Fantastic Beasts, New Titles Sweep Box Office
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald premiered last week to packed theaters and tepid reviews. Just like the first Fantastic Beasts movie, this one is also set the J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe but decades before the adventures of the Boy Who Lived. Box Office Mojo reports that the movie featuring, among others, Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean), Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes), Ezra Miller (Justice League), Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) and Katherine Waterston (Alien: Covenant) earned over $62 million in its opening weekend.
Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch dropped to the second place from the last weekend’s first, still earning a perfectly respectable $38,5 million. Similarly, Bohemian Rhapsody dropped from the last weekend’s second place into this weekend’s third, grossing a bit over $16 million. In the fourth place of the last weekend’s box office is Instant Family, a comedy about a couple – played by Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) and Mark Wahlberg (Ted) who decides to adopt three children. Directed and co-written by Sean Anders (Daddy’s Home), Instant Family earned $14,5 million. In the fifth place is Widows, a heist film about a group of widows trying to finish a failed heist started by their late husbands. Featuring Viola Davis (Suicide Squad), Elizabeth Debicki (Man From U.N.C.L.E.), Colin Farrell (In Bruges), Michelle Rodriguez (Avatar) and a host of others, Widows earned $12,3 million in its opening weekend.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Renewed for Seventh Season
Even though the sixth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t even aired yet, ABC has already announced plans to renew the series for the seventh season as well, says The Hollywood Reporter. While this move does come as a surprise, it also makes a lot of sense. Both Marvel Studios and ABC network are owned by Disney, a corporation now looking to expand into streaming market as well with a service called Disney+. A superhero show like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be a natural fit there.
Created in 2013 by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen and set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. follows the agents of the titular covert agency as they deal with all kinds of super villain threats. Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) – who made his first onscreen appearance back in 2008 in Iron Man – leads a team of special operations veterans like Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), scientists such as Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) as well as budding young superheroes such as Daisy Johnson alias Quake (Chloe Bennet). While at first show closely followed the larger events in the MCU movies, throughout its five seasons its writers began relying more and more on their own storylines.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism Adaptation in Works
AVClub reports that Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) will produce and most probably direct a movie based off a 2016 horror novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. In this Young Adult/Satanic Panic spoof set in the late 1980s, the friendship of two teenage girls is sorely tested when one of them gets possessed by a demon. Jenna Lamia (Awkward) is the movie’s screenwriter.
Landon’s 2017 slasher horror Happy Death Day drew attention due to its rather unique premise: a college student named Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) has to relive her birthday again and again as she gets repeatedly murdered by a masked killer.
This isn’t the only adaptation of Hendrix’s work in production. Josh Schwartz (The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck) is working on a TV series based off Hendrix’s 2014 bestselling novel Horrorstőr, set in a haunted IKEA store. Meanwhile, Hendrix himself has just finished working on a script for a horror comedy titled Satanic Panic.
