Jumanji Remains at the Top of the Food Chain
Over the last weekend, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle continued to reign over the box office. According to Box Office Mojo, this $100 million adventure comedy earned $35.1 million in its second weekend atop of the box office (and the fourth weekend in cinemas), bringing its total gross worldwide up to over $274 million.
Steven Spielberg’s political thriller The Post starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep took the second place in the weekend box office by grossing $23 million – a remarkable achievement for a movie that, just a weekend before, barely earned $1.7 million. In the third place with $16.1 million is the musical The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, Zack Efron and Rebecca Ferguson. Action thriller The Commuter is in the fourth place with $15.7 million. Finally, in the fifth place of the last weekend’s box office is yet another newcomer, an animated movie Paddington 2 with $15 million.
Flash Movie Finds Its Directors…
Variety reports that Flashpoint, Warner Bros’ movie about the superhero Flash (played by Ezra Miller), has new directors: John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Daley and Goldstein together wrote the script for the last summer’s blockbuster hit Spider-Man: Homecoming. In 2015 they directed the road trip comedy Vacation – a loose remake of the 1983 hit comedy National Lampoon’s Vacation starring Chevy Chase.
This marks a positive turn for a movie that already lost two of its directors. Originally, Flashpoint was to be directed by the Seth-Grahame Smith, best known for his novel Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. However, Smith left the project in April, 2016 due to “creative differences”. Smith was quickly replaced by the director and screenwriter Rick Famuyiwa, best known for his 2015 comedy-drama Dope, who then also left the project in October 2016. Warner Bros is growing understandably nervous ever since Justice League movie failed to meet the projected box office results in its opening weekend. Hopefully, the new directors of Flashpoint will help dissuade the fears of executives and fans alike.
…While Gambit Loses Its Own (Again)
Back in October, we reported that Gore Verbinski, who previously directed and produced Pirates of the Caribbean movies, was in talks with the executives at Fox about directing the X-Men spinoff movie about Gambit, a superhero kineticist who uses playing cards to a deadly effect. Now, according to Deadline, Verbinski decided to pull out of a project, citing scheduling conflicts.
This marks the third time that a director pulled out of this ill-fortunate project. Standalone Gambit movie was first announced over two years ago: Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) was to direct and Channing Tatum was cast to play the lead role as well as produce the film. However, Wyatt dropped out in September, 2015 to pursue other projects. By the end of 2015, Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) took over the production, helping to re-write the movie’s script and re-cast the movie… only to leave the project in August, 2017. Now, with Verbinski leaving the project too, Gambit movie remains stuck in the development hell.
