Movies

UPDATE, writethru: Disney/20th Century Studios’ Free Guy led the game at global turnstiles this session with a $51M worldwide debut. That includes domestic’s over-performance of $28.4M, and a $22.5M start in 41 material markets at the international box office — the latter in line with pre-weekend expectations. The offshore debut on the Shawn Levy-directed pic

Sony Pictures Classics’ The Lost Leonardo had a notable debut on three screens on a quiet weekend for specialty openings. The film about da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi painting opened to $13,209 with a per screen average of $4,403 ahead of a national release. The distributor has been a steadying presence a tough arthouse climate. Its

EXCLUSIVE:  We hear that New Line’s 8-Bit Christmas will premiere exclusively on HBO Max on Nov. 25th, in all countries where the service is available, meaning U.S. and Latin America. Here in the U.S., that date is Thanksgiving Day, a prime time for watching holiday movies on the couch. 8-Bit Christmas will be distributed by

Disney/20th Century Studio’s Free Guy is off to a very hopeful start, clocking $2.2M last night from previews that started at 6PM.  It’s a number that’s just under the Thursday night of Disney’s Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt family movie Jungle Cruise which made $2.7M. That film had Thursday night as a pure theatrical window before becoming available day-and-date on

Disney CEO Bob Chapek continued to emphasize the flexibility of the studio’s controversial theatrical-day-and-date Disney+ Premier model given the uncertain times of Covid. “We value flexibility in being able to make last minute calls,” said Chapek on today’s earnings call without indicating any additional future dynamic window releases beyond the studio’s recent summer handful of Cruella,

EXCLUSIVE: We’re hearing very loud rumblings from exhibition that Sony is poised to relocate Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania.  In the case of Venom 2, it’s to another destination on the release calendar. First we heard January, then Oct. 15; Sony hasn’t decided I hear what the new date is or whether they’ll continue to stay put on

After the industry’s and Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson’s ire over Disney’s day-and-date strategy, Disney returns to the theatrical-window form this weekend with Free Guy, the video game-inspired romantic comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Shawn Levy. It’s Disney’s first wide release respecting a theatrical window since 20th Century Studios’ horror pic The Empty Man

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron sees two things protecting the circuit in the face of surging Covid cases trigered by the Delta variant – its own Safe & Clean protocols, and vaccinations. “To our knowledge there has not been a single transmission of Covid by an AMC guest over the past year,” he said. “Most

Disney/Pixar’s sea monster story Luca has been granted an August 20 release date in China, signaling that the end of the giant market’s latest unofficial blackout period may be afoot. While Luca will take a prime slot amid a series of local holdovers and is the first Hollywood studio title to release since June, its

UPDATED  with full cast: Producers of the upcoming Broadway musical MJ, which begins previews December 6 at Neil Simon Theatre ahead of opening night February 1, has unveiled the full cast joining Myles Frost as Michael Jackson. The show originally had been set to begin previews in mid-2020 before the Broadway lockdown. It features a

EXCLUSIVE: Samba TV has updated the running U.S. viewership on Disney+ Premier’s Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt adventure film Jungle Cruise and it’s 1.5M U.S. households through the pic’s first ten-days. Multiply that by the pic’s in-home purchase price of $29.99 for Disney+ subscribers and Jungle Cruise has taken in $44.985M stateside in those homes clocked by Samba TV.

Refresh for latest…: After debuting to $6.7M from five overseas markets last weekend, Warner Bros/DC’s The Suicide Squad moved into wide offshore release this session, taking $35M from 69 total international box office markets. This is a touch below the like-for-like opening of 2020’s disappointing Birds Of Prey ($36.6M at today’s rates) and under the

It was a triumphant second weekend for indie Stillwater from Focus Features, which hit the $10 million mark in 2,611 theatres (up by 80) and 233 DMA’s in North America, where it was no. 5. The Matt Damon-starrer held up strongly from its debut, dipping 45% — compared with a 64% drop for The Green

Warner Bros. fired up James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad last night, the studio’s first Thursday preview in a long time arguably since pre-pandemic; the DC R-rated ensemble seeing $4.1M off showtimes that began at 7PM; the biggest for a R-rated movie during the pandemic. Previously, Universal/Blumhouse’s R-rated The Forever Purge made $1.3M on its Thursday night.

Sony Pictures Classics has set a Nov. 19 New York and Los Angeles theatrical release for their British romantic drama Mothering Sunday. SPC picked up the movie in September and gave it a world premiere at Cannes last month. The pic will further expand to other U.S. markets after its initial late fall release. Starring Odessa

While the delta variant continues to be a stumbling block for the overseas box office, it’s not entirely certain that’s the continuing case at the domestic box office as more people become vaccinated. Despite comfort levels for moviegoing being down over the last three weeks per NRG, it’s not all doom-and-gloom with such parameters on

Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions announced today that they’ll release the first of three movies based on the Exorcist franchise IP on October 13, 2023. Universal already had an untitled Blumhouse movie scheduled on the date which follows in the wake of the first October weekend of 2023 where both Disney Marvel and Warner Bros.

UPDATED with TIFF exit: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Paramount’s CG/live-action movie that was unset from its planned September 17 release, will also not world premiere at next month’s Toronto Film Festival. It had been set as a Gala Presentation via the pic’s Canadian rightsholder eOne, which confirmed the news today that it was removing

EXCLUSIVE: Disney’s Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt family adventure movie Jungle Cruise was watched by 777,000 U.S. Households in its first weekend on Disney+ Premier according to streaming analytics corp Samba TV. At a price of $29.99 that translates to an estimated $23.3M amount of revenue earned for Jungle Cruise in Samba monitored TV households. Samba monitors streaming viewership in 3M