Editor’s note: Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing are co-authors of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box-Office Became a National Obsession. Hayes is Deadline’s Business Editor and Bing is Chief Communications Officer at Vice Media Group. The more things change, the more the Hollywood studios stay the same. At least that’s one of the surprising lessons of
Analysis
EXCLUSIVE: Moulin Rouge! The Musical, based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 luscious pop classic movie starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent, has recouped its costs — not only the $28 million Broadway price tag, but it also recouped sizable sums in London’s West End and Australia. Luhrmann tells me that it’s “so gratifying that breaking
It was a magnificent movie weekend. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom. All hits, a blow-out! So what else have you got? The question sounds obnoxious, like its near-cousin, the always infuriating: “What have you done for me lately?” But it’s an honest query, and an important one for a strike-bound, streaming-bent, pandemic-emergent industry that is
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
Watching Jesus Revolution surge past $45 million in ticket sales for Lionsgate—matching or besting The Fabelmans, The Banshees Of Inisherin, Tár, Women Talking and Triangle Of Sadness, combined—it finally seems safe to say it. The faith-based audience is back. Between Covid and the culture wars, it’s been a rough few years for those who make,
Can we finally talk about movies for a minute? I mean, those of us who aren’t full-blown, always on-it awards professionals. The Republicans have had their Speakership brawl. The Democrats have observed their J6 vigil. The Twitter Wars have settled into the usual trench exchange between Left and Right. And the weary nation having survived
Updated: The aftermath of Covid’s 2020-21 closure of cinemas will continue to be felt in 2023 as the domestic box office claws its way back to what many sources believe is an $8 billion-$9 billion result. On the high end, it’s a 22% jump from what Comscore is expecting 2022 to final at, that being
Note: Deadline presents the 44th episode of its video series Take Two, in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films just opening in theaters every weekend. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for when
Editor’s note: Deadline presents the 43rd episode of its video series Take Two, in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films just opening in theaters every weekend. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for
There’s some snarking going on out there that Black Adam is poised to lose $50M-$100M, and that is simply just not true. Deadline film finance sources, meaning people who do this for a living and those close to the film, say this movie is bound to break even and be in the black. Scroll down
It was fascinating to see my good colleague Valerie Complex describe, in her review of the Antoine Fuqua/Will Smith slavery drama Emancipation, having almost walked out of the film, not because it was unworthy, but because she found the depiction of Black suffering and death almost too much to watch. In the end, Complex stuck
Editor’s note: Deadline presents the 42nd episode of its video series Take Two, in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films just opening in theaters every weekend. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for
Exhibition stocks were up today on news from Bloomberg that Amazon is going to commit a reported $1 billion to theatrical releases annually. We hear that such a plan is truly in its early days — read Amazon doesn’t have an executive yet to lead MGM theatrical. Capisce? Since Amazon bought MGM, it has been
Editor’s note: Deadline presents the 41st episode of its video series Take Two, in which Pete Hammond and Todd McCarthy tackle the artistry of films just opening in theaters every weekend. Each has reviewed and written about the craft for decades and built a remarkable breadth of knowledge of films past and present. What we hoped for
When a film as heavily promoted and well-regarded as Universal’s She Said gets body-slammed at the box office, it’s wise to pay attention. This weekend, the journalism procedural drama, about the pursuit of sexual predator Harvey Weinstein by two reporters from The New York Times, will take in perhaps $2.27 million in 2,022 theaters. That’s
While tentpoles resuscitated moviegoing this past summer with pics like Top Gun: Maverick, it’s true that more adult-skewing fare is having a much harder time now. Nowhere was this more true than with David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, which rivals believed had a shot at opening to $12 million-$15 million this past weekend based on the
Predictions are always a hazardous thing. And I truly hope this one is wrong. But it sure looks like the movie box office, disastrously low in September, will be stuck on the bottom again this month. September is rarely a great month for ticket sales, but last month is better left undiscussed. Putting aside the
When Dwayne Johnson takes the stage at San Diego Comic-Con next week, it would be truly seismic if he was to announce that Warner Bros. was moving up the release date to its New Line/DC movie Black Adam from Oct. 21 to earlier in the fall. However, that’s not going to happen. A pile-up of big