Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: The new movie “The Exorcist Believer” was #1 for this past weekend with about $26.5 million but didn’t meet its predictions. Most news are guessing that the people over at Universal are a little disappointed. Especially since they paid about $400 million for the franchise back in 2021. They’re expecting to make a trilogy of movies – like the recent successful trilogy of Halloween movies – but that means they may need to rethink the next two movies. This past weekend was also the VERY FIRST weekend that “Barbie” was not in the top 10 of the box office. Overall, the weekend was down about 15% from last weekend because all 3 new movies from last week went down approx. 50-55%. Other than the #1 and #2 movies – last weeks #1 “Paw Patrol the Mighty Movie” made $11 million – no other movie made over $8 million this past weekend.
Everyone is highly anticipating the big movie next weekend. The movie has ALREADY made $100 million worldwide in advance ticket sales and some are saying it could be the highest opening weekend of the year domestically and/or internationally.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “The Exorcist Believer” didn’t really impress foreign audiences. It only made $17.9 million internationally for a worldwide total of approx. $45 million. The other notable worldwide box office this past weekend was that Warner Bros crossed $2 BILLION worldwide thanks mostly to “Barbie”.
STRIKE NEWS: WGA votes are in and the new contract is officially ratified. According to the WGA, there were 8435 “yes” votes and only 90 “no” votes.
However, there are still many worried writers. Most of them won’t be going back to work right away due to the actors strike freezing almost all the scripted television and movie productions. Some are worried they might not be back to work until 2024. Also, because of the new contract, some people are predicting that the studios will cut down on the number of movies and television shows they make – especially for the streaming sites.
Meanwhile, although there was no one picketing today due to the “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day” holiday but picketing is expect to resume tomorrow because the every-other-weekday meeting concluded today without any announcements. The picking is supposed to resume tomorrow, and the discussions are scheduled to continue Wednesday.
OTHER NEWS: Dreamworks Animation just announced they’re laying off 4% of their staff which is approx. 70 people. According to some reports, they plan on scaling back in house production, leaving the production work to Sony Imageworks which they just made a deal with.
LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:
If you’re going to wait to watch a movie AT HOME then you probably didn’t really like the movie much. If you want to see a movie – first you ignore the reviews or the “rotten tomatoes” score and second YOU SEE THE MOVIE IN A MOVIE THEATER!!!!!!
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 