'Bill & Ted' and 'Mulan': Is Hollywood using nostalgia as bait to recover from Covid-19 losses?
The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent theatre shutdown have hurt a lot of pockets in Hollywood. But now as theaters prepare to resume operations, it looks like studios are banking on an old favorite to rake in the big bucks. Nostalgia baiting refers to the release of reboots and reimaginings of popular childhood movies in order to attract people who were children when the original movie came out. 'Finding Dory' and the new 'Lion King' are both parts of this trend and so are movies like Disney's 'Mulan' and United Artists' 'Bill & Ted Face the Music'.
The live-action remake of 'Mulan' was among the first films to be delayed due to the pandemic. It is now set to release on July 24, making it the first major project to arrive in theaters since the lockdown began. Disney has clearly taken some heavy losses with the closure of Disneyland and the drying up of theatre revenue. So it makes sense that the House of Mouse might want to back a tried and tested strategy to win back some of that lost revenue.
And Disney isn't the only one buying into the trend. 'Bill & Ted Face the Music', the third installment in the cult classic 'Bill & Ted' franchise, was originally set to hit theaters on August 21. But now the Dean Parisot-helmed threequel starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter will instead arrive on August 14, going up against Gerard Butler's 'Greenland'. Even as movies like 'Wonder Woman 1984' and Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' get pushed to later dates, 'Bill & Ted' being released early is a clear sign that the distributor United Artists is highly invested in this movie doing well. Now we'll just have to wait and see whether that gambit pays off.
Starring Liu Yifei, Donnie Yen, Jason Scott Lee, Gong Li, Yoson An and Jet Li, 'Mulan' is the story of a young woman who goes to war in place of her sick father, pretending to be a man in order to join the army. The movie is based on the 1998 animated classic featuring the vocal talents of Ming-Na Wen, Eddie Murphy, BD Wong and more. 'Bill & Ted Face the Music' is a much-awaited sequel to 1989's 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' and features Reeves and Winter in their beloved roles as Ted Logan and Bill Preston respectively. The movie will see the old buddies racing to create a song in 78 minutes in order to save all life in the universe.
