Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: “Twisters” blew past predictions (of $50-55 million) and made over $81 million this past weekend. It made almost double what the original “Twister” made back in 1996 ($41 million) and it’s just $1 million less than what Universal’s “Oppenheimer” made exactly 1 year ago (although that was #2 for that weekend). “Despicable Me 4” sunk down to #2 making over $24 million, but I’m sure Universal didn’t mind since it released both movies domestically. ”Inside Out 2” retained it’s #3 spot making almost $20 million. It is now just shy of becoming the biggest animated movie ever. Its total is $596 million and the biggest animated movie ever at the domestic box office is “Incredibles 2” which is just $12 million ahead at $608 million. (actually it would be the biggest COMPLETELY animated movie since “Avatar” and “Avatar The Way of Water” have a lot of CGI animation). Last week’s #2 movie “Longlegs” slipped down to #4 with almost $11 million.
The total domestic box office was $149 million which is 22% higher than the previous weekend but the same weekend last year – when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were released – was over double that total with almost $311 million. Hopefully, “Deadpool and Wolverine” next week will boost the domestic box office to the highest total of the year like this past weekend did a year ago, although I doubt the total will get past $300 million.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “Twisters” also dominated the worldwide box office. It’s domestic release (released by Universal) combined with it’s foreign release (released by Warner Bros) had a worldwide total of $123 million. “Despicable Me 4” was also the 2nd best internationally making a worldwide total of a little more than $577 million. “Inside Out 2” is closer to being the biggest animated movie at the worldwide box office ever. Its worldwide total is now $1.445 billion while “Frozen 2” is at $1.453 billion.
OTHER NEWS:
In union news, IATSE unions ratified their new 3-year contracts last week but the Teamsters are still negotiating with the studios. They extended their negotiations to continue this week but they’re getting very close to the end of their current contract on July 31.
Speaking of the unions, after the head of the Teamsters speaking at the Republican Nation Convention last week (which was called “a total sell-out speech”), today IATSE was one of the first unions to endorse Kamala Harris saying she “..has played a pivotal role in delivering landmark policies and legislation to benefit IATSE workers during the pandemic…such as helping pass the American Rescue Plan Act, or the trillion-dollar COVID-19 stimulus package.”
A little bit of sad news for people who live in Los Angeles, two somewhat famous movie theaters near UCLA – the Village and Bruin movie theaters (both were seen briefly in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) announced they will be closing this week. The Village was purchased by a group of filmmakers earlier this year so it will eventually reopen but there’s no word about the Bruin. The closure of those two theaters means that Westwood Village – which used to have over a dozen movies theaters in the area – now has only 2 that are still open. This is very sad for me since I grew up fairly close to Westwood Village and I’ve seen dozens of movies in each of those movie theaters.
It looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for Clint Eastwoods next movie – which may possibly be the final movie he directed. The movie was supposed to start filming last year but the strikes delayed it. It just finished filming but people are now saying it looks like it won’t be released by the end of this year due to an already fairly packed release schedule. Although they say plans can change (since Clint Eastwood movies don’t need a lot of CGI post production).
LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR: Here we go again…….
All the rumors about who was and was not going to be in this weekends “Deadpool and Wolverine” were just beginning to settle down until they released a new trailer for the movie at the end of last week. It showed
Dafne Keen – who played the young Wolverine clone in the movie “Logan” (Laura Kinney aka X-23 in the comic books). She is in the Star Wars TV show “The Acolyte” and while she was doing press for that show she had been saying that she’s NOT in the movie…until the trailer was released and Hugh Jackman put the above photo on his Instagram. So, the rumors are starting again. The new trailer also shows a masked female Lady Deadpool so the Taylor Swift rumors have also restarted.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 