Cinema Owner Smashed Mulan Poster Angrily As It Won’t be Screened; Video Probably Got More Views Than Mulan

By
Shawn Ambrose
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People react differently to crises.

When Singaporeans learned that all bubble tea stores in the country would close, for example, some stayed in bed for days crying themselves to sleep while others popped marshmallows in their Teh O and pretended it was the real thing.

Some people simply handle bad news better than others.

Cinema Owner Smashed Mulan Poster Angrily As It Won’t be Screened; Video Probably Got More Views Than Mulan

Say you’re the owner of an independent cinema in France, for instance, and you’ve just been informed that Mulan will not be showing in theatres. What do you do?

a) Accept it and move on with your life

b) Express your anger by uttering a curse word or two, and move on with your life

Instead of taking one of these two options, one French cinema owner decided to very rationally smash the heck out of a Mulan poster in his cinema.

The man, Gerard Lemoine, used a baseball bat to wreck a pop-up promotional poster of Mulan that was standing innocently in his cinema.

A video of his violent attack on the poor poster was uploaded to Twitter, where it was viewed 1.9 million times, according to The Straits Times.

The original video couldn’t be found, but it has been reposted on various sites.

Promoted Movie For Months

In an interview with Deadline, Lemoine explained that he had been promoting the movie for months, and hoped it would boost his reopening efforts.

As you know, many countries have shuttered their cinemas in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Cinemas reopened in France in June, but attracting audiences has been a tough task.

“It’s really a huge effort to stay open right now for most of us, but we were assuming there would be some ambitious movie releases in the coming weeks,” he said.

“By losing Mulan, we lost the possibility of offering our audiences a long-awaited film that would have helped us after these past hard weeks. It is also a bad message to send to the public [who had been expecting a theatrical release].”

The problem is that cinema owners primarily make their money from sales at the snack bar, not movie tickets.

According to The Week, cinemas only get around 40% of ticket sales, which is not much, considering all their expenses (employee salaries, rent, and maintenance.)

In fact, the profit margin for theatres tends to be around 4%, which has been slashed further due to the coronavirus.

Now you can see why he was so upset.

Lemoine is now pinning his hopes on Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which is scheduled to screen in theatres in France on 26 August.

“We thank Warner a lot for releasing Tenet in late August. But it’s not enough. Studios need to understand that if they cancel these films or put them on platforms, I won’t be able to last very long. I have devoted my life to showing movies and I don’t want to die!”.

If Warner Bros announces that Tenet will not be shown in theatres either, you can probably expect another video of Lemoine smashing a Tenet poster to pieces.

Still Screening in Singapore Cinemas

Now, before you go out and start smashing Mulan posters, you’ll be happy to hear that Mulan will still be screening in theatres in Singapore.

Image: Tenor

The movie will open in cinemas here on 4 Sept.

Disney announced that the movie will be released on Disney+ for a premium fee in countries where the service had launched, with France being one of them.

Conversely, Mulan will still be screened in cinemas in countries without Disney+ and where theatres have re-opened.

Though if Disney later announces that Mulan will not be screened in theatres here either, please keep your baseball bats away. Those poor posters have done no harm.

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Shawn Ambrose
Email: [email protected]