Ocean’s 8 Steals the First Place
Last weekend saw a clash at the box office between two movies about crooks, with Ocean’s 8 stealing the first place from Solo: A Star Wars Story. Set in the same universe as Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 movies, Ocean’s 8 is a heist comedy about Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock – Heat), a thief who is planning a complex heist with her best friend Lou (Cate Blanchett – Thor: Ragnarok). Featuring – among others – Anne Hathaway (Interstellar), Helena Bonham Carter (Harry Potter series) and Rihanna, Ocean’s 8 earned $41,5 million domestically in its opening weekend. The movie was directed and co-written by Gary Ross, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker best known for Pleasantville (1998) as well as the first Hunger Games movie (2012).
While Solo: A Star Wars Story failed to meet Disney’s financial projections, it still managed to hold the second place in the weekend box office. According to the Box Office Mojo, the latest story in the Star Wars universe earned $15,4 million last weekend. Third place belongs to Deadpool 2 that grossed $13, 6 million. In fourth place is the supernatural horror film Hereditary starring Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense) and Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects). A feature film debut of the director and screenwriter Ari Aster, Hereditary created a lot of positive buzz that helped it earn over $13 million in its first weekend in cinemas. Finally, the fifth place of the last weekend’s box office results belongs to Avengers: Infinity War with $6,8 million.
Game of Thrones Prequel in the Works
Several months ago, we reported that HBO is considering a number of Game of Thrones spin-offs. Now, Deadline reports that HBO has just green-lighted the pilot to a prequel series written by the Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin and screenwriter Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, Kingsman: The Secret Service). While both Martin and Goldman will serve as the show’s producers, Goldman will be its showrunner.
Very little is known about the show so far, although both the Vulture article and Martin himself on his blog have teased some details. According to both sources, Game of Thrones prequel will take place tens of thousands of years before the events of the show and depict the fall of the world “from the Golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour” while uncovering secrets from the rich, mythical history of both Westeros and the world beyond. Current Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss won’t be involved with this new project. HBO plans to give at least a year between the end of one GoT show and the beginning of another, meaning that fans will have to wait at least until 2020 to see it.
Geoff Johns Steps Down As DC Entertainment Head
Ever since less-than-stellar box office performance of Justice League last year, there were rumors and reports about a possible shake-up aboard DC Entertainment, a company tasked with managing all of DC movies, TV shows, and comic books. This week, the AVClub reported that Geoff Johns, current President and Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment will step down from this duty and be replaced by Jim Lee.
Geoff Johns’ career spans comic books, movies, and TV shows. As the writer of Green Lantern comic books, Johns helped revive the interest in character Hal Jordan and in the mythology behind the Green Lantern Corp. He worked on TV shows Smallville, Justice League Unlimited, Blade: The Series, Arrow, and The Flash. Johns was also a co-producer on ill-received 2011 Green Lantern movie and helped pen the scripts for the upcoming Aquaman movie and the Wonder Woman sequel.
Jim Lee is a comic book artist and writer, who began his career illustrating titles such as The Punisher War Journal and gained fame with his work on The Uncanny X-Men comic book series. In 1990s, Lee helped start Image Comics that published titles such as WildC.A.T.s and Gen¹³ before being sold to DC Comics where Lee continues to work to this day. In 2010, Jim Lee was named Co-Publisher of DC Comics alongside Dan DiDio.
