Industry News
by saidiontheside

Saidi’s Take – 11/22/2022

  • Of course, “Black Panther Wakanda Forever” kept the #1 spot in its second weekend with $66 million mostly due to the lack of any major wide releases this past weekend.  The movie “The Menu” did decent box office coming in at #2 with 9 million and a surprise #3 was the faith based “The Chosen Season 3” with $8.2 million.  The other wide release “She Said” disappointed coming in at #6 with $2.2 million which is only half the predicted box office for the movie.  Overall, the weekend had a $100 million total which is down about 50% from last weekend but it’s still a decent number.  
  • Most expect “Black Panther Wakanda Forever” to stay at #1 over the holiday weekend and probably until “Avatar: The Way of Water” opens in mid-Dec.  Some people think that Disney could also be #2 next weekend with the opening of the animated “Strange World”.
  • New trailers just premiered: The first Pixar movie opening next year “Elemental“ and the FINAL “Avatar: The Way of Water” (which still looks like a video game to me).
  • However, the new teaser trailer for “Indiana Jones 5” hasn’t surfaced yet although there has been a TON of promotion for the movie last week.  Empire Magazine had “first look” photos in it’s new issue and there’s a story online about how they made Harrison Ford look 40 years younger.  If he looks the way Jeff Bridges looked in “Tron Legacy”, I’ll be very disappointed.
  • The REALLY BIG news that happened last night is that Disney decided to suddenly fire Bob Chapek and have the former head Bob Iger return for a couple years until a new replacement is found.  According to reports, the last straw was Bob Chapek mentioning budget cuts, a hiring freeze, and possible layoffs a couple weeks ago.  No reason was given for why they decided to announce it last night.  A ton of the Disney executives were actually at the final Elton John show at Dodger Stadium that was streamed live on Disney+.  According to reports, even Bob Capek was going to be at that concert. Disney employees and some movie theater executives were all celebrating the return of Bob Iger on social media today.

Little bit of humor….

Why not?!?!  Because the movie theater is not in your living room.  I’ve never seen someone with a laptop in a movie theater and I hope I never will.  The glare from cell phones is bad enough.