Movies

It was a magnificent movie weekend. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom. All hits, a blow-out! So what else have you got? The question sounds obnoxious, like its near-cousin, the always infuriating: “What have you done for me lately?” But it’s an honest query, and an important one for a strike-bound, streaming-bent, pandemic-emergent industry that is

While the Hollywood Studios and WGA and SAG-AFTRA are at a standstill in labor talks –streaming residuals being a big bone of contention– the theatrical side of the business exploded with Barbenheimer together grossing over $511M worldwide, $235.5M of that being domestic. Never before in the history of Hollywood movies have two films opened respectively

Another 2023 theatrical release gets moved due to the SAG-AFTRA strike as MGM is pushing the Zendaya starring, Luca Guadagnino directed R-Rated tennis romance to April 26, 2024. The pic was scheduled to open stateside on Sept. 15, working off the heat of its Venice Film Festival opening night premiere. That world premiere is not

Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated and highly-reviewed Oppenheimer has begun overseas rollout with strong results versus some of the director’s previous titles. On Wednesday, the Universal film opened in 10 offshore markets, grossing $2.4M and led by France and Indonesia. These are early days as the critically-lauded Cillian Murphy-led biographical drama/political thriller will be playing a total

Return To Dust, an arthouse hit in China last summer before being pulled from release, opens Stateside this weekend with Film Movement presenting on two screens – NYC’s BAM Rose Cinema and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, expanding to LA and Seattle next Friday. The distributor acquired the film directed by Li Ruijun

In a contorted legal case, a Delaware judge today struck down a settlement that would have helped AMC Entertainment move ahead with steps to raise cash and shore up its stock. “To cut to the chase, the settlement cannot be approved as submitted,” Judge Morgan Zurn of Delaware Chancery Court wrote in a 69-page opinion

EXCLUSIVE: The box office event of the year which has Warner Bros. mass female attraction, Barbie, and Universal’s Christopher Nolan directed, Oppenheimer, has officially fired off its confetti guns with the movies seeing respectively an estimated $20M and $9M+ from their previews. Again, these numbers could fluctuate by morning. Even if Barbie falls short of

Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan are marking their sixth collaboration with Oppenheimer, the biographical epic about the titular complicated and brilliant physicist tasked with leading the Manhattan Project, the secret effort to create the atom bomb, and the moral and political struggles that followed. This is the first time Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, is essaying

“You’re being managed on Barbie” was a snarky text I received last night, “it’s at least $130M.” The point of that is the projections out there for the Greta Gerwig directed feature take of the Mattel doll are indeed wild. Rivals were spotting $90M-$125M; Warners asserting $75M. Today, to support the crazy fever of moviegoing

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema said CEO Shelli Taylor is retiring in August and named president Michael Kustermann as its new chief executive. The fast-growing dine-in chain, that’s been hugely successful luring post-pandemic moviegoers back to theaters, said its board of directors, including Taylor and executive chairman Tim League, selected Kustermann as Taylor steps down, effective August

On the edge of what is bound to be the domestic box office’s third $200M+ weekend thanks to Barbie and Oppenheimer, the motion picture industry’s fret is whether the great post-pandemic moviegoing rebound is about to screech to a halt due to the SAG-AFTRA strike and actors prohibited from promoting. Barbie and Oppenheimer are expected

At a time when the industry is suffering through historic dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the motion picture industry is poised to see an enormous weekend at the box office with Warner Bros./Mattel’s long awaited toy feature adaptation Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s World War II era three-hour adult drama Oppenheimer reaping a combined

Talk about respecting a theatrical window: Disney has set a Disney+ global premiere date for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 of Aug. 2, that’s 90 days after the pic’s theatrical release of May 5. While Disney got a lot of slack during CEO Bob Chapek’s era for executing theatrical day-and-date releases on Disney+ during

Searchlight Pictures’ Sundance-winning original comedy Theater Camp will take in an estimated $281,172 or $46.9k per theater at six locations opening weekend — the best limited opening for the distributor since Jojo Rabbit in the fall of 2019 ($349k in five locations). That’s after the A CinemaScore film on Sunday pulled ahead of Searchlight’s The

What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise

SATURDAY PM UPDATE: Facts are facts, and Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One set a 5-day opening domestic record for the franchise with $80M, we hear. Previous best 5-day opening belonged to 2000’s Mission: Impossible II which cleared a Wednesday-Sunday take over Memorial Day weekend of $78.8M. The 3-day record still belongs to

Gkids has acquired North American rights to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, the Japanese maestro’s latest feature which Toho is releasing today in Japan as Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (How Do You Live?). The Boy and the Heron is now the official international title. This all-rights deal marks a continuation of Gkids’ long-standing

Expressing solidarity with Hollywood actors on Day 1 of the SAG-AFTRA strike, specialty distributors polled were anxiously juggling opening weekend Q&As and movie premieres without talent. They were trying to clarify which actors on what international productions are SAG-AFTRA, bound by the guild, or neither. And, for those involved in production, trying to pin down

Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is off and running overseas with a $39.8M cume through Thursday in 48 international box office markets. This includes Wednesday openings in some markets and a strong paid preview program. With domestic’s Wednesday/Thursday plus previews, that brings the global total on the Tom Cruise-starrer to $$63.6M through

AMC Networks had made it official that Scott Shooman as been upped to Head of its Film Group which encompasses IFC Films, RLJE Films and the Shudder streaming service.   Shooman has been serving as the interim head in the wake of the shocking exit of IFC Films President Arianna Bocco back in March. Shooman

Box office for most Broadway shows last week wilted a bit as June’s Tony glow gave way to plain old New York summer heat, though a couple newcomers were among the handful bucking the downward trend, one very impressively so. In its second week of previews, Back To The Future: The Musical grossed a whopping

Sony/Stage 6 Films/Blumhouse’s Insidious: The Red Door may have stolen No. 1 away from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the weekend box office, but Angel Studios’ indie wonder Sound of Freedom won Monday with an estimated $4 million. All of this before Paramount/Skydance’s Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One takes all

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One is looking at $6M-$7M in previews so far, which is bound to be higher than the Thursday previews of the last Mission Impossible – Fallout back in 2018 which did $6M. This is according to sources. The figures we’re seeing now could go higher or lower.

Can Tom Cruise save summer? Despite the onslaught of shiny product that hasn’t delivered, i.e. Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the summer domestic box office at $2.1 billion per Comscore is pacing 6% behind last year’s for the period of May 1 to July 9. All eyes are on the best

Refresh for latest…: Busy weekend at the international box office with a strong scary new entry, some unexpected spark in holds and a milestone for a long-running franchise. Out of the gate this frame, Sony/Screen Gems/Stage 6 Films/Blumhouse’s Insidious: The Red Door knocked out the biggest overseas horror debut since 2019. With $31.4M from 52

When it comes to horror movies at the box office, Sony resurrected its track record this past weekend with the opening of Blumhouse/Stage 6 Films’ fifthquel, Insidious: The Red Door which had a $32.65M domestic opening, $64M Worldwide debut. On the domestic front, that’s the second best horror opening for Sony after 2004’s The Grudge

Sony Pictures has set a Feb. 9, 2024 theatrical release for the Wayfarer Studios’ Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. Pic starring Blake Lively and directed by Justin Baldoni is a feature take on Hoover’s best-selling novel. Logline: Though coming from a complicated past, Lily Bloom (Lively) has always known the life she wants. While

A sci-fi comedy by Mel Eslyn and a literary noir by Alice Troughton – who are, respectively, the longtime producer for the Duplass brothers, and an award-winning UK television director (Dr. Who, Cucumber, The Living And The Dead) — debut in limited release this weekend, alongside Adele Lim’s Joy Ride, a Lionsgate wide-release – marking

Sony/Stage 6 Films/Blumhouse’s fifthquel Insidious: The Red Door nearly locked out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yesterday at the box office. The Patrick Wilson starring and directed PG-13 horror film scared up $5M in previews at 2,806 locations that began showtimes at 4PM. That amount of money is very close to what Indy

UPDATED EXCLUSIVE: Angel Studios’ thriller Sound of Freedom starring Jim Caviezel has seen its presales spike to $10 million. This is before the pic’s opening on July 4 in north of 2,600 locations. Many rivals are tracking this semi-faith-based, based-on-a-true-story title about about former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard, who took rescuing abducted children around