actors, etc.

In rare cases, a film could very well meet the first release date that the studio has in mind for it. A perfect example of this would be Illumination's Despicable Me 3. That movie held the 6/30/2017 slot since January of 2014! It made the date as well!

(Side note: I predict that sometime this month, Illumination will announce that Despicable Me 4 is coming out in either 2021 or 2022, and they may also stake out release dates for other projects they have in the works *cough*Mario*cough*)

But have you heard of the idea of a movie getting a release date that makes you go "oh, cool", but at the same time, you KNOW that it won't make that date? Let's look at some examples of this trend...

The first one I can think of right now, which is the main reason I'm ranting about this in the first place, is DreamWorks' Trolls 2.

As many an animation fan knows, Trolls was a profitable little film for DreamWorks. It may have made only $344.6 million at the worldwide box office on a $125 million budget, and it could have made more had Fox not chosen to release this the same day as Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange, but merchandise sales were through the roof! I haven't seen so many non-Happy Meal toys for a DreamWorks film in years! The film's theme song, Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop the Feeling", was such a huge hit that it played practically everywhere you went! Try finding one person who hasn't heard the song, I dare you.

As Jeremy Scott of CinemaSins put it in his "Everything Wrong With" video of the film, "it's obvious this ENTIRE movie was just a setup for this song, which was released 6 F*CKING MONTHS before this movie came out in a cheap grab for the 'song of the summer' in 2016."

Anyways, with all of that, DreamWorks went ahead and slated a sequel for April 10, 2020. I'll admit, I never really liked that release date to begin with. It was just one week before an untitled franchise film from Sony Pictures Animation. Now, the date they chose was originally staked out by distributor Universal back in June 2016 for an untitled "event film". DreamWorks nabbed that date back in February 2017, and it remained there for a good while...

However, in October 2017, Universal moved Trolls 2 up to 2/14/2020. Its old 4/10/2020 date went to the ninth Fast & Furious installment, which had already been delayed from 4/19/2019. The release date choice is even worse than the last one, since it was sandwiched between Paramount's Loud House movie and Blue Sky's Nimona adaptation, the latter of which being more likely to move though.

Now here's where things get sketchy...

Two months later, Universal moved the film back to its original spot...sort of. As of right now, the movie is slated for 4/17/2020, which is a slot that Universal had once wanted to use for an untitled "event film" back in June 2017. That's one week after the very first release date they had staked out, and is now two weeks before that untitled Sony Animation film. Plus, no animated movie until whatever comes out on 5/15/2020, whether it's Warner Animation's Scooby or Paramount Animation's untitled film.

However, that's not why I'm ranting here. The real reason I'm ranting is because I feel like studios only do this to cater - no, scratch that - pander to those who don't follow release date changes and are likely to forget the news until the film eventually comes out. I don't know if you've noticed, or if you even care in the first place, but DreamWorks' social media pages cater towards kids more than adults. I mean, what kid is going to be interested in movie schedules and whatnot? That's most studios' logic when it comes to appealing the fans.

Anywho, those kids who follow DreamWorks on, let's say, Twitter probably saw "Trolls 2! April 10, 2020!" and thought "awesome!" Another thing that DreamWorks did was make an image that said "Trolls 2! Valentine's Day 2020!" Again, cue the kids' screams of "awesome!" Now, when it got moved again to 4/17/2020, no mention of it was made on social media except for news websites like Deadline and Variety. Yeah, like kids are totally going to check those!

My theory? I think DreamWorks sort of low-key knew that the film would always be an April 2020 release. They just moved it out of there at first to make way for Fast 9(or whatever they end up calling it this time, haha). Here's a little transcript I made:

(We see DreamWorks Animation CEO Chris deFaria sitting in his office when suddenly, his phone rings. He answers it.)
Chris: Hello?
(On the other line is Universal Pictures chairwoman Donna Langley)
Donna: Hey, Chris. How's it going?
Chris: I'm good. How are you, Donna?
Donna: I'm fine. I came to ask you about something.
Chris: Sure, what is it?
Donna: We're thinking about placing the ninth Fast & Furious movie in the release date that your Trolls sequel currently has. Do you mind if we push it back a week?
Chris: Not a problem, Donna. We want our film, along with that other one from Sony, to make the highest grosses possible.
Donna: Alright, Thanks, Chris! By the way, could you call up the social media department and ask them to make an image saying that the film is coming out on Valentine's Day in 2020?
Chris: Why? That's lying, Donna! Plus, what about the animated films that Fox and Paramount have locked for that month?
Donna: Don't worry about it, Chris. I've already spoken to them about it, and they're fine with it.
Chris: Well, if they're okay with it, then I better be as well. Okay. I'll do it, Donna.
Donna: Thanks, Chris! Bye!
Chris: Good bye!
(They hang up)

So there you have it!

Honestly, I think this trope can be applied to another Universal release. Which film, you may ask? The Secret Life of Pets 2.

When its 2016 predecessor had crossed $400 million at the worldwide box office in August of that year, Universal went ahead and slated a sequel for July 13, 2018. They had claimed this date back in October 2015 for an untitled "franchise film" from Illumination Entertainment...

But, here's the thing! 2018 is only two years away from when the first movie came out. I get that the film was really popular! I mean, when I saw it in theaters, the place was packed with people of all ages! This is because Universal does a damn good job at making audiences want to see Illumination's films. Why, take one look at the worldwide grosses for each of their movies and you'll see that a good chunk of them made it near or have even surpassed the $1 billion mark. However, this does not necessarily mean that an animated sequel should be rushed out just two years after its predecessor.

I think Illumination knows this as well, for their Despicable Me 2 opened in 2013. That was three years after the original. So, what did they do in January 2017? Well, aside from announcing the inevitable sequels to Minions and Sing(hence my prediction of Despicable Me 4 possibly getting a release date later this month), they announced that The Secret Life of Pets 2 had been delayed to another date that Illumination/Universal staked out back in October 2015, which was 7/3/2019. A person on Twitter named "@TheAnimationBoy" had said "Pets 2 has been pushed to 2019, I knew that 2018 was too early", and Illumination probably knew it as well!

Originally, I had insinuated that Illumination pushed the film back a year because they discreetly knew about Louis C.K., who voices Max in the film, and his sexual endeavors. Read it here if you like. For those who want it summed up, I had suspected that Illumination was using that extra time to find a replacement for Max and had only waited now to announce that C.K. had been dropped. That may still be part of it (and even then, I still think it was pretty stupid to say that the film moved up to 6/7/2019 out of the process of replacing Max going faster than expected. I'm starting to think, like I did before Louis C.K.'s allegations, that Universal did it out of confidence.), but now I suspect that Illumination staked out a 2018 date to simply hype up Pets 2.

Consider. Illumination's films are big hits with families, so much so that it's now gotten to the point where the studio has removed the word "Entertainment" from their logo on Despicable Me 3 and will likely continue to do so on future films of theirs, such as Dr. Seuss' The Grinch. Illumination has now become a well-known name in the veins of Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks. For a more recent example, when McDonald's put out their "Holiday Express" line of Happy Meal toys last month, Illumination had more representation then any other company whose characters appeared on the train cars. Not only did Despicable Me/Minions get two cars, but they had also made cars for both The Secret Life of Pets and Sing! I mean, their moves regularly get featured in Happy Meals anyways, but never like this! It goes to show you how much kids and(to a lesser extent)parents love these films. With that in mind, I'm guessing that a good chunk of casual people saw the "Secret Life of Pets 2, July 2018" announcement and got excited for it. After that, they never hear about it again until presumably late 2018 when the teaser trailer unspools before Dr. Seuss' The Grinch. By that time, they will have already forgotten that it was once set for this year.

That's two off the bat for Universal. Unsurprisingly, other studios are doing this as well...

If there's one set of films that always moves around Pixar's slate, it would have to be their sequels. I'm going to exclude Cars 2 and Cars 3 since the latter has always held on to, and eventually made, its 6/16/2017 release date.

I don't want this rant to go on for too long because I have something big brewing at the end, so I'll just sum it up quickly with this list:

Toy Story 3: slated for 2009, moved to 2010 to make way for Up
Monsters University: slated for 2012, moved to 2013 to make way for Disney Animation's Wreck-It Ralph
Finding Dory: slated for 2015, moved to 2016 to make way for The Good Dinosaur
Incredibles 2: slated for 2019, moved to 2018 to make way for Toy Story 4
Toy Story 4: slated for 2017, moved to 2018 to make way for Cars 3, moved again to 2019 to make way for Incredibles 2

Okay, I can give them a pass for Finding Dory since it had to be delayed in order to accommodate the struggling Good Dinosaur. But, the thing about Pixar is that their sequel announcements mostly cater to the nostalgic teenagers/college students who grew up watching the previous installments in their youth. You know, back when they didn't see animation as a "kids only" thing? They just see these announcements and say "oh my God, my childhood has come back!" Some of them will even race to the theater in droves no matter how good or bad the film ends up being. It's why Toy Story 3 and Finding Dory both hit the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office.

But one thing is for sure, they are certainly NOT going to keep these films on their radars like I (and probably a good number of you) will. When it eventually comes out, those people won't think jackshit about it and just enjoy the film for how nostalgic it made them feel!

(Side note: I wouldn't be surprised if Toy Story 4 got delayed again to 2020, either to make way for something like Suburban Fantasy World or so they can sit out 2019 like they did in 2014. I mean, John Lasseter did just leave the studio due to sexual allegations, so I wouldn't rule it out)

However, I think the worst offender of this trope in recent years is...

Context: Back in November 2015, Paramount Animation secured a bunch of release dates through 2019. One of the films on the then-new slate was Amusement Park, which had just been pegged for March 22, 2019. Later on, in January 2017, the film was moved up to the 7/13/2018 slot that Illumination's Secret Life of Pets sequel left vacant. Two months later at CinemaCon, the film was moved to 8/10/2018. I'll give them credit there, since Sony Pictures Animation had moved right into the 7/13/2018 slot with Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. In addition, two untitled films were slated that day, one of which was set for Amusement Park's old release date...

However, in August of 2017, Paramount moved the film all the way back where it came from...sort of. It is now set to open on March 15, 2019, which is one week before the aforementioned untitled film that has now been removed from the calendar. What, did Paramount always know that it would come out in March 2019? Did they secretly allow Sony to take that release date from them?

Now, like I said, there was another untitled film slated at CinemaCon 2017. It was set for July 31, 2020. Well, guess who came crashing in...

SpongeBob SquarePants 3, on top of already moving from 2/8/2019 to 8/2/2019!

Now, I understand that the third SpongeBob movie may need more time, but that's not my concern regarding Paramount Animation.

What I'm noticing is that every time Paramount secures a release date for an untitled animated film, it always goes to a movie that had a release date beforehand! I understand that their animation division got off to a rocky start, for they started up in 2011 and their third movie isn't out until March 23 of this year, but consider this:

This doesn't really affect casual people, for they may have little interest in what's coming. However, this goes as far as to pissing off those who are fans of animation! I feel that this applies to a lot of other studios as well. When a highly-anticipated film gets delayed, cue the moans of disappointment from animation fans. The Good Dinosaur, anyone?

On the same day that Paramount moved SpongeBob to 2020, they have also staked out a May 15 date in the same year for an untitled film from Paramount Animation. I won't rule out the possibility of it being something brand new(TINTIN 2, BIOTCH!), but I will NOT be surprised if the date ends up going to The Loud House Movie, which is currently slated for February 7, 2020. The slate would look like this:

03/23/2018-Sherlock Gnomes
03/15/2019-Amusement Park
05/15/2020-The Loud House Movie
07/31/2020-SpongeBob 3
03/19/2021-Luck

In my opinion, this is what needs to happen...

Simply stake out a release date for an untitled film, and then don't say what it is until about a year or so before it is set to be released. For example, the untitled film coming from Walt Disney Animation Studios on November 25, 2020. Ed Catmull may have said we were hearing about it soon, as in maybe the beginning of this year, but how about don't tell us what it is until November 2019 when Frozen 2 is right around the corner? By that time, the film will have its cast, crew, what have you locked and will likely be deemed more than ready to go!

If they did this, it would be a win-win situation for all groups. The studios would like it because they get to lock the release date years in advance before other competing studios can get it, the people who work on the movie are relieved because most of the work will be done - therefore taking all and any pressure off of them -, and the animation fans who look forward to these movies won't be disappointed about a delay since the film will already be locked in place and ready to go full steam ahead!

Now, this is all wishful thinking on my part. When a film gets delayed, I just have to accept it and move on with my life. However, the fun part is that I get to predict what will be released, what will move, etc. I mean, that is the whole purpose of this blog, right? Even in the articles where I ramble about things, I try to include a little bit of predictions in them(like the Paramount slate I made above).

What say you?