Boyle infects the box office, ELIO fails to launch, BOND 26 finds its director, Sorkin writing a SOCIAL sequel, and More!
Plus: THE STAND, FANTASTIC FOUR, F1, LETHAL WEAPON...
DreamWorks tames Pixar with DRAGON fire, 28 DAYS LATER breaks a franchise record, and ELIO struggles to find an audience.
How to Train Your Dragon held onto the US No.1 spot with $37M (total $358M worldwide), holding off new releases 28 Years Later ($30M), and the disappointing debut of Pixar’s Elio ($21M). In the UK, Danny Boyle’s homegrown horror 28 Years Later was No.1 (£3.9M), knocking Dragon to No.2 (£2.8M), but Elio again opened at No.3 with £970K.
28 Years Later made $68M worldwide over its opening weekend, which is a franchise record—as the previous entries only debuted to $10M and $9.8M, respectively. It should also beat both its predecessor’s total grosses ($74M and $72M) with ease. And with a second movie already shot by Nia DaCosta (Candyman), financing for the unmade third part of this intended trilogy should be a breeze now.
Elio’s struggles are particularly frustrating because reviews are glowing and it has an ‘A’ CinemaScore. Film analysts are critical of the terrible title, the fact filmgoers tend to gravitate towards established IP with their ticket money now, the strong competition it faced with other family-oriented films that are already out in June, and the sad truth that Disney’s conditioned their audience to expect original animated movies to be streaming on Disney+ in mere months.
The latter situation isn’t true for Universal Pictures/DreamWorks with How to Train Your Dragon, making families feel like they have to see it on the big screen this summer as god-knows-when-or-where it’ll be streaming at home.
Elio could still pull off the same trick Elemental managed in 2023, of course, in having extraordinary staying power over the summer as families get around to it later once school holiday boredom sets in. But will it remain in cinemas for that long? Let’s wait and see how it pans out…
🗞️ Film News: Villeneuve aims for BOND, Sorkin writing SOCIAL NETWORK 2, another STAND for Stephen King, and a Mel Brooks TV prequel…
Amazon MGM Studios has landed a big-name director to relaunch the James Bond franchise now it’s under their artistic control. And it’s quite the catch! French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Dune) has agreed to helm the 26th Bond movie, so let the rampant speculation about who’ll play 007 continue…
Aaron Sorkin is writing a sequel to The Social Network, presumably showing the darker side of what Facebook/Meta turned into because the film is almost charmingly naive about what Mark Zuckerberg’s platform inflicted on society at large. Jesse Eisenberg is likely to return as Zuckerberg, but will David Fincher direct again? He doesn’t really do sequels.
Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is set to make a new big-screen version of Stephen King’s The Stand, only a few years after the expensive but disliked Paramount+ miniseries. The only problem here is that King’s The Stand story is so enormous even a three-hour film can’t do it justice, so unless they’re talking about doing an epic trilogy… I don’t see the point.
In odd news, FX are developing a prequel to Mel Brooks’ classic spoof comedy Young Frankenstein called Very Young Frankenstein. What on earth do you do with that idea? Doesn’t seem like a winner on the face of it. Good luck! I have more faith in Spaceballs 2…
🔎 Critical Lens: fast cars, faster zombies, a pale rider, a swordsman, eerie aliens, buddy cops, and more!
reviewed the new F1 movie starring Brad Pitt.
chewed over Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider for its 40th anniversary.
looked at Eureka’s new Blu-ray of German fantasy classic Heart of Stone, and Arrow’s The Invisible Swordsman and Dark City 4K release.
Marios Papadoniou had a lot of negative thoughts about 28 Years Later.
returned to a 1980s buddy cop classic, Lethal Weapon, now it’s available on 4K Blu-ray.
watched Celine Song’s second movie, the romantic drama Materialists.
🔥 Trailer Spotlight: FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS
There have been too many trailers for Fantastic Four: First Steps, let’s be honest, but it seems Marvel are anxious because even Thunderbolts* didn’t make a lot of money despite excellent reviews and the ‘New Avengers’ marketing twist. They really need this movie to work, as it’s one of only two big plays they have left (the other being introducing the X-Men into the MCU), in the run-up to the next two Avengers movies.
And I have to say, I do like what I see. The actors and their chemistry together seems just right, I love the retro-futurism of the alternate-world they’re in, and Pedro Pascal is a perfect choice in terms of Marvel needing a charismatic lead (a new Robert Downey Jr.) to make their films seem appealing beyond the visuals and IP.
I’m a little concerned the trailers seem to suggest Galactus is the main villain and nothing much else is going on, but hopefully they’re keeping more back than we expect. Or know they can rely on audiences just having a good time hanging out with the Fantastic Four doing whatever they’re doing. The film comes out soon, on 25 July.
👀 What Have We Been Watching?
: “Deep Cover starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom. An amusing action comedy about actors who go undercover for the police. It features a surprisingly hilarious performance from Bloom, a great supporting performance from Nick Mohammed, and is far better than I expected from a Prime Video exclusive. Also on Prime, Ash, a sci fi starring Eiza Gonzalez and Aaron Paul that wastes the predictable but intriguing concept of a woman waking up alone on a spaceship with no memory of what happened. Sadly, it gets weighed down with overcomplicated timelines, over explanatory flashbacks and will remind you of films which have done the concept better.”
Alexander Boucher: “I finally saw Wes Anderson's sea-faring adventure The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on Criterion Blu-ray this week. I’ve always liked or loved Anderson's work, but it's only in the last several years that I've developed an appreciation for how emotionally rich his worlds are. There are moments here so devastating, so precise, and so funny, that I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. And as an ocean guy, this film hit the sweetest of spots for me. 30 minutes in I was already texting my friends 'I think I might be in love with this film', and as the credits rolled I knew I'd seen something truly special.”
Jack Heslop: “Neill Blomkamp’s bafflingly bad paranormal sci-fi horror film Demonic, which frequently looked like straight-to-streaming trash, with thin characters and bland settings, mixed with VFX that seem ripped straight from The Sims. Also, the somewhat bland but fitfully amusing comedy Killing Gunther, elevated by a fun Arnold Schwarzenegger performance, although he only shows up in the third act. Neither the story nor the characters are desperately interesting and it’s all on a ‘lowest common denominator’ sitcom level. Worth it if you’re an Arnie fan.”
: “Brightburn—a horror take on the Superman origin story. A stark reminder of what really happens when bullied 12-year-old boys discover they’re special. Very well acted and beautifully directed.”
: “I rewatched the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis almost a decade after first seeing it, and was surprised that so much of it was still burned into my memory. The folk music is gorgeous and melancholy, just like this film, which itself feels like a weary folk tale as it explores the woes and misadventures across one week in its protagonist's life. What stuck out to me most this time around was the humour, which is more understated than other Coen films (though no less hilarious), and the extent to which the entire movie's tone is informed by the absence of Llewyn's rarely mentioned friend and musical partner, who committed suicide before the events of the film.”
: “A recent viewing of newly restored classic The Quatermass Xperiment was an absolute joy. Don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, but this time I understood a whole subtext I’d previously overlooked. And for currently streaming television, Murderbot is definitely the highlight.”