Tenet Dominates the Box Ofice (Such As It Is)
Christopher Nolan’s spy-fi thriller Tenet finally came out in the US during the Labor Day weekend, earning $20,2 million. It stars John David Washington (BlacKkKlanskan) as the nameless CIA agent who stumbles into a temporal cold war. The stellar cast includes Kenneth Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express), Michael Caine (The Dark Knight trilogy), Elizabeth Debicki (Widows), Himesh Patel (Yesterday), Robert Pattinson (The Batman), and Clémence Poésy (In Bruges).
In the second place at the three-day weekend’s box office is Josh Boone’s superhero/horror film The New Mutants with $3,7 million. Its domestic gross is currently $12,4 million. Ordinarily, this would have been terrible box office results for a superhero movie. However, with the pandemic, this is quite an accomplishment. In the third place with 2,2 million is Unhinged. Usually, this B-movie action thriller likely wouldn’t stay among the top five highest-grossing movies of the weekend three weeks in a row. However, this is the new normal. Bill & Ted Face the Music is in fourth place $879 thousand. Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield is in fifth place with $425 thousand, bringing its total domestic gross up to a bit over $1 million.
All of this data comes courtesy of the Box Office Mojo.
MGM Developing a RoboCop Prequel Series
You ever wondered what happened in the RoboCop world before there was a RoboCop. No? Well, MGM thinks you might be interested anyway. The studio is currently developing a series focused on the career of Dick Jones, the villainous senior president of Omni Consumer Products. And yet, even though Ronny Cox did an excellent job chewing scenery as a heartless business executive, there’s a reason Paul Verhoeven’s movie isn’t titled Dick Jones.
GeekTyrant adds MGM is also developing a new sequel for the original film based on the ideas by RoboCop screenwriters Michael Miner and Ed Neumeier. Initially, the studio wanted Neill Blomkamp to direct. However, after he had left the project, he was replaced with Abe Forsythe (Little Monsters). Neumeier is also involved with this new prequel series alongside writers Rob Gibbs and Dave Parkin, claiming “It has all the cool stuff about RoboCop except no RoboCop.” Neumeier explained the project would focus on business and law enforcement in a near future. And while a TV series depicting and satirizing modern-day corporate politics sounds like a solid concept, there’s no reason to label this RoboCop in any way except for – oh the irony – corporate branding of the product.
The Venture Bros. Cancelled After Seven Seasons
2020 is a year that keeps on giving. The most recent bad news in this dumpster fire of a year: Adult Swim canceled the animated TV series The Venture Bros. after seven seasons and 17 years on the air. One of its creators Jackson Publick (aka Christopher McCulloch), confirmed the news on his Twitter alongside the actor James Urbaniak, who voiced numerous characters, including its lead Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture.
Created by Publick and co-written by him and Doc Hammer, the first season of The Venture Bros. aired way back when in 2004. Initially, the show was a spoof of Jonny Quest, the 1960s Hanna-Barbera science-fiction animated series about the adventures of the Quest family. The show’s ostensible protagonists were Hank and Dean Venture, accident-prone children of Rusty Venture, a former boy adventurer himself, protected by the blood-thirsty bodyguard Brock Samson. And yet, throughout the years, The Venture Bros. morphed into a whip-smart, hilarious examination of failure, masculinity, superheroes, aging, and – most of all – the 20th century broken promise of a utopian, hi-tech future.
Publick and Hammer preferred working with a small production team, partially to maintain creative control. Because of this, a long time went by between individual seasons – sometimes years.
Since the news was first announced, Adult Swim posted on Twitter, claiming it is seeking a way to somehow continue The Venture Bros. with Publick and Hammer.
