Tenet Still on Top, Surprising Absolutely No One
For the fourth weekend in a row, sci-fi thriller Tenet remained at the top of the box office. And how could it not? So far, every other big-budget movie has either been postponed to some date we all know will change or streamed digitally. By the way, did you notice that Tenet spells backward still says Tenet? Mind. Blown.
Anyways, Tenet earned approximately $3,4 million last weekend, bringing its total domestic gross up to $41,2 million. Its overseas gross currently stands at $243,7 million. In the second place is once again the superhero horror movie The New Mutants with $1,2 million. Its domestic gross is inching towards $20 million with an additional $20 million earned overseas. Even by the COVID-19 standards that’s… not good. The New Mutants is one of the few big(ish) movies to come out in late August. It’s been playing in US cinemas a week longer than Tenet and has practically no competition. And yet it barely earned $40 million worldwide gross.
And then there’s Unhinged starring Russell Crowe. Now in its seventh week in cinemas, it remains among the top five highest-grossing movies of the weekend, with just a bit below $1 million. And yet, its worldwide gross up to this point is still below $33 million – its production cost. That’s tells you how little are people willing to go to cinemas, even after they reopened.
In the fourth place at the last weekend’s box office is this little film called The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe you’ve heard of it? This 40-year-old Star Wars sequel almost overtook Unhinged at the box office, earning just $60,000 less than the road rage thriller. And finally, in the fifth place is the romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery with $500,000.
James Cameron Claims He finished Avatar 2
AVClub reports James Cameron officially confirmed he finished filming Avatar 2.
So, OK, there’s still long post-production ahead of it. Also, Disney recently postponed its release until December 2022 due to the pandemic and the increasingly crowded 2021 release schedule. And, yes, admittedly, it is hard to get excited about a sequel to a movie nobody remembers anything about even though it was, for a time, the highest-grossing blockbuster in cinematic history.
But Avatar 2 is filmed. So, yay? Maybe?
Cameron announced this news during a recent online panel with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the 2020 Austrian World Summit. During the same event, Cameron confirmed that Avatar 3 has also been about 95 percent done.
Notorious perfectionist, Cameron has been developing Avatar sequels for over a decade now. Even the first film took two years to get off the ground. When it arrived in cinemas in 2009, it became a huge hit, its profits boosted by the popularity of 3D technology. Remember 3D technology? That sure proved out to be a waste of money.
Anyways, Cameron has been producing several Avatar sequels at the same time to cut down on production costs. Luckily for him, he set the production in New Zealand that, unlike some countries we won’t name here, actually handled the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, Cameron and his crew traveled to New Zealand for the first time since the outbreak where they spent the mandatory two weeks in quarantine before resuming work.
Chris Hemsworth, Jurnee Smollett, and Miles Teller Sign on the Netflix Sci-Fi Film Spiderhead
Chris Hemsworth (Avengers: Endgame), Jurnee Smollett (Birds of Prey), and Miles Teller (Whiplash) will star in the upcoming Netflix sci-fi thriller Spiderhead, says GeekTyrant. The movie will be helmed by Joseph Kosinski, director of sci-fi films TRON: Legacy and Oblivion as well as the upcoming action movie Top Gun: Maverick.
Spiderhead is based on a short story by George Saunders. Set five minutes in the future, it tells a story about a group of convicts offered an opportunity to shorten their prison sentences if they agree to become test subjects. The medical experiment in question exposes them to an emotion-altering drug forcing them to confront their past. The story first appeared in The New Yorker and was later collected in an anthology titled Tenth of December.
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick adapted Spiderhead into a script. In the past, this creative duo of screenwriters developed scripts for superhero comedy Deadpool, horror-comedy Zombieland, and sci-fi horror thriller Life. Reese and Wernick already worked with Netflix, producing a script for Michael Bay’s action film 6 Underground. Hemsworth also collaborated with the streaming giant, playing a lead role in the 2019 action thriller Extraction.
