The Suicide Squad Wins the Box Office… Or Does it?
The arrival of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad seemed to have been eagerly anticipated. And yet, even though the latest DC superhero movie easily won first place at the weekend box office, its earnings were underwhelming. In its inaugural weekend, this $185 million superhero film featuring an ensemble cast led by John Cena (F9: The Fast Saga), Idris Elba (Hobbs & Shaw), and Margot Robbie (Birds of Prey) earned a mere $26,2 million. This is becoming a pattern this summer, as other would-be blockbusters like Jungle Cruise and Space Jam: A New Legacy struggle to recuperate production costs. F9 has proven out to be a rare exception from this.
Speaking of Jungle Cruise, Disney’s latest action-adventure film is in second place this week with a $15,8 million gross. Its domestic earnings currently stand at $65,4 million. M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror movie Old earned third place with $4,1 million, bringing its domestic gross up to $38,5 million. Marvel’s Black Widow is in fourth place with $3,9 million. At the moment, its domestic gross is $174,3 million. And in the fifth place is the crime drama Stillwater starring Matt Damon, with $2,8 million.
As always, all of this data comes from Box Office Mojo.
The Orville Season 3 Update
Recently, Jordan Helman, head of scripted originals at the streaming service Hulu, provided an update regarding the status of the sci-fi series The Orville. According to SlashFilm, the show’s third season will air sometime soon on Hulu. While it may not sound like much, this is the most recent update about the show whose last season aired almost two years ago.
The Orville has had a bumpy ride. The series initially aired on Fox before moving to Hulu after season 2. Production of season 3 began in late 2019, but then the pandemic struck halfway through the shoot in March 2020. Just as with so many other movies and TV shows, production of The Orville stopped for a considerable chunk of last year. It resumed late in 2020, only to be halted again early this year – again, due to COVID-19. But the production eventually continued in February. Will there be a season 4? We’ll have to wait and see.
The Orville is Seth MacFarlane’s (Family Guy, Ted, A Million Ways to Die in the West) spoof and a love letter to Star Trek. Set four hundred years from now, it follows the crew of USS Orville, an interstellar spaceship led by Captain Ed Mercer (MacFarlane). Tasked with exploring the various planets of the galaxy, the officers and the crew meet strange alien races and stumbles into all kinds of sensitive situations.
AMC Signs a New Distribution Deal with Warner Bros
This week, AMC Theaters entered a new agreement with Warner Bros regarding the distribution of the studio’s latest titles. SlashFilm reports that starting from 2022, Warner Bros movies will play exclusively in theaters for at least 45 days before appearing on the streaming service HBO Max. This deal comes eight months after that same studio caused chaos by announcing plans to release all of its upcoming 2021 titles both in cinemas and on streaming simultaneously.
While the COVID-19 pandemic put enormous stress on the entire entertainment industry, movie theaters were hit the hardest. Even with eased health and safety measures, the public remains wary of watching films in cinemas in the middle of a global pandemic. As studios began re-focusing on streaming services as legitimate distribution platforms, they also started renegotiating deals with the largest movie theater chains in the country, like AMC, Regal, and Cinemark.
SlashFilm provides a handy overview of the current situation regarding individual studios and the way they distribute movies. While various studios approached the pandemic in different ways, one thing is abundantly clear: there’s no going back to the old distribution model.
