ThaOGDreamWeaver

Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood

Beetlejuice Broadway Cast: The Whole "Being Dead" Thing

Stevie Wonder - Superstition

🎼🎵 It's the most wonderful tiiiiiiiimmee... of the year... 🎵 Ghoultown - Mistress Of The Dark (feat Elvira)

Side note: I'm aware that some people (myself included) are worried about seeing this in cinemas, but it would have been a perfect opportunity to sell souvenir stillsuit masks (maybe with filters too...)

Think the cast isn't a problem as long as any delay isn't more than a couple of years. The key cast would have taken the option for both movies, or it wouldn't have been greenlit. Unless the scheduling's insane, backing out of that kind of paper is what gets you a "difficult" reputation in Whollyodd. Hard to shake and harder to come back from. Chalamet will be back as this is his chance to prove he cuts it as a franchise headliner. I know every castmember always says they had a blast working on things (unless it's a difficult shoot), but Momoa enjoyed the hell out of this one and he's not got much of a filter. Mind you, Momoa seems to enjoy pretty much everything. I saw him charging around at his first London Film & Comic Con being thoroughly confused, surprised and happy at all the strangeness (not least TubaPool). Most of us were confused as to why he needed four bodyguards, unless they were his lunch.

For pandemic-era movies, not bad. Which means a gamble on Part 2 is possible. For comparison with established(ish) franchise movies: Shang-Chi did $416m ($75m US domestic) and No Time To Die $460m ($110m). Both off wider numbers of screens booked, though.

It's made $129m so far worldwide (excluding UK and a couple of other territories), and $17.5m "domestic" on its opening US weekend. $147m sounds like a lot, but on a budget of $165m, not good. It's going to need to do pretty well in the US and UK to make up ground. I'd still be confident in a sequel, though, because leaving it hanging at this point doesn't let you gamble on people coming to see the conclusion and the original together (as per Endgame, when a fair chunk of people also went back to see Infinity War). Hollywood accountancy is a dark art at the best of times1, but a rough rule of thumb is that notional breakeven = 3x budget. Studios take home a bit less than one third, once you take out the cinema owners' cut, distributor's cut, and any talent or director cuts if they've pulled an Alec Guinness and got themselves gross points2. 1and the worst - having been on the pointy end of it and lost half a year's worth of wages. If you ever get the chance to work there, find out what whoever you're working for actually does, especially if they call themselves a "producer". Also, make sure they actually already have the money and you have a rock-solid contract. Even then... 2A cut of the actual, undiluted gross box office revenue, instead of "monkey points" - a cut of net profits. Which given studios can move declared profitabilty levels with "rolling breakeven" tricks, y'aint never gonna get paid unless it's a smash.

Toots & The Maytals - (Take Me Home) Country Roads

Kinda excited to see it. It looks beautiful, and not just talking about the cast here. However, I'm still not going to be tempted out to the flicks just yet (UK isn't very safe plague-wise right now and won't be for some time.) Villeneuve is not happy about the HBO Max simul-release: while it guarantees some returns, it's a fraction of what it'd make even in COVID-era cinemas, and probably not enough to fund the second episode under normal circumstances. WB might greenlight it anyway though - in the hopes that things will have settled down by the time Part 2 is released, and then you can do a back-to-back release with Part 1 in a smaller number of screens.

The Cult - Fire Woman #besthatsinrock

FLC - Come Find Yourself

Visit Venus - Harlem Overdrive (hint: headphones on for full effect)

Thievery Corporation - True Sons Of Zion

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Without being a Marvel insider, I can't tell you the reason why (and would have Feige sending the killer robots after me if I was/did.) Maybe they just thought the markets would support this one better than Black Widow as more things were open: maybe it was an experiment: maybe they thought there'd be more piracy given they launched this one heavily in China. (Having worked briefly in the Chinese VoD sector, a 30-second video saying that Xi Jinping resembles Winnie the Pooh will get taken down almost instantly and probably earn you a trip to Qincheng, whereas a full length rip of a Hollywood movie... the censor teams can happily watch through - for cultural inspection reasons, of course - and then leave alone.)

Don't we all, dear boy. Sadly, the money from butts on seats is what primarily pays for them. (Well, and the kind of arcane dark accountancy that would terrify the Circle Of Thorns. The "rolling break-even" is particularly evil...) You have to wonder if epic summer tentpole movies on the Marvel/Bond/DC level will have to get shelved in favour of smaller, cheaper, more streaming-friendly versions for a while. Given what Favreau managed to achieve on a (relatively) micro-budget for The Mandalorian, using new filming techniques, it's certainly possible to get epic movie feels without breaking the bank. It would also allow for a wider range of storytelling. https://www.ft.com/content/a44b5c22-0b44-4c34-8f67-5540db152182

Bit of industry news: almost all of Marvel's upcoming slate after Eternals has been put back - basically leapfrogging down one slot. Spidey:NWH - currently still slated for December 17th but might move, especially if COVID strikes back in key markets. (UK is already in trouble with sub-variant AY4.2, aka Delta 2: Electric Boogaloo - so unfortunately another Christmas lockdown is likely.) Strange's MoM - now May 5th 2022 Love & Thunder - July 8th 2022 Wakanda Forever - Nov 11th 2022 The Marvels - Feb 17th 2023 GOTG 3 - May 5th 2023 (original date) Quantumania - July 28th 2023 Reasoning is that while Shang-Chi was a hit in pandemic-era terms, it still underperformed compared to other Marvel movies. Giving the industry more time to adjust seems wise.

You can see why they hired in Gunn for The Suicide Squad as soon as Marvel's back was turned. It's very much a James Gunn movie that happens to use DC characters rather than following on from the Snyder movies. An actor's director, pulls off the epic shots, borrows from all across canon but still invents for the screen, can balance fun and characterisation with some imaginative touches...

BTW, I actually like the teaser for Shazam II more: I mean, Mirren is a goddess anyway, of course, so feels a bit like typecasting. But she looks like she's having a whole bunch of fun...

Nightwish - Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Very pretty. Very short. Not much to go on. Dwayne's brand is wisecracking badass, and this movie is very much built around him, so evil wisecracking badass... yes, Terminator, or Idris's underrated turn in Hobbs & Shaw. Brosnan clearly on Alec Guinness duties - lend Serious Actor cred to a silly popcorn movie. I guess Bill Nighy was busy. Dr. Fate's an interesting choice as an antagonist though. Lots of power, free will issues... Pierce seems to like the sets. BIG physical sets, and BIG money spent. BIG risk if they're still depending on butts on seats rather than streaming. The reveal sequence feels quite The Mummy, which is also on-brand for The Rock. (DW's top archeology tip: you don't have to read weird ancient inscriptions OUT LOUD, y'know. They never learn.) TBH, looks like a very pretty movie that I will happily munch popcorn through and may even remember. But world-changing? Or Marvel-baiting? Mmm. Remains to be seen.

Not to "actually" you or (Bat-ctually?) but the Court of Owls showed up in Gotham season 3 and were effectively creepy, led by veteran character actor Ray Barry... https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/GothamCourtOfOwls Side note... not sure why there's bad Bat-titude about Gotham generally. It took the key characters and quite a few deep cut ones too, and used the whole thing as a sandbox to tell new and different stories. Plus loved Shaun Pertwee as ass-kicking Alfred, Mazouz and Bicondova held their roles well and should have a great future... ...and when I think of the Penguin these days, it's not DeVito, Paul Williams or even the great Burgess Meredith. Robin Lord Taylor's Oswald Cobblepot was a fully-fledged character with depth, bathos, sympathy, multiple great arcs, and even a degree of charm. I think they're going for a very slow-burn reveal of the Riddler. Slightly spoilery stuff ahoy:

Chollo Rivera - Latin Soul Drive Is Here

Linda Jones: Not On The Outside