I created the thread expressly for the purpose of discussing the
new trend that has been happening
post-pandemic. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me that giving specific examples of how this has been happening post-pandemic wouldn't be enough to get the point across that I'm talking very specifically and exclusively about what has been happening post-pandemic.
Look, the issue of lost films in general (by which I mean ALL lost films ever) is one that is very dear to my heart; but it is also very, very, very old news. We've known about that for decades and, sadly, there is absolutely nothing to be done about it.
But what is happening post-pandemic is
a whole new phenomenon altogether, one that doesn't involve a) political censorship by the state; or b) long, drawn-out battles between stubborn directors and equally determined studio chiefs over which version of a movie to release to the public - or a studio simply taking the movie out of the director's hands, re-editing it to their hearts desire, and then releasing the truncated version (think Terry Gilliam's
Brazil).
The new phenomenon is simply different because the studio just shuts down everything and doesn't even attempt to release a butchered copy of the movie the director made. They simply decide the movie is never to see the light of day, period. And part of the deal with using those movies as a tax write-off is that they must ABSOLUTELY make sure the movie never gets to see the light of day, at least as far as the reporting on the matter from the most reputable trade publications in Hollywood (I'm no tax expert, but I take their word on this, since they've cited their sources).
It would be bad enough to see a butchered version of
Batgirl or
Coyote vs. Acme, which would at the very least allow us to imagine what a director's version might have looked like. Instead, we are left with nothing but (at best) a few stills and wardrobe images, and pretty much zero footage (except possibly some cellphone video taken during the shoot, but I mean actual footage that was meant to be in the finished film).
That's just the gist of it - we had definitely seen studios taking away movies from directors before, but at least they released
something, however badly butchered it had been.
Now, we're getting pretty much zero.