Matthew Monagle
Seth Rogen and Lonely Island Are Making Their Own Music Festival Disaster Movie
These days, we take our amusement where we can. For the past week, the internet has been entranced by the disaster that is the Frye Festival, a supposed music festival for rich millennials that quickly descended into anarchy when musicians and vendors pulled out due to its unsafe conditions. The full scope of the festival’s failure was laid bare in Friday’s piece at New York Magazine, where one administrator — or former admin, since she dropped as soon as she realized the full scope of the organizers’ failure — spoke candidly about the missteps leading up to the festival. For entertainment value, the Frye Festival just can’t be beat.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Fate of the Furious’ Wins a Turbulent Weekend
In a week devoid of any major releases, we still saw some major changes at the box office, with familiar faces like Kong: Skull Island, Power Rangers, and Get Out (RIP) all falling from the Top 10 in favor of new releases or aggressively expanding art films. Of course, not everything was different; if you read these box office reports every weekend, I’ll bet you can name the top three movies (in order) with minimal effort. Here’s the weekend box office projections as of Sunday afternoon:
Rumor: The Creator of ‘Mr. Robot’ Is Working on an Obi-Wan Kenobi ‘Star Wars’ Prequel
Unlike the previous Obi-Wan Kenobi — sorry, Alec Guinness — Ewan McGregor has long been excited about the prospect of returning for more Star Wars movies, telling Empire Magazine last October that he was the “right age” to make two more movies as the beloved character. While fans were sometimes unimpressed by the prequels, McGregor’s winning performance as the young Jedi was one of the highlights of the film, leading fans to clamor for a standalone Kenobi movie while McGregor was still the right age.
Fox Releases Another Short Teaser for Tomorrow’s ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ Trailer
Last week, 20th Century Fox teased the first footage from Kingsman: The Golden Circle via ten glorious seconds of accelerated action. There were gunfights, and Julianne Moore making burgers (I think), and plenty more blink-and-you’ll-miss-it looks as the exciting new world of Matthew Vaughan’s film. So, secure in the knowledge that studios never release trailer teases without the trailer following shortly thereafter, we all gathered around our computers the following day and waited for our first look at the highly anticipated sequel. And waited. Aaaaaaand waited.
Zachary Quinto Says There Are ‘No Guarantees’ We’ll Get a ‘Star Trek 4’
Despite being supported by a blindingly charismatic cast and some of the best action directors in the business, Paramount’s Star Trek franchise has somewhat been an exercise in diminishing returns after 2009’s big screen reboot. Last year’s Star Trek Beyond may have captured some of the fun of a standalone episode of the series, but it was a surprising disappointment with audiences: the film’s $158 million gross was nearly $100 million less than the first entry in the series and failed to break even on the studios $185 million investment. Those are the kind of numbers that make a studio think long and hard about investing in a sequel.
The ‘Fate of the Furious’ Cast Suggests the Next Movie May Revisit Han’s Death
While fans have mostly been enthusiastic about the expanded role of Jason Statham in The Fate of the Furious, there is one thing that has stuck in their collective craw. While Statham’s character has the movie’s best moments, he never stops to address the elephant in the room: Shaw did kill Sung Kang’s Han, perhaps the most beloved character in the franchise and (we assumed) an unforgivable offense for a movie built on family. Will the filmmakers address this in a future installment of the Fast and the Furious films? Or, perhaps more intriguing, could Sung Kang find his way back into the franchise?
James Cameron Announces the Release Dates for the Four ‘Avatar’ Sequels
It’s been nearly eight years since James Cameron’s Avatar took the global box office by storm, and while it’s become très chic for some corners of the internet to endlessly bash Avatar, I still maintain my stubborn affection for Cameron’s movie. Very few filmmakers can create action-driven science-fiction that operates at Cameron’s level; just look at how many times people have messed up Cameron’s Terminator franchise, a near-flawless formula for blockbuster movies that studios have nevertheless run directly into the ground. We may laugh at Cameron’s planned sequels, but they are both original (technically!) and creator-driven movies. Isn’t that what we claim to want from Hollywood?
Go Behind the Scenes With These Dashing New ‘Mission: Impossible 6’ Photos
Are we still doing #SquadGoals? Because if so, I think I’ve found mine. Earlier today, Mission: Impossible 6 director Christopher McQuarrie posted a photo of himself hanging out with series stalwart Tom Cruise and dashing newcomer Henry Cavill against the Eiffel Tower, raising the bar for family vacation photos everywhere. If I worked in the photo department at the local Walgreens and saw this in someone’s film roll, I would put a sign up on the door that said “No More Eiffel Tower Photos” for everyone to see. What’s the point? They’ll never be this cool.
Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Fate of the Furious’ Zooms Up the Record Books
Audiences don’t turn their back on family. That’s the lesson to be learned from this past weekend, anyways, when The Fate of the Furious proved that this is one franchise showing no signs of slowing down. It was never a question of whether The Fate of the Furious would take the top spot this weekend, but even the most optimistic of projections couldn’t have expected the global domination that this movie undertook. Here’s the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:
A Sequel for ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ Is Currently Underway
While the words “period action” and “Guy Ritchie” don’t always go over well with critics, there’s no denying that Ritchie’s 2015 film The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a cut above the rest. Led by an all-star cast that included Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, and Alicia Vikander, U.N.C.L.E. runs with its Cold War setting and creates a stylish and — dare I say — sexy story of international intrigue and the dapper spies who saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Unfortunately for its fans, the movie didn’t do particularly well at the box office, only grossing about $110 million worldwide against a $75 million budget. That’s not exactly money that screams sequel, if you know what I mean.
‘The Fate of the Furious’ Screenwriter on Addressing Paul Walker’s Character
It may seem strange to describe the eighth film in a blockbuster franchise as a transitional moment in the series, but then again, few franchises have had to deal with the death of an actor as essential as Paul Walker. The Fate of the Furious was always going to be a bittersweet affair for those involved; while the movie promised to push new characters and new relationships to the forefront, fans wondered how exactly they would choose to address the loss of Walker’s beloved Brian. The solution screenwriter Chris Morgan came up with should leave diehards and newcomers alike very pleased.
The ‘Star Wars’ Canon Expands in the First Trailer for ‘Star Wars Battlefront II’
When is a video game more than just a video game? When the story it tells is woven into the legends and events of one of the biggest blockbuster movie franchises of all time. This weekend, Electronic Arts debuted the first footage from its upcoming Star Wars Battlefront 2, the sequel to the bestselling 2015 Star Wars video game, with the promise that this game would tell canonical stories not previously seen in the Star Wars universe. It’s all part of an ambitious effort by Lucasfilm to weave these Star Wars stories across a variety of media, including the films, television shows, video games, and books.