Thor: Ragnarok Dominates Weekend Box Office
The God of Thunder came and conquered. According to Box Office Mojo reports, Thor: Ragnarok dominated last weekend’s box office, earning almost $123 million. Directed by the New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, best known for his 2014 horror comedy What We Do In the Shadows, the latest Marvel Studio blockbuster follows Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on his quest to defeat Hela (Cate Blanchett), goddess of death.
In the second place of the weekend’s box office is A Bad Moms Christmas, a holiday comedy starring Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, and Kathryn Hahn. This sequel to a 2016 comedy Bad Moms earned $16.7 million in its first weekend. Jigsaw, the latest horror film in the Saw franchise, dropped two places from the last weekend’s first, earning $6.5 million in its second weekend in cinemas. In the fourth place is Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween with $4.5 million. Finally, in the fifth place is the sci-fi thriller Geostorm that earned a bit below $3.2 million.
Lord of the Rings Heading Out To Amazon TV
Warner Bros. Studios and the estate of J. R. R. Tolkien are in the talks with Amazon Studios about a new TV show based on Lord of the Rings. Variety says that Amazon Studios CEO Jeff Bezos is personally involved in these negotiations. Several months ago Bezos issued a new programming mandate, pushing Amazon Studios towards bigger, more spectacular productions.
Since the negotiations are still in a very early stage, it is as yet unclear what story this Lord of the Rings TV series would tell. After all, Peter Jackson did an outstanding work adapting Tolkien’s epic fantasy classic into movies. And yet, such is the vastness of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth that there are surely plenty of other stories to tell. Color us cautiously optimistic.
Kong: Skull Island Writer And Director To Work On A Metal Gear Solid Movie
AV Club reports that Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of this year’s blockbuster Kong: Skull Island, as well as the movie’s screenwriter Derek Connolly, are both on board for a live-action adaptation of Metal Gear Solid – a popular series of computer games created by Hideo Kojima in late 1990s and developed by Japanese studio Konami.
Vogt-Roberts was in talks to make a Metal Gear Solid movie way back in 2014, just after he debuted with his first film, an indie drama The Kings of Summer. Meanwhile, Connolly first came to notice in 2012 with his screenplay for Colin Trevorrow’s sci-fi dramedy Safety Not Guaranteed. Since then, Connolly helped write screenplays not only for Kong: Skull Island but also for Jurassic World and its upcoming sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Dark Times Ahead For Dark Universe
Dark Universe, a cinematic universe created by Universal based on their classic movie monsters from the 1930s and 40s, is in trouble. According to Hollywood Reporter, writer-producers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, who were to oversee this ambitious project, recently left it instead.
Back in May, Universal announced its shared universe project with a cast photo featuring, among others, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, and Russell Crowe. And yet, The Mummy – the first of the Dark Universe movies – earned around $400 million worldwide, which, considering its (reported) $200 million budget and around $100 million in marketing costs, was far from enough. Production of Bride of Frankenstein was stopped this October while Angelina Jolie – who was rumored to play the movie’s titular character – moved to other projects. Is it game over for Dark Universe? People involved claim they’re currently exploring other options, which might mean pretty much anything at this point.
