Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: Things aren’t looking good at the box office. “The Marvels” was #1 this weekend with a disappointing $46 million which is the lowest opening weekend for ANY Marvel movie and approx. 25% of the opening weekend box office for “Black Panther Wakanda Forever” which came out on the same weekend in 2022. Also, except for the #1 movie no other movie made over $9 million at the domestic box office. This includes “Taylor Swift The Eras Tour” which was #3 with just $6 million. I thought that movie stopped playing the prior weekend but I guess they want it to keep going.
This is also disappointing for the total domestic box office for 2023 because I believe this year is approx. tied with 2022 right now but last year they still had the blockbusters “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Avatar The Way of Water” opening. This year, I don’t think there is any more blockbusters coming. There are some good movies coming out in the next few weeks including “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”, “Trolls Band Together”, the Disney animated movie “Wish”, “Napoleon”, the Beyonce concert movie “RENAISSANCE: A FILm by BEYONCÉ”, “Wonka”, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”, and “The Color Purple” but I don’t think any of them will rise to blockbuster status. I don’t see any of them passing $100 million in their opening weekend. So, it seems like the 2023 box office will come out just under the 2022 box office.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: The same for the worldwide box office where “The Marvels” made $110 million which is also the lowest worldwide opening for a Marvel movie. In other worldwide box office news, “Oppenheimer” is still stuck with just below $950 million worldwide and “Taylor Swift The Eras Tour” is slightly above $240 million worldwide which makes it #20 for 2023 worldwide box office (so far).
STRIKE NEWS: This will probably be the last “Strike News” for a while since it looks like the actors strike is over. Although the actors national board didn’t unanimously approve it – it passed by 86% (after what was reported to be a “debate” made the meeting take longer than anticipated), it seems like there is a PR battle about the new contract brewing with people like the SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher trying to sell the deal, in a meeting today (Monday Nov 13) they said that the FULL agreement may not be available in time for the vote – they recently released an “18 page summary of the agreement instead, and there are some actors saying that the actors actually didn’t get some of the things they thought they got, most people still think that the new contract will pass although it won’t be even close the almost unanimous vote from the writers.
However, the effects of both strikes which shut down almost all film and TV productions for over half this year are continuing. Late last week they announced that a few Marvel movie releases have been postponed. At Sony, the pushed back the release of “Venom 3” from July 2024 to November 2024.
Then Disney announced that ALMOST ALL of their Marvel movies will be push back to 2025. The only exception is “Deadpool 3” which is pushed from May to July 2023 . “Captain America Brave New World” will now be released Feb 2025, “Thunderbolts” moves from Dec 2024 to July 2025, and “Blade” moves from Feb 2025 to Nov 2025. Disney also moved the “Lion King” spin off movie “Mufasa: The Lion King” from July 5 2024 to Dec 2024.
OTHER NEWS: Warner Bros recently went through some controversy again when it was revealed that they have shelved the COMPLETED Looney Tunes live action/animated movie “Coyote vs ACME”. This is the 3rd movie that Warner Bros recently shelved (“Batgirl” and “Scoob Holiday Haunt!” are the other two). It’s especially controversial since it looks like there will be some gaps in theatrical releases next year due to all the postponed releases after the writers and actors strike. Warner Bros changed their mind and said today that they’re OK if another studio or streaming site wanted to release the movie. So, the there is a possibility that the movie will be released (in theaters or on a streaming site) next year.
Little Bit of Humor:
Out of everything that was in that movie…..WHY did he keep the turtles?????
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 