Bad Boys for Life Threepeats Its Success
Martin Lawrence and Will Smith keep proving there’s life yet in Bad Boys. The second sequel in the series, Bad Boys for Life stayed at the top of the weekend box office for a third week in a row, earning $17.7 million. According to the Box Office Mojo, this brings its total domestic earnings up to $148 million. Michael Bay, who directed the first two Bad Boys movies, wasn’t involved with the third film except by performing a minor role of a Wedding MC. Bad Boys for Life was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, Belgian/Moroccan directors, known for the TV series Snowfall and the crime drama Black.
In the second place is once more 1917 by Sam Mendes. So far, this World War I drama received ten nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards. It also won two Golden Globe Awards, three Critics’ Choice Awards, and seven British Academy Film Awards. It has also been among the five highest-grossing movies of the weekend for five weeks now. 1917 is currently in second place at the weekend box office with $9.5 million and a total domestic gross of $119 million. In the third place with $7.6 million is the fantasy adventure film Dolittle, featuring Antonio Banderas (The Laundromat), Jim Broadbent (Game of Thrones), Robert Downey Jr. (Avengers: Endgame) and Michael Sheen (Good Omens). In the fourth place is this week’s sole newcomer Gretel & Hansel. Directed by the acclaimed horror filmmaker Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), this dark fantasy film earned $6.2 million in its inaugural weekend. And finally, in the fifth place of the last weekend’s domestic box office is once again Jumanji: The Next Level with $6 million and a total domestic gross of over $291 million.
Mike Flanagan Rounds Up the Cast for Netflix’s Midnight Mass
Mike Flanagan is quite busy. This critically-acclaimed filmmaker is currently working on The Haunting of Bly Manor. This is a sorta/but not quite sequel to his 2018 Netflix horror series The Haunting of Hill House. We recently reported he was developing a second horror series for Netflix called Midnight Mass. Now Deadline reports Flanagan already picked the cast for this new show, many of which have collaborated with him on earlier projects.
Zach Gilford (The Purge: Anarchy) and Hamish Linklater (Legion) will play the show’s leads alongside Kate Siegel, who appeared in The Haunting of Hill House as well as in Flanagan’s horror films Gerald’s Game, Hush and Ouija: Origin of Evil. Annabeth Gish and Henry Thomas both appeared in The Haunting of Hill House; Samantha Sloyan and Michael Trucco were in Hush; and Alex Essoe and Robert Longstreet played supporting roles in Flanagan’s 2019 adaptation of Doctor Sleep. Even Midnight Mass itself appeared in Flanagan’s previous work. The lead character in the 2016 horror film Hush is writing a novel titled Midnight Mass. A copy of this fictional novel can be seen in the Flanagan’s 2017 psychological horror-thriller Gerald’s Game.
Streaming Service Quibi Announces Its Roster of Shows
Quibi is an upcoming streaming platform with a silly name an unusual concept. All of its shows will have a running time of ten minutes or less, resulting in quick content bites that can be enjoyed anywhere, anytime. Because enjoying an hour-long TV show or a feature-length movie is just too much!
However, Quibi admittedly presented an impressive, even ambitious roster of projects as we learned this week through Entertainment Weekly. Kiefer Sutherland is returning to his Jack Bauer mode in the latest iteration of The Fugitive. He will play US Marshall hunting down a crime suspect, played by Boyd Holbrook (Logan, The Predator). Kevin Hart (Jumanji: The Next Level) and John Travolta (In a Valley of Violence) will team up for Die Hart, an action-comedy series in which Hart portrays a fictional version of himself who wants to become an action star. Will Forte (The Last Man on Earth) and Kaitlin Olson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) will star in Flipped. In this comedic series, they’ll play a pair who discovers a hidden stash of money, only to end up chases by a narco cartel. Liam Hemsworth (Hunger Games) will be pitted against Christoph Waltz in the thriller Most Dangerous Game.
Quibi will also produce projects by Catherine Hardwicke, Doug Liman, Paul Feig, Sam Raimi, Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh, Steven Spielberg, and Guillermo del Toro. The launch of this streaming service is set for April 6.
