God Save the Kingsman!
An exciting weekend at the box office featured a three-tiered race between Kingsman: The Golden Circle, It and American Made, says Box Office Mojo. Mathew Vaughn’s action spy comedy Kingsman: The Golden Circle won the first place by the skin of its teeth, earning $16,935,565. Despite being in cinemas for a month now, It nevertheless managed to keep the second place by earning $16,902,442, bringing its gross total up to a whopping $290 million. Not bad for a movie produced for mere $35 million! In the third place is American Made, Doug Liman’s biographical crime drama starring Tom Cruise that grossed $16,776,390 in its opening weekend. The LEGO Ninjago Movie fell to the fourth place from the last week’s third, earning $11.6 million. In the fifth place, with $6.5 million, is Flatliners, Sony’s remake of Joel Schumacher’s 1990 psychological horror movie.
Big Plans for James Cameron’s Avatar Sequels
For almost a decade now, James Cameron has been talking about his upcoming Avatar sequels. Now, according to AVClub, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox Lachlan Murdoch announced plans to spend over a billion dollars on not one, not two, not three, but four sequels to Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi extravaganza/tech demo. Deadline reports that Kate Winslet, who previously worked with Cameron on Titanic, will join the cast of the as yet untitled sequels. Production for all four new Avatar movies began in September with the first of them arriving in cinemas December 2020.
Produced for $237 million, James Cameron’s Avatar earned an incredible $2.7 billion at the global box office, becoming the most successful movie in the history of cinema. Despite that, this sci-fi blockbuster left a surprisingly shallow imprint in the global pop culture. Avatar also helped revive 3D movies, a fad that, almost a decade later, is dying far too slowly for some tastes.
Jon Hamm Joins the Cast of Good Omens
Deadline reports that actor Jon Hamm (Mad Men, Baby Driver) will appear in Amazon’s adaptation of Good Omens, a humorous apocalyptic novel written in 1990 by Neil Gaiman and the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett. Hamm will join the cast led by David Tennant (Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Doctor Who) and Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex), as a devil and an angel who try to prevent the preteen Antichrist from ushering in the apocalypse. Gaiman will serve as an executive producer alongside Douglas Mackinnon, who won an Emmy in 2016 for his work on the TV movie Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.
Neil Gaiman has been on a roll lately. His fantasy novel American Gods has been turned by Showtime into a critically acclaimed TV show. AMC-owned streaming service Shudder is planning an anthology series titled Likely Stories based on the lesser-known works of this British-born writer of weird fiction. Good Omens is being co-produced by Amazon Prime Video and BBC Two and is scheduled for the release in 2019.
