Jumanji Still the Jungle VIP
For the third week in a row, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle took the first place at the weekend box office. According to Box Office Mojo, this action adventure movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black took around $19,5 million throughout the January 19th – January 21st weekend, bringing its total domestic gross to over $316 million.
Two newcomers appeared among the top-grossing movies last week. War drama 12 Strong, starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Peña, and Michael Shannon, earned $15,8 million in its first weekend in cinemas. The second newcomer, a cops-and-robbers movie Den of Thieves featuring Gerard Butler, is in the third place with $15.2 million. Steven Spielberg’s political thriller The Post is in the fourth place with $11.7 million. And finally, in the fifth place of the last weekend’s box office is once again the musical The Greatest Showman with $10.6 million.
And the 2018 Academy Awards Nominations Go To…
This Tuesday, actors Andy Serkis and Tiffany Haddish announced the nominees for the 90th Academy Awards. Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy drama The Shape of Water received a staggering 13 nominations, including those for the best movie, the best director, and the best original screenplay. Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk got eight nominations, while Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was nominated for seven awards.
The list of the best directors includes both lauded veterans such as Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) and Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk) and first-time directors like Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) and Jordan Peele (Get Out). Incidentally, these last two films received four nominations each, including those for best director and best original screenplay. Nominations for best actors and actresses are similarly varied, mixing well-known stars like Meryl Streep (The Post), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread) and Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) with relative newcomers such as Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out).
The 90th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 4. The full list of nominees for the 2018 Academy Awards can be found here.
A TV Version of What We Do in The Shadows in Works
For several years now, there have been talks about possible spin-offs, sequels and TV shows based on the hilarious 2014 mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows about a group of vampires sharing a house in Wellington, New Zealand. Now, Variety reports that TV channel FX is producing a pilot for a TV show based on a movie. Both Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi – who wrote, directed and starred in this horror comedy – will serve as the show’s executive producers, with Clement writing and Waititi directing the show.
But this isn’t the only project related to What We Do in the Shadows. Last December, Stuff reported that Clement and Waititi were also working on a police mockumentary series focusing on a duo of hapless New Zealand cops (played in the film by Karen O’Leary and Mike Minogue) as they accidentally uncover paranormal occurrences around their city. Titled Wellington Paranormal, the series will consist of six half-hour episodes and will first air on TVNZ sometime in the mid-2018.
Ryan Reynolds to Star in Clue
Recently, Fox studios made a three-year deal with Ryan Reynolds and his Maximum Effort company that allows Fox first look at their potential new projects. According to Deadline, one of them is based on a 50-year-old board game Clue. While this may sound like a joke project, there actually already exists a Clue movie, a 1985 ensemble comedy, that’s surprisingly entertaining. Fox is now trying to re-team Reynolds on this project with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who wrote Deadpool, because nothing says “murder mystery” like an R-rated superhero flick.
In a similar vein, last December Reynolds signed on to star as a voice of Pikachu in the upcoming live-action adaptation of Detective Pikachu, who is just like regular Pikachu, only with a deerstalker hat. Because, why the hell not? Detective Pikachu will be directed by Rob Letterman, who in 2015 helmed the children’s horror movie Goosebumps, inspired by the novels by R. L. Stine.
