Film

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

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.

The revival of West Side Story will not return when Broadway repoens its doors in September, producer Kate Horton said on Monday. The iconic musical was one of only a handful of major titles that had not made an official announcement about its return plans after New York declared back in May that theatres could

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

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

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

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

Sara Bareilles won’t be the only Waitress cast member with prior stage-diner experience when the musical reopens on Broadway in September: Producers announced today that Waitress vets Eric Anderson, Charity Angel Dawson, Christopher Fitzgerald, Caitlin Houlahan, Dakin Matthews and Joe Tippett will be back for at least part of the show’s limited engagement. Producers Barry

AMC Entertainment CEO and newly anointed chairman Adam Aron is having a moment with shareholders — that army of retail investors he said in June numbered approximately 4.1 million and own more than 80% of the stock. Some of them found it hard to access the company’s annual meeting Thursday, which was held in person

Refresh for latest…: In its global launch, Disney’s Jungle Cruise grossed $61.8M at worldwide turnstiles. That does not include the “over $30M” that came from Disney+ in the day-and-date streaming release (which leads to $91.8M as Anthony has reported). In pure theatrical terms, the Dwayne Johnson/Emily Blunt-starrer performed ahead of expectations domestically, and came in

Sony Picture Classics and Neon fared well in their small releases this week with Nine Days and Ailey respectively, running across 6 total locations in New York, Los Angeles and Irvine – both notching heavy per screen averages with the former leading to its wider release next week. Nine Days hit NYC (Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square)

Sunday AM Update: Refresh for chart and more analysis  Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt kept its ship together at the box office over the weekend, and actually saw an uptick in Friday-to-Saturday grosses (when you back out Thursday previews of $2.7M) of +15% which puts the adventure film at $34.2M, an opening that’s not far

New Line’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It has grossed more than $196M WW, catapulting the entire Conjuring franchise through seven movies past $2 billion in global ticket sales. The series from filmmaker James Wan and producer Peter Safran kicked off in 2013 with the first title yielding $320.2M WW and another $321.6 M from its 2016

Refresh for updates…Disney is reporting $2.7M for its Dwayne Johnson-Emily Blunt family adventure movie Jungle Cruise off 7PM shows. A24’s Dev Patel fantasy movie Green Knight came up strong with $750K at 2,790 theaters. The NY-based indie distrib’s previous preview highs include Ari Aster’s Midsommar (which started on a Tuesday) with $1.1M and the filmmaker’s Hereditary which did a $1.3M Thursday. Green Knight has