Bad Boys Good for the Box Office
Last weekend, action-comedy Bad Boys for Life roared to the top of the box office. 25 years – A quarter of a century! – after the first Bad Boys movie and 17 years after its sequel, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith once again reprise their performances as Detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey. Even though the director of the first two films Michael Bay didn’t return for this sequel, Bad Boys for Life nevertheless earned over $62,5 million in its opening weekend.
After a single weekend at the top, Sam Mendes’s war epic 1917 dropped to the second place, grossing $21,9 million in its fourth week in cinemas. Considering the positive buzz, and ten Academy Award nominations however, 1917 will probably keep attracting crowds. In the third place is Doolittle, an adventure comedy starring Robert Downey Jr. as a Victorian doctor who can talk to the animals. This most recent adaptation of Hugh Lofting’s children’s book series earned $21,8 million in its inaugural weekend. Judging by the negative reviews though, Doolittle is on his way down. Meanwhile, Jumanji: The Next Level – an adventure film featuring animals that’s actually entertaining – is still among the top five highest-grossing films of the weekend. Now in its sixth week in cinemas, the third Jumanji movie earned around $9,7 million, raising its domestic gross up to almost $271 million. And finally, in the fifth place with $8,3 million is Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.
All of this data comes from The Box Office Mojo.
Netflix Working on The Witcher Anime
The Wrap reports that Netflix is working on a feature-length anime film set in The Witcher universe. This spinoff film, titled The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, will be produced by The Witcher’s showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and its producer Beau DeMayo. Behind the project is Studio Mir, the Korean animation studio that previously worked on The Legend of Korra, The Boondocks and Voltron: Legendary Defender.
Netflix claims that The Witcher was watched by 76 million households in its first month on the streaming service. This claim should be taken with a grain of salt, though. The streaming service decided to count each subscriber who watched at least 2 minutes of The Witcher. In the past, Netflix counted each subscriber who chose to watch at least 70% of a movie or show’s episode. Such a change of metrics most likely inflated the numbers, although no one knows by how much.
Judging by internet memes alone, Netflix seems to have tapped into a deep, deep thirst for The Witcher. Considering that the series won’t be back before 2021, the streaming service understandably wants to keep the fans happy until then. Will Nightmare of the Wolf be any good? When it comes to animated shows, both Netflix and Studio Mir have a decent track record. If the film turns out to be similar to Netflix’s own Castlevania anime series, fans will probably be happy.
Amazon to Turn Fear Agent Into a Series
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon is looking to Adapt Rick Remender’s comic book series Fear Agent into a TV show. Comedian Seth Rogen is one of the producers, alongside director David F. Sandberg (Shazam! and Annabelle: Creation) and the producer Matt Tolmach (Jumanji: The Next Level, Spider-Man: Far From Home). Mattson Tomlin, co-writer of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, will pen the pilot episode. Amazon won a bidding war to pick up rights to the title, defeating Peacock, HBO Max, and TNT.
Fear Agent is a retro-futuristic science fiction comic book series written by Rick Remender with art by Tony Moore and Jerome Opena. It follows an alcoholic spaceman Heathrow Huston on his numerous intergalactic adventures. Image Comics first published Fear Agent in October 2005. From 2007 until its conclusion in 2011, Fear Agent was published by Dark Horse Comics. This isn’t the first adaptation of Remender’s work. Formerly, this comic book author worked with Sony Pictures Television to adapt his comic Deadly Class into a series that aired on Syfy.
