Pathé, the largest cinema operator in the Netherlands, will not screen the long-awaited film Wonder Woman 1984 from 16 December for the time being. A spokesperson confirmed this in conversation with NU.nl on Tuesday. The film can be seen in the nineteen theaters of Kinepolis.
Pathé, the largest cinema operator in the Netherlands, will not screen the long-awaited film Wonder Woman 1984 from 16 December for the time being. A spokesperson confirmed this in conversation with NU.nl on Tuesday. The film can be seen in the nineteen theaters of Kinepolis.
According to Pathé, distributor Warner Bros. unilaterally amended the business conditions. As a result, there is now “no agreement on the display conditions”.
“We are aware that our visitors are very much looking forward to this film and we are committed to showing Wonder Woman 1984 – under the right screening conditions – in our cinemas from December 17th.” The new match week will start on that day.
The company claims to show films only if the conditions have been agreed in advance with the distributors “to the satisfaction of both parties”. “That is no different now than usual.”
Cinema chain Vue would be in the same situation as Pathé. A spokesperson said he is currently negotiating with Warner.
Warner Bros. releases the film anyway
Warner announced on Tuesday that he did not want to comment on the matter. “We will release the film on December 16,” said a spokesman. He cannot say in which theaters the film will be shown. Pathé and Vue own most of the commercial cinemas in the Netherlands.
The Netherlands would be one of the first countries where Wonder Woman 1984 can be seen. The cinemas initially seemed happy with the news that the action movie with actress Gal Gadot was released in December. Many major Hollywood titles have been postponed until well into 2021 due to the corona crisis.
According to Pathé, the conversations around Wonder Woman 1984 are separate from the discussion about Warner’s plan to release major films simultaneously in cinemas and on their streaming platform HBO Max in 2021. American cinema operators and many filmmakers, such as Christopher Nolan, are not happy with this plan. Nolan previously made with Warner, among other things, Tenet, one of the few major cinema films that Hollywood has released this year.
Warner Bros. The Netherlands announced in a short response last Friday that all major films from the studio will also be shown in the cinemas in 2021. HBO Max is currently not offered in the Netherlands. But the boss of HBO Max reported last week that the service will be rolled out in Europe in the course of 2021.