A supremely frustrated theater owner by the name of Gerard Lemoine has chosen to display his anger with Disney's decision to release MULAN via Disney+ in a rather extreme fashion. Lemoine, who owns the French indie venue Cinepal in Palaiseau, located in a suburb south of Paris, recently posted a video of him destroying a MULAN pop-up art via Twitter.
You can watch the video of Lemoine going ham on the MULAN theater display below:
La réaction d’un exploitant suite à la décision de Disney… #Mulan pic.twitter.com/I2uWICofve
— Destination Ciné (@destinationcine) August 6, 2020
“My video exceeds my expectations a little,” Lemoine told Deadline when questioned about his wrathful online post. At present, Lemoine's video has over 328K views on Twitter and that number is only going up each time I refresh my screen. The post is also getting a staggering amount of replies, most of which I cannot read on account of them being written in French.
When asked to elaborate on the situation, Lemoine explained that his frustration reached its boiling point when he'd heard that Disney would premiere MULAN on their streaming service on September 4th. He then added that he's been hyping MULAN "for months," and had been banking on ticket sales from the film serving as a primary boost to his re-opening efforts after COVID-19 closures.
While it's true that cinemas re-opened in France in June, Lemoine attests that it's been difficult to attract audiences while the pandemic is ongoing.
“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].”
With Disney bringing MULAN to Disney+ (for the arguably lofty price of $29.99), Lemoine says that he is now hoping that Christopher Nolan's TENET, which is scheduled to open in France on August 26, will be the cinematic experience that puts asses back in seats. “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!”
What do you think about Lemoine's display of violence? Should the destruction of Disney's MULAN display have remained a private act of cathartic aggression or was Lemoine right for sharing his frustration online? Has Disney done lasting damage to cinemas by releasing MULAN via Disney+ at the top of September? Has the House of Mouse lost their minds for charging $29.99 for the film to customers who already subscribe to their streaming service? I know you all have opinions about this stuff, so let's hear what you've got in the comments section below.
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