Director Jon M. Chu Credits Movie Theaters For Crazy Rich Asians’ Success

Director Jon M. Chu Credits Movie Theaters For Crazy Rich Asians’ Success

We’ve been busy celebrating all things movies but also all things related to movie theaters at CinemaCon this week, and Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu went onstage in Las Vegas and talked about the history of making his movie Crazy Rich Asians and the choice to bring it to the big screen, crediting movie theaters for the film's success.

The general story behind Crazy Rich Asians’ big release is one that was told by the author of the book the film is based on, Kevin Kwan, previously. Kwan said before that multiple companies were bidding on the movie while it was coming together.

Both Netflix and Warner Bros. really wanted the movie to be theirs; at the time the author even noted Netflix was offering a lot of money for the project. But money wasn't necessarily the end goal. Both companies have very different release policies. Warner Bros. releases titles theatrically and there’s a distribution window before titles go out onto other platforms. Netflix typically releases movies on Netflix and Netflix only. Per Chu:

We had to make a choice of whether to tell CRA on a streaming service or theatrically, like Warner Bros. And it wasn’t an obvious choice to some, but to us it was very obvious. The producers, myself, the writer. We wanted to affect culture and we wanted to affect culture on a global scale to become part of the dialogue that had to be had and urgently.

While there are pros and cons and filmmakers are choosing both streaming and theatrical distribution these days, John M. Chu notes his entire team was in agreement with Warner Bros. being the right fit, and there was a big reason why they felt theatrical was the only way to go:

We knew there was only one way to present our movie and that was theatrically. No other medium in the world forces people to leave their homes make a choice to fight through traffic, stand in line, sit in a theater turn off the lights and say tell me the story with all my attention on the screen the way cinema does.

Ultimately, when watching a movie on streaming, a lot of us will also have our phone out or be watching while doing some other task, whether that be cooking, doing a crossword puzzle, knitting or myriad other activities. The theater is one of the only places that asks us to turn our phones off and sit in rapt attention while a piece of art is presented in front of us.

Crazy Rich Asians went on to be a global phenomenon. It made $238.5 million at the worldwide box office on a reported $30 million budget. It has also made movie stars out of its two leads, particularly Henry Golding, who was a travel show host prior to Crazy Rich Asians and went on to appear in A Simple Favor and now the upcoming Last Christmas opposite Emilia Clarke and Emma Thompson and The Gentlemen opposite Charlie Hunnam. Constance Wu will also be in Jennifer Lopez's new stripper movie, Hustlers.

Before that, when opening weekend happened, Jon M. Chu says he went to the theater to watch people watch his movie. He noted that something happened at the theater that was unexpected and touching -- people actually stayed in the lobby to talk about the movie for a long time after it let out.

The weekend became a can’t-miss pop culture event. But it wasn’t about the first weekend. Our audience came back for the second and the third and they brought their parents and grandparents and friends. Some people bought tickets for total strangers. I’ll never forget. My experience going to the theater for the opening, but at the end people stayed like in the lobby. Like they didn’t want to leave… It was contagious. I felt pride, true pride, for the first time in my life.

It's not often that full asian ensemble casts have been brought together on the big screen for a U.S. audience. In particular, during his comments at CinemaCon, Jon M. Chu talked about remembering seeing The Joy Luck Club when he was a young man and spending hours afterwards dissecting the movie as a family. It was the first time he'd experienced seeing his culture shown on a big screen at a movie theater. So, seeing the same thing happen in the lobby after screening Crazy Rich Asians sort of takes that story full circle.

None of that would likely have been possible without the big screen experience. Sure, Netflix offers a worldwide platform similar to theaters. It also has a large number of subscribers and is good at marketing its new products to the people most likely to be interested. The company is even big on choosing diverse projects for its streaming service. But the shared moviegoing experience is something completely different and it was that experience that was deemed to be the most important by the people who worked tirelessly to make Crazy Rich Asians a reality.

One major thing theatrical releases still have going over streaming releases is their ability to produce event weekends and a lot of buzz. Occasionally a Netflix product like Stranger Things has a similar trajectory, but there’s nothing like opening weekend for a new movie. If you are a big release, you're guaranteed to be the center of attention, and even if you land second or third on a busy box office week, a movie is still an event flick that is being talked about on blogs, in social media and at the dinner table. Don't get me wrong, people talk about Netflix shows and movies plenty, but it's often more of a slow burn thanks to people not binge-ing Netflix content at a consistent rate.

It could have been chancy if Crazy Rich Asians hadn’t dominated at the box office. But the movie did make money in most countries, leading to Crazy Rich Asians 2 getting greenlighted and more. Jon M. Chu has another project in the works right now, In The Heights based on the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, but China Rich Girlfriend and the third movie in the franchise are expected to shoot back-to-back in 2020. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Crazy Rich Asians leads in their upcoming new projects.

ReelBlend #68: Our Interview With John Wick: Chapter 3 Director Chad Stahelski

ReelBlend #68: Our Interview With John Wick: Chapter 3 Director Chad Stahelski

Very few directors currently are doing action as well as Chad Stahelski. He learned from the best. The kickboxer turned stunt performer turned coordinator turned director has been reinventing the stunt/fight wheel with the John Wick franchise, which is continuing this week with John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.

Before the movie opens in theaters, Stahelski was kind enough to join the ReelBlend podcast for a candid discussion on his extensive approach to action-set constructions, the insane amount of time it takes to do action scenes with trained dogs, the way they broke story for the John Wick saga, and the influence that The Matrix continues to have on action movies to this day.

(In case you were unaware, Chad Stahelski first met Keanu Reeves when we worked as the actor’s stunt double on all three Matrix movies. Theirs is a legendary partnership that stretches back decades.)

It was an honor to have Chad Stahelski on our show, and we know the Blenders are going to love his incredible stories about the John Wick films, and moviemaking in general.

Before we got into our conversation with Chad Stahelski, we discussed the news that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will be the ones to get their Star Wars movie in theaters in 2022. There hasn’t been confirmation that their trilogy will continue in 2024 and 2026 (or if Rian Johnson will get one of those slots to begin HIS trilogy), but those guys are slated into the 2022 slot, and we discuss how that impacts Star Wars going forward.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, Kevin, Sean and Jake weigh in with their opinions of the next-to-last episode of Game of Thrones. Their largely split on how things played out, but they talk about how the season is concluding, and how they think the finale will play out.

Finally, this week’s #Blend Game focused on the films of Sofia Coppola. How many of the guys chose Lost in Translation?

ReelBlend is a weekly podcast that we do on CinemaBlend. You can download the latest episode (and all of our past episodes) for FREE on our iTunes page! Visit. Subscribe. Like and comment. Review! Apple loves when you have star ratings and reviews, so if you listened, and you liked it (or even if you didn't), let us know. We also are on Spotify. And Google Play. And basically everywhere that you download podcasts. So download us.

Meanwhile, follow the guys on Social Media! We have an official Twitter feed for the show, so follow @ReelBlend. In addition, follow the guys at @Sean_OConnell, @JakesTakesand @KevinMcCarthyTV.

Halle Berry Cold Called John Wick 3 Director To Pitch Herself For A Role

Halle Berry Cold Called John Wick 3 Director To Pitch Herself For A Role

Halle Berry is an Oscar-winning actress who has proved to be a successful action star, having played a Bond girl, X-Men’s Storm and Catwoman. Her experience doesn’t mean she’s opposed to taking risks, and fighting for the roles she wants is still part of the job. She did just that for her upcoming part in John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum.

Halle Berry actually spoke her part into existence when she approached John Wick director Chad Stahelski before the third installment had a script ready. Check out what the director told Entertainment Weekly about how the actress joined John Wick: Chapter 3:

It was right before the holidays [in 2017]. I got a call saying, ‘Halle Berry would like to meet with you.’ I was like, ‘That’s cool.’ I’d never met her before. She came to my offices in Manhattan Beach the next day, walked right in, sat down, goes, ‘I want a part in John Wick 3. I’m like, well, ‘That’s very flattering, but we don’t have a script yet.’ She said, ‘I don’t care.’ I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t even know if there’s a female [part].’ She’s goes, ‘I don’t care, I want to be in it, let’s party.'

Get it, girl! The actress marched right into the John Wick filmmaker’s office and demanded to be a part of the franchise. Now, this isn’t something that just any actress could have gotten away with, but we’re talking about Halle Berry – it obviously worked. When Chad Stahelski decided to call her up five months later to see if she was still interested, it gets even better. Here’s what he said:

She was like ‘Of course I’m fucking interested. When do we start training?’ I’m like ‘Why don’t you come down and watch?’ She’s like, ‘I don’t want to watch, I wanna do it.’ Came in, first day, jumped right in. [She] finished going, ‘Yeah, that was tough, what time do we start tomorrow?’

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to enjoy John Wick even more, knowing Halle Berry essentially invited herself onto the movie. Way to write your be in charge of your own narrative in Hollywood! Berry will be playing a new character named Sofia, who is an old acquaintance and fellow assassin in Keanu Reeves’ John Wick. She rolls with two Belgian Malinois dogs, to fill the hole of Wick’s late Beagle Daisy, who he famously went on a killing rampage over after her death.

Just as Daisy symbolized John Wick’s wife, the director teased that Sofia’s puppers will also be symbolic of her own past. The actress worked and played with the dogs for months so she would be their trainer on set along with doing some intense weapons and fight training.

The actress recently joined the Kingsman action franchise in the 2017 sequel, after some time away from the action genre since the her time in the X-Men series. Halle Berry must have missed kicking ass and didn’t mind making her interest known to Chad Stahelski. The actress recently brought up how she’s proud about how the upcoming movie proves age is just a number as Keanu Reeves at 54 years old and she at 52 are stars of the highly-anticipated action flick.

You can see Berry join the franchise when the third John Wick film hits theaters on May 17.

Yes, Avengers: Endgame Will Still Beat Avatar ... Eventually

Yes, Avengers: Endgame Will Still Beat Avatar ... Eventually

I'm seeing a lot of naysayers out there now. Debbie Downers. They no longer believe Avengers: Endgame will top Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time. Blasphemers. Listen, I no longer think Endgame will top Avatar by the end of May -- I flew way too close to the sun on that call -- but it will seal the deal eventually. I still think it will happen this summer. Worst case scenario, it takes a re-release like Avatar got to pick up an extra $30 million or so. Since the gap is currently about $110.5 million in total, every million counts.

Avengers: Endgame's current worldwide gross is $2,677,472,736.

Avatar's worldwide gross is $2,787,965,087.

Before Avengers: Endgame came out, there was talk that it had potential to top Avatar. Some scoffed at the idea, but they stopped after that massive record opening weekend. However, some doubters are back, saying it will be a tough climb for Endgame to close the deal now:

It's slowed down more than we all expected.

That's the word from Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice Media, to THR. He had predicted Endgame passing Avatar in mid-June. Now he has moved his prediction to Labor Day. However, he added this caveat:

If it performs like it has been up to this point, there is about a $10 million to $20 million margin that falls half north and half south of Avatar. But it would be surprising if Disney didn’t get it there somehow.

If Avengers: Endgame gets within $10-$20 million, do a big marketing campaign to push it over the edge -- or take a break and then come back for a re-release. James Cameron's 2010 re-release gave Avatar an extra $10.74 million at the domestic box office and $22.46 overseas for a total boost of $33.2 million. If Marvel makes a production about a last call to see Avengers: Endgame before it's pulled from many theaters, fans will head out to help it pass Avatar.

That's a key difference here. There's a movement. After 10 years of Avatar rule, fans are ready for a new champion. There's a push for Endgame, which is considered worthy of the new title. When Endgame passed Titanic, there were cheers. Endgame has already passed Avatar at the domestic box office, but it's the overall worldwide total that really counts. (Endgame is not going to pass the domestic box office leader, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But it has already passed that movie in total worldwide gross.)

Labor Day sounds like a fine time to pass Avatar, from here. Avatar took a lot longer to get to where it is, with its run compared to more of a marathon than Endgame's current sprint. Avatar spent over 60 weeks in theaters.

Avengers: Endgame has been out for five weeks and it's still ranked #3 on the box office charts during a competitive Memorial Day weekend. It just made $16.8 million at the domestic box office this weekend. Yeah, it played on 410 fewer screens than last week. Week to week, we're going to see Endgame lose screens as films like Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, and more show up. But Avengers: Endgame is going to keep at least one screen in many theaters through the summer. It's the other smaller films that will be completely pushed aside.

I still believe Endgame will close that $110 million gap, thanks in part to U.S./Canada fans still buying repeat tickets, but also from the all-important international box office. Endgame has already made $1.8 billion dollars at the foreign box office, per Box Office Mojo. International fans are in this game right alongside the rest of us. We're going to get this job done eventually, and I won't be surprised if it's before Labor Day. Marvel Studios could even openly advertise it as an Avatar battle. Call it what it is. A fight to the finish.

What say you? Will Avengers: Endgame still top Avatar? If so, when? Do you have a revised prediction?

Jurassic Park's Laura Dern Is Clueless About The Shirtless Goldblum Memes

Jurassic Park's Laura Dern Is Clueless About The Shirtless Goldblum Memes

It’s pretty fascinating how the internet obsesses over certain movies and scenes, giving films second lives by repurposing them for all manner of content, from memes to gifs to videos. Sometimes this occurs with cult classics like Office Space and sometimes it happens to beloved blockbusters like Jurassic Park. In addition to still having major pop culture relevance, Steven Spielberg’s seminal 1993 film has provided the internet with plenty of meme fodder thanks to Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm.

In a scene in Jurassic Park, while recovering from the T-Rex attack, Ian Malcolm is laying with his shirt open in a seductive pose. This scene has become so iconic that it has received its own Funko Pop figurine and last year got a giant statue in London. Despite this pop culture prevalence, Jeff Goldblum’s Jurassic Park co-star Laura Dern is clueless about the memes. When told about the statue and the conversation around the shirtless scene, she said:

I think that’s hilarious! It speaks to a very successful narrative that is now a franchise, but gosh. Is he flattered, or is he defensive?

How Laura Dern has managed to go this long without coming across Jeff Goldblum shirtless memes is a mystery. Perhaps that’s what happens when you are busy starring in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and HBO’s Big Little Lies instead of browsing Twitter and Reddit. Even more wild is that no one asked her about it prior to Uproxx’s conversation with her. But now that she knows, the actress is clearly amused and surprised by it.

Upon finding out about all the internet love for a scene from one of her biggest movies, Laura Dern seems to have been legitimately curious about how Jeff Goldblum has responded to it all. It’s a caring impulse on her part, wondering whether Jeff Goldblum is flattered or feels self-conscious about all the discussion about his shirtless scene. She doesn't have to worry though, because as you might expect from the actor, he seems to enjoy the fandom over the scene.

I wonder if her curiosity compelled the actress to google all this after her Uproxx conversation and found her going down the internet rabbit hole of Jeff Goldblum memes.

Laura Dern also spoke about how the fandom of the Ian Malcolm shirtless scene is a product of the success of Jurassic Park itself, a film which spawned a successful franchise that has found new life in recent years. Addressing that iconic film and working with Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern also said:

Let me just say that he is one of the greatest improvisational actors ever, and he’s hysterical. So he does try everything, and Steven [Spielberg] enjoys this in actors, which is lucky in the confines of Jurassic Park, needless to say. All I know is that I felt privileged to be there, to be playing this kind-of radical feminist, paleobotanist badass, and [dissolves into laughter]. But I have no other opinion on the shirtlessness, I had no idea, that’s hilarious to me.

Jeff Goldblum’s improvisational hilarity is part of why he is so beloved and the shirtless scene may have been a product of that. The actor has spoken about the shirtless scene in the past and said that he doesn’t remember exactly and it may have been Steven Spielberg’s choice, but he thinks he opened his shirt because it was hot.

Whoever made the choice, it proved wise, as Jeff Goldblum is now immortalized with a shirtless pose that says 'paint me like one of your French girls.'

Laura Dern still sounds grateful to have been a part of Jurassic Park all these years later and to have played the kind of strong female character that many in the industry are trying to champion today. We haven’t seen that badass paleobotanist Ellie Sattler since Jurassic Park III but everyone wants to see her again and Laura Dern seems down to return, so maybe she will in Jurassic World 3.

Check out our 2019 release schedule for all the biggest movies headed to theaters this year, and stay tuned to CinemaBlend for all your movie news.

Mark Ruffalo Is Still Psyched He Wasn't Fired From Avengers: Endgame

Mark Ruffalo Is Still Psyched He Wasn't Fired From Avengers: Endgame

Actor Mark Ruffalo has a well-documented history of inadvertently dropping spoilers to Marvel movies, an offense that you might think could result in termination or at least a stern warning in the ultra-secretive Marvel Cinematic Universe. So when the new trailer and poster for Avengers: Endgame dropped yesterday, Mark Ruffalo was psyched to see that he was still in them and wasn’t fired. Take a look:

No, Mark, you weren’t fired, but the press tour for Avengers: Endgame hasn’t begun yet, so I suppose there’s still time. Given his many screw-ups and spoilery slips of the tongue, Mark Ruffalo can’t be too sure about his employment status, so he even queries it in his tweet. It’s a combination of curious befuddlement and elated shock to see himself in the new marketing.

Mark Ruffalo knows he should be fired, and yet there he is in the middle of the Avengers: Endgame poster. It’s definitely him too because his name is on it. And while he knows better than anyone that the actor who plays the Hulk can be replaced, he appears as Bruce Banner, not the Hulk. So there can be no doubt, Mark Ruffalo has not been fired and is still part of the MCU, a fact he is understandably psyched about.

The three-time Oscar nominee has been joking about being fired for a while now, leaning in to the perception that he spoils MCU movies after his various actual slip-ups. Back in October, Mark Ruffalo appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and jokingly said that he let a spoiler for Avengers 4 slip and the Russo Brothers have been playing along, telling him he’s fired ever since.

But like bullets on the Hulk’s thick green skin, those firings have just bounced off Mark Ruffalo and he remains very much in the movie.

However, Mark Ruffalo’s co-stars have even started teasing him about his loose-lipped ship sinking. Don Cheadle, who was sitting beside Mark Ruffalo for his most notorious “everybody dies” spoiler, has joked that he doesn’t want to do press with him anymore. On his latest appearance on The Tonight Show, the host even had Mark Ruffalo hooked up to a lie detector to try and grill him for answers.

We don’t know the answers for the Hulk or Avengers: Endgame yet, but we certainly have a lot of questions. Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner only appears once in the new trailer and we have yet to see the Hulk at all in the trailers for the Phase 3 capper. Obviously Bruce Banner and the green guy were going through some stuff in Avengers: Infinity War, but how that will be sorted out in Endgame is being kept under wraps.

Also of note, Mark Ruffalo may have escaped termination and is in the movie, but he does not appear with the rest of the team in the shot towards the end of the trailer where they are all suited up, presumably for some time travel/Quantum Realm adventures. Of course, we don’t see Captain Marvel or Thor in those shots either. Shots of them could have just been omitted for any number of reasons, or maybe those three, the three heaviest hitters, are off doing something else. But what?

Mark Ruffalo has less than 42 days to keep quiet and maintain his employment. Avengers: Endgame arrives in theaters on April 26. Check out our 2019 release schedule for that and all the other big movies you can look forward to this year.

Rumor: Venom Could End Up In Spider-Man 3

Rumor: Venom Could End Up In Spider-Man 3

In a few weeks, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) will receive a much-needed European vacation in the planned sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home. And according to the most recent trailers, that sequel will delve into something mysterious for the MCU: the Multiverse.

When Marvel and Sony get around to eventually doing a third Spider-Man movie, however, one rumor now speculates that the buzzword will be something even more exciting to Spider-Man fans: Symbiotes.

The Twitter account for Roger Wardell broke some Avengers: Endgame rumors that turned out to be very accurate, so there’s a chance that the person’s “Insider Information” is accurate. For the time being, we will chalk this up as rumor, as there isn’t even a Spider-Man 3 for the MCU on the books at Sony, and the studio is focusing instead on getting Spider-Man: Far From Home off the ground.

But bringing Tom Hardy as Venom into the MCU makes a whole lot of sense, particularly because audiences responded far better than we would have anticipated to the character when he got his own movie in Venom. You wouldn’t want to have an MCU Venom as well as a Sony Venom. And the only time that we have been able to see our favorite wallcrawler sharing the screen with one of his most-popular villains was in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, which was a trainwreck of epic proportions.

At the same time, Sony might not be in a rush to lend their Venom over to the MCU, despite what the above Tweet suggests. The studio seems hard at work at their standalone “Spidey” universe k(that doesn’t have Spider-Man in it yet, mind you), with Morbius following up Venom, and plans for a Venom 2 that assumedly will develop Woody Harrelson as Carnage.

Venom made a lot of money for Sony, banking $855 million globally. Audiences will return for the sequel, out of curiosity. The better bet, for Sony at least, would be to lure Tom Holland from Marvel Studios back to Sony, where he can play alongside Hardy, Jared Leto and the stars being set up in the Sony Spidey universe.

But I can also understand why Marvel wants a heavy hitter like Venom in the MCU. It’s a difficult situation.

There are better villains who seem to be more important to Spider-Man than Venom who should get a shot at the MCU treatment. The Venom origin story has been truncated in the Sony universe, so far, so trying to bring him over to the MCU without properly addressing the alien symbiote suit might get confusing.

Personally, as a die-hard Spider-Man fan, I’d love to see the MCU get a proper crack at two classic Spidey villains before they even started thinking about Venom, and that’s both Norman Osborn and Otto Octavius. Osborn could become a Big Bad not just in the Spider-Man movies, but in the larger MCU, as Norman became a chief adversary for many major Marvel heroes over the years.

And the most recent Playstation Spider-Man game mapped out a fantastic way for the MCU to do Doc Ock on screen. Also, more than enough time has passed since Alfred Molina’s spectacular rendition of Doc Ock in Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, so we are ready to see a new version of the character.

For now, this is all a rumor. All we know for certain is that Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) is joining Spider-Man’s corner of the MCU in July, and what happens after that is up in the air. Click here, then, for more details on all that we know about Upcoming Marvel Movies.