If you have a passing interest in film and animation, you’ve likely heard of Coyote Vs. Acme, a feature film in the Roger Rabbit tradition of blending 2D animation with live action focusing on characters from Warner Brothers’ Roadrunner cartoons. The film would have focused on Wile E. Coyote suing the ubiquitous Acme corporation after decades of selling him faulty products, and by all accounts appeared to be a passion project from everyone involved. The movie was, in fact, complete and ready for release- only for Warner Brothers to kill it at the last possible second in the name of a multi-million dollar tax writeoff.
To be fair, Roadrunner and John Cena sounds like a garbage movie idea. I doubt anyone has missed anything of substance.
Imagine you’re an aspiring movie director. You’ve worked for 10 years to get your first big break. Sure it’s just a shitty road runner movie for kids, but it’s being financed by a major studio for global release. You do casting, shoot the movie, edit it and do ADR, start promoting it, and then the studio cancels it at the last minute just so some Hollywood exec can pump the WB stock price a couple of points and collect a slightly bigger bonus.
Now this is just a fictitious spin I put on this, but the point still stands. Artists are getting screwed over by 1 percenters. Film studios are axing the one thing they’re supposed to do - make movies. This situation is a part of the same problem of Hollywood pursuing corporate profits at the expense of anything else, which also led to the WGA/SAG strikes.