Amid the coronavirus epidemic, organizers of the Beijing International Film Festival have indefinitely postponed the event which was set to take place from April 19-26 this year. The move was expected as China has now recorded 80,735 cases of Covid-19 and 3,119 deaths. However, the National Health Commission said there were only 40 new cases
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Suddenly, 2020 is a year of imponderables. Will there be a Cannes Film Festival? Given the coronavirus-induced cancellation of SXSW, MipTV, and the AFI Life Achievement Gala, who knows? Is Marvel’s Black Widow the big spring-summer hit, now that No Time To Die is bumped to November? Maybe, if an April/May release still looks wise
Refresh for latest…: Disney/Pixar’s Onward topped the global and international box office chart this weekend, but came in vastly below projections. A $68M worldwide start includes just $28M from 47 material offshore markets. That’s well under the $40M-$55M range the industry was seeing ahead of the weekend. The spread of the coronavirus, and the fears
There was a stampede of new titles opening this weekend at the specialty box office, and despite coronavirus-induced fears of being in close proximity in theaters, there weren’t any glaring slumps in the indie and arthouse space. Of the films released this weekend, First Cow made some moo-ves at the box office, earning an estimated
A24 is ready to milk the weekend with their new film First Cow from director Kelly Reichardt. The film isn’t about a presidential cow, but it is about a special bovine creature. Set in the 19th century, the film follows a lone cook (John Magaro) as he travels west with a group of fur trappers. Out
Disney/Pixar’s Onward made $2 million on Thursday night in box office previews, according to the Burbank, CA studio, from shows that started at 6 PM. Previous previews around this range include Disney’s Dumbo ($2.6M, $45.9M opening), Monsters University ($2.6M, $82.4M opening), Moana (which previewed on a Tuesday before Thanksgiving with $2.6M, 3-day of $56.6M, 5-day much greater due to Thanksgiving
EXCLUSIVE: Disney/Pixar’s family film Onward has been banned in multiple Middle East markets due to the film’s minor reference to a lesbian relationship. In the movie, about two teenage elf brothers in a mythical world who embark on a quest for magic, there is a passing reference to an LGBTQ relationship between two secondary characters.
Disney’s Mulan boarded tracking this morning and is seeing a 3-day domestic start around $85M when it hits theaters on March 27. Some believe the live action remake of the 1998 musical animated pic has a shot to get to $100M+ based on tracking diagnostics and comparative titles, but the looming outbreak of the coronavirus
Sony’s Tom Hanks World War II movie Greyhound is jumping from its May 8 weekend to June 12, as a means to tee off before the Father’s Day weekend of June 19-21. I hear the pic’s rescheduling has nothing to do with coronavirus fears which are weighing on many distribs’ minds, but rather it being an
EXCLUSIVE: With the coronavirus socking it to the Asian box office, Deadline has learned that MGM, Eon and Universal are postponing the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die from its UK and international release date of April 2 and its U.S. Easter weekend global day-and-date of April 10, and moving the 25th 007
EXCLUSIVE: A24’s religious horror movie Saint Maud is flying from April 3 to April 10 after MGM/Eon/Universal’s No Time to Die departed this morning to Thanksgiving. Saint Maud is the second wide entry today after Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls World Tour (which was originally scheduled for April 17) to fill the vacancy left behind by Bond 25.
“We are in uncharted territory.” Those are the words from one exhibition source this morning to Deadline in the wake of MGM/Eon/Universal’s shocking shift of No Time to Die from its April 10 Easter global launch date to Thanksgiving, largely due to those Asian markets effected by the coronavirus. Don’t doubt this for a second,
Dreamworks Animation’s Trolls World Tour is going where No Time to Die vacated: April 10. Originally the DWA pic, released via Universal, was to go April 17. This is the first major studio move in the wake of MGM/Eon/Universal moving the global day and date release of the 25th 007 pic this morning, which Deadline exclusively broke. It also
Despite the swelling panic about the coronavirus, the global business for Disney/Pixar’s elf fantasy feature Onward should turn out to be solid. To date, there aren’t any theaters closed in the U.S. (nor do sources expect any in the near future), certainly not in a grave way like China’s which has seen its nationwide exhibition
As the coronavirus (aka Covid-19) spreads into Europe, cinemas in some parts of France have been closed for the next two weeks. This concerns the northern Oise area, which is located in the Hauts de France region, as well as the northwest department Le Morbihan located in Brittany. The Louvre museum also saw its second
Sony has dated Melanie Laurent’s feature adaptation of Kristin Hannah’s international bestseller The Nightingale for December 25, 2020. With the Christmas debut of Greta Gerwig’s PG-rated Little Women last year, Sony saw a multitude of women flock to that movie, which grossed more than $203 million worldwide and earned six Oscar noms, winning one for Costume Design.
Broadway box office was down 11% last week, but don’t jump to any coronavirus conclusions: Attendance was down a small 3%, and the slide in receipts can be chalked up at least in part to theater-going children. With more than a dozen productions participating in the annual Kids Night On Broadway – children free with
Paramount/Skydance’s long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick will fly on Wednesday, June 24 instead of Friday, June 26. That’s standard for Paramount to take a big summer event tentpole out on a Wednesday, ala their Transformers movies and even the Tom Cruise Steven Spielberg directed 2005 hit War of the Worlds. The pre-Independence Day weekend is crowded already with Dreamworks
Refresh for latest…: Universal/Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man made its first appearance at the international box office this weekend, scaring up $20.2M in 47 markets. Combined with the strong domestic start, the Leigh Whannell-directed pic debuted to $49.2M globally. In like-for-like offshore openings, the Elisabeth Moss-starrer is tracking in line with Lights Out, A Quiet Place
Impractical Jokers: The Movie isn’t pranking us when it comes to their box office performance. After having a stellar opening last week, the big-screen adaptation of WarnerMedia’s truTV prank show expanded from 357 to nearly 1,800 theaters and earned an estimated $3,545,000 to bring its cume to $6.6 million. The movie has now cracked the top 10
5th Update Sunday AM: Moviegoers didn’t have a problem finding Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man on Saturday with the Leigh Whannell movie racking up $11.1M, a 12% surge over Friday’s $9.9M for a weekend that Universal is calling at $29M (some rival estimates have it in the low $28M range). Even more commendable: if you back out those
The specialty box office is headed towards the second star on the right and straight on till morning with Benh Zeitlin’s magical adventure Wendy, a fresh reimagination of J.M. Barrie’s classic tale of Peter Pan. The pic from Searchlight Pictures is Zeitlin’s follow up to his Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was released
Sony’s Escape Room 2 is jumping its release date from Aug. 14 to Wednesday Dec. 30 this year. Adam Robitel, who directed the first $9M production, returns to helm here. The first movie last year grossed $57M stateside, and $155.7M WW with 22% of that latter number coming from China. Originally, Escape Room 2 was dated on April
Warner Bros has just dated John Lee Hancock’s cop thriller The Little Things for a January 29, 2021 release. The distributor already had the date reserved with an untitled film. The movie, which starts Denzel Washington and Rami Malek, is now going up against Paramount’s animated monster-wrestling movie Rumble on that date. The pic, written by Hancock,
EXCLUSIVE: Seventeen years after the release of Bad Boys II, Sony’s Bad Boys For Life dominated domestic, overseas and global turnstiles in its mid-January debut. On Saturday, it will cross $400 million globally, with current cumes through Thursday at $193.1M domestic and $204.1M from the international box office. Bad Boys 4 is in the works.
Refresh for updates … As the coronavirus continues to spread, now affecting nearly 60 countries spanning six continents, more events are being canceled or postponed amid travel restrictions and increasing health warnings. As of Friday, the virus had sickened more than 83,000 people worldwide — including 62 people across six states, per the CDC —
Universal–Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man made its first appearance Thursday night at 7 PM shows nationwide with $1.65 million, an an amount of cash that’s near both studios’ previous collaborations, Get Out ($1.8M Thursday) and Split ($2M). Both 2017 titles overperformed their $20M-predicted tracking at the time, with Split posting a $40M start, and Get Out taking $33.3M. Invisible Man, directed and written
If any good is to come of the coronavirus outbreak, and just now it is hard to see even a glimmer of good, we might consider this: The media will have a shot at redemption. Japan is closing its schools. Saudi Arabia has put Umrah on hold. Cruise ships are dead in the water. And
As a precaution due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Italy, AMC Theatres boss Adam Aron mentioned today on the exhib chain’s 4Q 2019 earnings call that the exhibitor has closed 22 of its 47 theaters in the country for a week. Since Monday, the number of cases of the coronavirus has spiked from
The Parasite train keeps on gaining traction, with Bong Joon Ho’s four-time Oscar-winning dark comedy crossing $50 million right now at the domestic box office. But the real question is, can it beat Life Is Beautiful’s box office gross of $57M? If it maintains its momentum, signs are pointing to yes. As its Imax run comes to