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SOUND OF FREEDOM carrying on well. Now let's see which movies have more staying power.

It is very rare for a movie’s popularity to grow after the first weekend of wide release. Studios routinely expect a significant decline, after the eager fans have already attended and the impact of the marketing blitz fades. When a movie’s gross receipts soar, it is almost a certain sign that word-of-mouth publicity – the hope and dream of every mass entertainmåent product – is spreading the word that this is a film not to be missed. >That appears to be what is happening with Sound of Freedom, the movie chronicling one man’s fight against child sex slavery. (If you...

"Sound of Freedom" hit theaters on Tuesday, and due to the "Pay It Forward" technology used by Angel Studios, the true-life thriller, which was reported as tied with Disney/Lucasfilm's "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," actually beat out the studio giant for the No.1 spot at the box office on Independence Day. As recorded by Box Office Mojo, "Sound of Freedom" grossed over $14 million in total: $11.5 million in direct box office sales and $2.6 million from the Pay It Forward tickets sold through the July 4 holiday. According to Deadline, "Indiana Jones" brought in $11.698M in total...

Box office analyst and YouTuber Valliant Renegade has estimated that the Walt Disney Co. has lost $890 million on the last eight studio releases, including the woke Little Mermaid remake and Elemental, an anti-racism animated film featuring a non-binary character. The films contributing to the losses include “Lightyear,” “Thor: Love and Thunder,” “Strange World,” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “The Little Mermaid,” and “Elemental.” Valliant Renegade said that the eight films cost roughly $2.75 billion but only brought in $1.86 billion. “That can’t go on forever. It’s just simple numbers,...

Latondra Newton, who has served as Disney’s chief diversity officer since 2017, is leaving the company. An internal memo from Disney chief human resources officer Sonia Coleman announcing Newton’s departure was circulated to staff Tuesday. Coleman wrote that Newton “decided to leave The Walt Disney Company to pursue other endeavors.” We hear that she plans to join a corporate board and focus on a creative company she owns. Disney said Newton’s direct reports will now report to Julie Merges, SVP Talent Acquisition, who will run the DEI operations on an interim basis while the search for Newton’s replacement is underway....

The ongoing culture wars are something we need to endure as a nation. Culturally there is ground wanting to be conquered by the activists and those wanting to preserve norms are left in defense mode on a near-perpetual basis. These days the battles are seen in areas such as our schools and even beer aisles in stores, but most of these sieges are traditionally playing out in the entertainment complex. Hollywood has long been the battlefield.The Easter weekend has long been a favored time for Hollywood to install big-ticket releases, and this year the landmark title to arrive was the...

As is typical of Disney, a live-action remake of a classic animated film cannot simply be a faithful adaptation. Instead, they deem it necessary to adjust the original material to appeal to current sensibilities and to make casting less white. The latest example is the new live-action/CGI remake of The Little Mermaid, which has black actress Halle Bailey playing the title character. As expected, there were Disney purists who love the classic 1989 animated film who were no doubt hoping for a more faithful adaption of the original, complete with the classic look of Ariel, the mermaid—but were taken aback...

The Adam Aron-led exhibitor reported a global attendance at 49.5 million, down from 60 million patrons during the year-ago period.Despite box office grosses from Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever during the holiday period, AMC Entertainment Holdings has seen its fourth-quarter revenues fall and its net loss rise on a non-cash impairment write-down. On Tuesday, the parent of AMC Theatres reported fourth-quarter revenues at $990.9 million, down from a year-earlier $1.17 billion. Wall Street analysts had forecast revenues of $1.05 billion for the latest quarter. The per-share loss came to 26 cents, against a year-earlier loss...

Disney’s animated movie ‘Lightyear’ flopped in its first weekend in theaters, with the new Toy Story spin-off film earning $51.7 million in North America. Not only did the movie open lower than expected, but it also failed to conquer ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’, which held on to the first-place spot with $58.7 million in its second weekend. Expectations were very high for ‘Lightyear’, an origin story about the movie that inspired the space ranger action figure in the ‘Toy Story’ movies, with some analysts pegging the movie for a $70 million North American debut. But it didn't even come close to...

The rerelease of Francis Ford Coppola's mob pic boasted the top location average of the Feb. 25-27 weekend. Over the Feb. 25-27 weekend, Paramount booked The Godfather in 156 theaters across North America in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic Mafia pic earned $970,000 for a per-location average of $6,218, the best of any film for the weekend. (The next closest was Uncharted’s $5,438 average from 4,275 theaters and The Automat’s $5,004 from three locations.) The Godfather 50 Years was No. 1 or No. 2 in 50 percent of the theaters where it played, and...

"West Side Story" had little to sing about this weekend. 20th Century Studios' remake of the 1961 classic musical brought in an estimated $10.5 million for its opening in North America this weekend. This total was below expectations, which projected the film to make closer to $15 million in its debut weekend. The total is a bit surprising considering that the film had a lot working in its favor. For starters, it is directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the most recognizable and blockbuster directors in history. His name alone appeared to not be enough to get people to buy...

At a time when parents are waking up to the threat of critical race theory in schools, Hollywood is doubling down on it. In fact, they’re eating their own. Just read the primary criticism of the latest work of Lin-Manuel Miranda—a man who literally cast black and Hispanic actors as America’s founding fathers in Hamilton: the actors playing Dominican characters aren’t dark enough. After catering to a smaller and smaller group of coastal elites, La-La Land is finally collapsing into itself under the weight of the political left’s own contradictions. It’s not enough for the left to set the agenda....

Due to the pandemic, thousands of cinemas in North America have been dark for the better part of nine months, while those that have reopened are operating at dramatically reduced capacity. Mid-December is usually a launching pad for yuletide-fueled holiday blockbusters. That isn't the case this year as Hollywood and theater owners grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and a virtual nine-month standstill in moviegoing that will result in the worst showing for domestic ticket sales in at least four decades. Case in point: There were no new wide releases at the North American box office over the Dec. 11-13...

Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/SIPA USA/AP Images This is the winter of discontent for Hollywood workers, as no level of seniority has been spared from the wave of mass layoffs. Warner Bros. has been shaken by two rounds of layoffs and a wholesale restructuring that have ushered out veterans with decades of service to the Hollywood studio. NBCUniversal has rewired the structure of its TV content production and distribution operations, leading to hundreds of job cuts. ViacomCBS has periodically shed bodies by the dozens in the year since its two halves formally tied the knot again in December 2019. AMC Networks...

The weekend before Thanksgiving is one of the most desired release dates. It’s been home to entries in the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games franchises; in 2019, “Frozen II” opened to $130 million. This year, weekend grosses won’t pass $7 million and only “Freaky” made more than $1 million. These numbers cap a week of bad-to-worse news for theaters. Announcements from Universal codifed its Premium VOD plans, which suggest that the new maximum window, likely adapted by other distributors, is five weekends after opening. Warner Bros. placed “Wonder Woman 1984” on HBO Max for 30 days, along with theaters...

Movie theater executives don’t usually quote Winston Churchill on earnings calls. But during his company’s most recent quarterly report to analysts, AMC chief Adam Aron dusted off one of the prime minister’s most famous speeches to describe the financial cataclysm engulfing the exhibition industry and the resilient spirit he hopes will rise up to meet the challenge. “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,” Aron said. A touch melodramatic? Perhaps, but Aron is correct in noting that cinemas...

Disney is no longer releasing Mulan on Aug. 21 and is unsetting the movie for the time being. Oy, just when AMC was looking to turn the lights back on with a big movie in pockets of the country. [snip] Disney is also not revealing their playbook, i.e. whether Mulan will debut abroad first before domestic, even though logic would dictate that. Earlier this week, exhibitors and distributors were betting Mulan would stay put; the notion being that the Niki Caro-directed feature adaptation of the 1998 toon would be on Disney+ by at least Christmas. “Over the last few months,...

Movie theater closures and the uncertainty created by COVID-19 will have a devastating impact on the box office, according to a new note from research company MoffettNathanson. The Wall Street analyst firm predicts that revenues from ticket sales will be cut in half, falling from $11.4 billion in 2019 to $5.5 billion in 2020. That’s a 52% plunge, and it’s a drop that could be even steeper if cinemas don’t reopen in July and if summer blockbusters such as “Tenet” and “Mulan” that are supposed to debut that month get pushed back deeper into the year. They note that it...

Spike Lee spoke out in late April against movie theaters re-opening amid the coronavirus pandemic, and now the Oscar winner tells Vanity Fair he most likely will not be going to movie theaters until there is a vaccine for the virus being distributed. Lee is releasing his new film, the Vietnam War drama “Da 5 Bloods,” straight to Netflix on June 12. The director was supposed to begin production this summer on an adaptation of the graphic novel “Prince of Cats” for Legendary Pictures, but Lee told Vanity Fair he doesn’t see filming on any Hollywood production happening anytime soon....

On March 12, the London premiere of Mulan had just wrapped when the film’s director Niki Caro received the call everyone was anticipating. Executives in Los Angeles had made the decision to pull the Disney tentpole and were about to make the announcement, scuttling plans for a European junket that was had just kicked off. The move didn’t come as a surprise. After all, less than a day before, President Donald Trump announced a new ban on most travel from Europe, aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. That travel ban torpedoed any plans to promote the $200 million...