Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.
Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.
He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.
Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.
But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.
Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.
Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.
So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?
Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.
Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.
Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.
Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.
Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.
Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.
But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?
Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.
Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.
So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.
Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.
At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.
The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.
Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.
All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.
Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.
But by GOD is he trying.
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For what I've seen, the ST production team has been working all o this time since none of them are part of neither the WGA nor SAG-Aftra. This probably means they've advanced a lot of work. Do you think that once the strikes are over, this will make it easier for them to start filming as soon as possible or even for the filming process to take less time than initially predicted? (Around a year)
It’s possible.
But it’s also worth noting that them needing a full year to film ST5 is for a multitude of reasons.
With all the delays, they now have to rework their entire schedule post-strike, as it won’t look the same as it looked before the strike. They need to be able to fit dozens of cast-members schedules together to ensure that their availability aligns with other cast-members they have scenes with.
While ST does get first dibs more than the casts other projects because of their contract with Netflix, it’s a lot easier to plan a schedule when you get everyone’s schedules, put them all together, and look at what aligns and what doesn’t, to make it easier for everyone.
For example, it made sense that despite certain cast members being unavailable in May to film, there were rumors (multiple statements from Noah himself) that he would start filming in May. And that’s likely because he started school again in the fall, and so it makes sense they looked at his schedule and determined it would be best to squeeze in as much filming for him as possible from May-August before school started in the fall, with him having a good chunk of time throughout the school year to go back to school for tests, etc..
Another example is David Harbour, who said he was going to be filming Thunderbolts in Atlanta simultaneously while he was filming ST5 in Atlanta. This means he would likely have at least 1-2 weeks of filming for ST and then 1-2 weeks of filming Thunderbolts, with days off and on within the mix, in order to accommodate both films schedules and when they need him for certain scenes.
I think a lot of fans assume that 1 year of filming means nonstop filming for each cast member, which is just not the case.
Even if certain actors have a lot of scenes in each episode, there are still scenes without them.
For example, let’s say Millie has 8 scenes total in 5x01 or something. There are still going to be several scenes without her, upwards of over 10 scenes give or take. That's scenes with other characters filming without Millie present because she does not have to be because she is not in any of the shots. Millie does not need to be strictly in Atlanta for those 1-2 weeks that it takes to film the block of scenes that do not include her. If they can make it so actors are able to be gone for 1-2 weeks of time, as opposed to just filming 1-2 scenes and then having to wait 2-3 days for their next scene, they’ll try to. Not saying that won’t happen occasionally, as I'm sure there are times when it's maybe a week on and week off or three weeks on and one off, but still, doing it in larger blocks to make it easier and accommodate everyone, is much more realistic because it just makes it a lot smoother to flesh out the schedule like that with their main (high demand) cast, and then fit side characters (not as high demand aka more wide open availability) around that.
For example, Amybeth only had like 4ish scenes total throughout the entirety of s4, and she lives out of the country, so it wouldn’t make sense to have her stay in Atlanta for upwards of a year. Instead Amybeth was only in Atlanta filming for two weeks total for those scenes featuring her, from mid May-early June 2021. That meant they had to ensure Maya (and Joe lmao) were available during that time Amybeth would be on set bc they had scenes together. Fun fact, if you pay close attention to the shots with Vickie during the pep rally, it's clear that it was filmed on a different day than the rest of the scenes, bc in the wide shots we don't even see the band on the bleachers (TV magic!). This means that only that corner with the band was filled up and the rest of the bleachers were empty when they shot that scene with Amybeth and Maya. No one else needed to be there since it wasn't necessary.
Usually, filming for 1 episode takes about a month. But it’s likely much of ST5’s episodes will be a little over 60 minutes as opposed to like 50 minutes. So giving them about 1-1.5 months to film each episode, 8 total (unless that changes), puts them at approximately 12 months aka a year. While some episodes might take only a month (or maybe even less) to film, the finale is going to be over 2 hours, which means filming for the finale will take closer to 2 months potentially.
This means 12 months is a very good estimate for how long it could take to film ST5 overall. Though to be fair, given the circumstances of them being on hiatus for so long and maybe being more prepared, maybe it’ll take a little bit less than that? But I honesty don’t think it will be by much, as most years they end up underestimating and it takes a little bit longer than anticipated bc of impromptu delays. (This is also assuming the strike ends and filming starts in Oct, only a couple months from now, which isn't guaranteed whatsoever either).
Even if the strike ends and filming is in full swing and they have a plan to finish in 12 months, there’s no way of knowing for certain if something else could impact filming and cause it to take longer. We should know by now with COVID and the strike that nothing is guaranteed until it’s all filmed. Once it’s all filmed, THEN we can actually start theorizing about when it will premiere.
ST5 premiered about 8 months after filming, not only because post-production is time consuming in and of itself, but because they wanted to have it come out in summer as opposed to Spring. Maybe the first few episodes were ready way earlier, but the later ones weren't even close, so holding off for a more suitable release period, Summer, which they prefer for ST releases anyways, makes sense.
A best case scenario rn, that I allow myself to hope for still, despite everything (assuming the studios get their heads out of their asses asap), is ST5 starting filming in October this year and finishing in October 2024. This puts them at a similar roll out period to ST4, with about 8 months of post-production and a premiere in the summer sometime in 2025 between May-August, whether that include two volumes or not. Netflix is a lot more likely to push for a summer release, regardless of them starting/ending filming sooner than October. Hell, even if they finished editing those first 5 eps by like March or something, Netflix would much rather stretch and wait to release those in early summer with the rest in mid/late summer again, bc they’ve never done Spring releases and I don’t think they’re going to start now. Especially bc I think it will be pushing it in terms of the working conditions being way too strenuous for VFX/editors. I'd rather have them push for a summer release and take their time and make it as good as they can, then to rush and make a spring release and have it feel half ass, only to be over forever.
I know people get sad knowing how long it's going to take to come out. But I just can't comprehend wanting it to be out ASAP, and most likely poorly, only to be over forever. Like this is the end for real. Maybe you'll see one of the characters pop up in a spin off, at best, but it wont be any of the mains that is for certain.
ST5 in 2024 is 100% not happening, so unless you want s5 to be edited for a mere 2 months at absolutely shit quality, let it go. If you want to hope for Spring 2025 go ahead, but that release period is already unprecedented with/without the strike, so don't hold your breath. I would try to accept ST5 Summer 2025 and hope that is as far as it goes. TBH if the strike goes past October, Netflix is going to have to come up with a deal because they are risking ST not premiering in the Summer like they want. If they don't make a deal by then, they'll presumably be forced to make a deal asap, otherwise they’d just be fucking themselves over.
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