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Monday, June 29, 2020

Watch A Supercut Of Every John Wick Kill

Watch A Supercut Of Every John Wick Kill

John Wick, a.k.a. Baba Yaga, is the most feared assassin in the criminal underworld. If you interfere with his mission, you’re going down and almost certainly won’t get back up. With John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum finally hitting theaters this weekend, we’ve put together this supercut video of all the people John Wick has killed onscreen so far. Alas, you’ll still have leave the carnage he unleashed during his Impossible Task to the imagination.


From shooting adversaries in the head to stabbing them with a pencil, there’s no shortage of ways for John Wick to slay someone. By the video’s end, Keanu Reeves’ deadly character has racked up 202 kills. Needless to say that number will rise once John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum comes out.


All of this bloodshed could have been avoided had Iosef Tarasov and his buddies had just refrained from breaking into John Wick’s house to steal his car and kill his dog, the one thing his recently deceased wife left him. John had already killed enough people to fill up several lifetimes, and he’d spent the last four years living in bliss and far way from darkness.




But no, these idiots unwisely came into the picture, and with the grief of losing Helen still fresh on his heart, John Wick dished out hell on Iosef, his father Viggo and anyone remotely connected to them… well, except Kevin Nash’s Francis. He correctly decided to “take the night off” when John offered the opportunity.


Of course, that’s just covering the first movie, which ended with John Wick bringing a new dog back home. At the beginning of John Wick: Chapter 2, after he retrieved his stolen car, John was content to return to his quiet life, but Santino D’Antonio, the man who helped John with his Impossible Task, got in the way.


Santino demanded John make good on the marker he gave him, blowing up John’s house when the protagonist initially refused to comply with his demands. Making matters worse, even after John traveled to Italy to kill Gianna D’Antonio, Santino opened a $7 million contract on John to wrap up loose ends. The only way John saw fit to end this was to gun Santino down on Continental grounds, which is a big no-no in this crowd.




Which brings us to John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, where John is now on the run because assassins are after the now-$14 million contract Santino’s associates on the High Table have put out. Making matters worse is that John has also been declared excommunicado, meaning he’s lost all his underworld privileges and access.


So how will John Wick fare against this latest round of people trying to kill him? In the eyes of his friend Winston, the odds are about even. It’s already clear that John will manage to get out of New York, but it remains to be seen just how many bodies he’ll drop both in the Big Apple and elsewhere in the world.


John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum opens in theaters on May 17, but if you’re wondering what movies are hitting the silver screen after that, be sure to browse through our 2019 release schedule.



Godzilla: King Of The Monsters' Worldwide Opening Numbers Are Massive

Godzilla: King Of The Monsters' Worldwide Opening Numbers Are Massive
Godzilla shooting his atomic breath into the sky

There is perhaps no more appropriate movie to usher in the summer months than one in which a bunch of giant monsters fight each other. That is what we are getting with this weekend’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters from director Michael Dougherty. As befitting a movie with beasts of leviathanic proportions, the sequel to 2014’s Godzilla is looking to stomp its way into theaters in grand fashion with massive worldwide opening numbers.


Godzilla: King of the Monsters should reign supreme at the worldwide box office this weekend with an opening in the range of $230-$235 million according to Deadline. That’s a massive worldwide opening and one that would be a great start for a movie that may have had a production budget of $170 million before print and advertising.


Such an opening would give Godzilla: King of the Monsters the top spot at the worldwide box office, and the ability to say it’s the biggest movie in the world in TV spots, as well as besting Aladdin’s impressive $213.5 million opening from last weekend. An opening of $230-$235 million would also crush Legendary’s previous two MonsterVerse movies, Godzilla, which opened to $196 million and Kong: Skull Island, which opened to $146.1 million.




As far as how that $230-$235 million breaks down, domestically the tracking for King of the Monsters has the film landing between $50-$55 million. This is on the upper end of the long-range tracking from a couple months back that had the sequel opening between $40-$60 million.


However, there is an expectation that the Rotten Tomatoes score could have an effect on the domestic box office for Godzilla 2. Namely, if negative reviews continue to drag the film’s score on the Tomatometer down into the 20th percentile range, that could damper the enthusiasm of domestic audiences and thus hurt the film’s chances to enjoy that $50-$55 million debut.


Nevertheless, as anyone who follows the box office of films of this ilk could probably guess, Godzilla: King of the Monsters was always going to live and die overseas. On that front, the kaiju clash is expected to top the box office in 75 offshore markets for an international debut of $180 million. That would best the $140 million and $160 million international openings for Godzilla and Skull Island respectively.




Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ opening crucially includes China and where the movie ultimately lands on the weekend will depend a great deal on how it fares in the Middle Kingdom. A great debut there could possibly push Godzilla to $200 million international in its opening weekend. High anticipation and an international cast could work in its favor, with Godzilla 2’s Chinese debut estimated to be in the $75-$90 million range.


Also opening this weekend and hoping to counterprogram against Godzilla and friends is Rocketman. The Elton John musical from Dexter Fletcher is looking at a $25 million domestic bow and $45+ million worldwide. It obviously won’t take the crown from Godzilla, but it shouldn’t get drowned out either, as other would-be counterprogramming success stories have this year.


Godzilla: King of the Monsters hits theaters on May 31. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to keep track of all of this summer’s biggest titles.



Sunday, June 28, 2020

Dumbo Is Expected To Have A Big Worldwide Opening Too

Dumbo Is Expected To Have A Big Worldwide Opening Too
Dumbo with feather

Disney has never had trouble making money with the remakes of animated classics. It's the main reason that we're getting three of them this year. However, the level of success can still be quite variable. Beauty and the Beast make a billion dollars while Cinderella made only half a billion. Dumbo may turn out to see numbers on the lower end of that spectrum, but it's still looking like it will have a pretty impressive global opening, as the film is currently tracking to bring in something around $140 million for it's opening weekend.


Dumbo is opening in nearly every territory where it is opening at all by this Friday. That means that this weekend is going to be key to the overall success of the film. It's opening in the U.S. and China, the two biggest box office markets in the world, which means it's pretty much all downhill from here.


The official range for Dumbo's opening weekend, according to Deadline is between $137-$155 million. The U.S. is looking to make up a bit less than half that business as the domestic number currently projected is around $60 million at the low end. It doesn't have much competition for the box office title. No other major wide releases are hitting screens on Friday. Jordan Peele's Us will probably have a solid second weekend, but that movie really isn't competing with Dumbo for audience share.





For comparison, 2015's Cinderella saw a domestic opening weekend of $67 million and ended up grossing $543 million globally. If Dumbo finds itself on the low end of projections, it could end up coming in beneath that number. Still, when your competition is a series of films that have largely made a half billion dollars or more, you can come up short by comparison and still be a massive hit in absolute numbers.


Dumbo is the earliest of the Disney animated films to be given the remake treatment, which is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's had the longest time to become popular to multiple generations. At the same time, it may not resonate with fans in quite the same way as a more modern film simply because of its age.


Of course, the last time Tim Burton directed a Disney remake it was a little film called Alice in Wonderland that made a billion dollars, so who knows? If lightning strikes twice we could see Dumbo become an absolutely massive hit.





Regardless of Dumbo's numbers, it is sure to be a big year for Disney remakes. In just two months we'll see the live-action version of Aladdin, and two months after that we'll get the new version of The Lion King. Those two films are almost certainly destined to be box office successes. The latter film could find itself competing for the box office crown of the year if it does as well as the animated original.

Star Wars Website Seemingly Confirms Doctor Who Alum Matt Smith

Star Wars Website Seemingly Confirms Doctor Who Alum Matt Smith
Doctor Who Matt Smith

One of the stranger mysteries surrounding Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has been whether or not Doctor Who alum Matt Smith is actually in the movie. The actor’s casting was first reported last August, but his name was not on the official cast announcement and the actor himself denied having a role in the film. Star Wars Celebration shed some light on the final chapter in the Skywalker Saga with the reveal of the movie’s title and first trailer, but regarding Matt Smith, we were left in the dark.


That darkness may be beginning to abate though, because in the movies section on Disney’s United Kingdom website, the page for The Rise of Skywalker lists out the returning cast as well as the newcomers. There, sandwiched between Keri Russell and Dominic Monaghan, is the name Matt Smith. This seemingly confirms that yes, in fact, the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith is in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.


It doesn’t get much more official than Disney’s website, so unless someone is messing with us or has been given the wrong information, this is the most conclusive evidence we’ve had so far that Matt Smith will indeed be in this movie. If that’s the case and Disney was just going to confirm it in this unceremonious fashion, why the prior secrecy?




Even though the original casting announcement seemed to offer more transparency than expected with regards to Mark Hamill returning and how Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia would be brought back, Matt Smith’s name was not included. And Matt Smith denied being in the film, which would seemingly indicate that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.


That secrecy now looks especially interesting in light of the first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That trailer ended with Emperor Palpatine’s laugh, and with Ian McDiarmid’s appearance on stage, we now know that the Saga’s main villain will be in Episode IX in some form.


That is a massive reveal with major implications and something that could have remained hidden as a surprise. So if Disney is willing to reveal the return of the Emperor but hide Matt Smith (other than his name on the UK website, which could be a big uh-oh for someone), just who the heck is he playing?




Speculation has ranged on this matter, but the prevailing consensus seems to be that he will be a bad guy. The two possibilities that I’ve seen thrown around the most are that he’s either a Knight of Ren, the dark siders who again failed to make an appearance in the trailer, or that he has something to do with Palpatine.


The Knights of Ren are still being held back, so it is entirely possible that Matt Smith’s character could be among their ranks, but the Palpatine angle is what I’d put my money on. With Ian McDiarmid in the movie, it doesn’t seem like Matt Smith will be Palpatine, but some sort of clone or apprentice would be neat. Perhaps when the next trailer arrives, we’ll get a better idea what Matt Smith’s role in this movie will be, but right now he is one of the biggest question marks.


Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens on December 20. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what’s headed your way this summer, and for all your movie news, stay tuned to CinemaBlend.



The Special James Gunn Easter Egg You Can Find In Brightburn

The Special James Gunn Easter Egg You Can Find In Brightburn
Brandon Breyer in his mask in a diner in Brightburn

James Gunn didn’t write or direct the new superhero horror feature Brightburn, but he did have a significant role in its creation. In addition to producing the film through his Troll Court Entertainment banner, he was a regular presence on set during shooting, and is a mentor of sorts to helmer David Yarovesky (who previously directed the “Guardians Of The Galaxy: Inferno” music video). His fingerprints are most definitely all over the work… and there’s even a special little Easter egg snuck in that ties back to one of his previous movies.


The movie in question is 2011’s Super – which James Gunn made just prior to venturing into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Guardians of the Galaxy. The independent comedy stars Rainn Wilson as Frank Darbo, a short order cook who becomes a low-rent costumed vigilante when his wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a local crime boss (Kevin Bacon). The plot of the film doesn’t really factor into Brightburn, but while watching the new release I couldn’t help but notice the name of the diner where a few of significant scenes take place: Darbo’s.


Does this mean that Super and Brightburn take place within the same continuity? I brought this question with me when I attended the Los Angeles press day for Brightburn this past weekend, and when I sat down with James Gunn and star Elizabeth Banks I got official confirmation:




Apparently at some point between the events of Super and Brightburn Frank Darbo moved to Kansas and graduated from being a short order cook to a restaurant owner with his name on the outside of the building. It may not be a full-on diner franchise, as James Gunn pointed out, but it does suggest a nice happy ending for the character beyond the events that unfold at the end of the 2011 film.


The connections between Brightburn and James Gunn’s past work may not stop there, however. Recognizing that Gunn and Elizabeth Banks previously collaborated on the writer/director’s first feature, Slither, I followed up my Super question by asking the duo about the possibility of a link between those two movies as well. It was an idea that Banks embraced, explaining,



Well, we don't know what planet Brandon is from or what else could be coming. We don't know! We don't know what else there might be... There's so much alien, you know... there's crap floating around out there and just lands here every once in a while.





Given their similar looks, this might mean that there is a link between Banks’ two characters – Slither’s Starla and Brightburn’s Tori – but that’s certainly not impossible. We never learned much about Starla’s family in the 2006 movie, so perhaps Tori is her cousin from Kansas… who just so happens has an extraterrestrial encounter of her own when she makes the decision to adopt a baby who crash lands on Earth in a spaceship.


Obviously this isn’t spoiler-y at all, but instead a fun Easter egg you can look out for when you go see Brightburn yourself. The new movie arrives in theaters nationwide this weekend, and we’ll have more from my interviews with the cast and filmmakers coming to CinemaBlend in the next few days – so stay tuned!

Dark Phoenix Director Compares Movie To Avengers: Endgame And Game Of Thrones

Dark Phoenix Director Compares Movie To Avengers: Endgame And Game Of Thrones
X-Men: Dark Phoenix movie poster

In 2019, we’ve already witnessed the the end of an era in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the polarizing end to HBO’s Game of Thrones. But wait, that’s not all! The X-Men franchise and current Star Wars saga are also coming for our hearts this calendar year.


The mutants are up next with the release of Dark Phoenix, and the film’s writer/director Simon Kinberg is prepping fans to say goodbye. Check out his recent words:



I approach this movie as the culmination of 20 years of storytelling, of living with the X-Men for all this time and watching this family come together, and this movie is the movie that challenged that family and tears them apart in a new way. And so I imagined it as the culmination, and I even pitched it to the studio, as this is the culmination of this cycle of X-Men stories. Which there will be more X-Men movies in the future no doubt, but this particular cycle with this cast, it felt like it was time to do kind of what Game of Thrones has done, what Endgame has done, really see them challenged in a new way and sort of survive and go off into the sunset.





Did all our favorite franchises coordinate to leave our lives all at once? Because I feel like we need a breather here. These are a lot of farewells at once. Dark Phoenix will hit theaters less than three weeks after the Game of Thrones finale and a little over a month away from Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of the MCU thus far. Now that we’ve grown accustomed to bittersweet endings, will this X-Men conclusion measure up?


When Simon Kinberg sat down with Comicbook.com, he also teased the movie as being the most intense of the X-Men films. When Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey gets hit by a solar flare during a mission in space with the rest of the team, she develops new incredible powers that threaten the X-Men and the world.


One trailer for the film particular heightened the stakes when it showed that Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique would be killed off by Jean in the first act. While the decision to reveal this in the trailer surprised many, Kinberg has said Mystique’s death won’t be the only major casualty in Dark Phoenix.




The movie also marks the last of Fox’s main X-Men movies, since Disney recently obtained the rights to the franchise. So while the mutants will likely be seen again someday in the MCU, Kinberg took this chance to close out the stories told through the franchise since 2000’s X-Men. He has noted that it has always been the plan to end the series with Dark Phoenix; this isn’t only a side effect of the Disney/Fox merger.


Ride off into another fictional sunset with the X-Men with Dark Phoenix coming to theaters on June 7.

Saturday, June 27, 2020

How Little's Marsai Martin Became The Youngest Executive Producer Ever

How Little's Marsai Martin Became The Youngest Executive Producer Ever
Marsai Martin as young Jordan Sanders in Little

Sometimes getting what you want is all about carving out your own opportunities for yourself, and Marsai Martin was ready to take that plunge at 10 years old. The young actress had just finished off her first season on the ABC comedy Black-ish as Diane, one of four children in Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross’ TV family. Take a break? Take a summer vacation like the other kids her age? Nah. She decided to pitch what became this weekend’s comedy release Little to the production company behind Think Like a Man and Ride Along. Doing so, she’d become the star and youngest executive producer in Hollywood history.


Will Packer Productions has grown in the past few years, including the 2017 mega-hit Girls Trip, and has boosted black comedians Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart into blockbuster leads. Here’s what Packer told me during a recent Little press day about the time Marsai Martin pitched her idea for the upcoming body-switch comedy:



This 10-year-old little force of nature comes into my office with Kenya Barris, who I knew very well, but I did not know [Marsai Martin]. She comes in, she has this pitch and I hear pitches all the time at various stages, some well thought out, some not so much. She came in with this really well thought out, structured pitch that was good and worked! I said ‘You know what? I can see this movie!' She had some scenes that she acted out in the moment and I was like ‘Okay, this young lady is not shy, she’s got a very strong sense of self but also a very strong sense of story.’ That’s what stood out.





If only we all had that kind of confidence that that age! Not only did the actress have the courage to step into the Hollywood executive’s office with creator of Black-ish, Kenya Barris, but she convinced Will Packer to actually make the movie too. Little is about successful tech entrepreneur Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall), who wakes up one morning as her younger self and must renavigate life as middle-schooler, as her assistant April (Issa Rae) covers for her back at work.


Tina Gordon, who also penned the script for What Men Want, was hired to write and direct the project and collaborated with Marsai Martin during the development process. Gordon admitted that she had some different ideas going into the project about what Marsai Martin’s character would take on. Here’s what she told me:



Originally, she had a lot of scenes with the kids in the movie, but after I met her, I realized that comedically she could really go toe-to-toe with Issa Rae. She is beyond her years as far as comedic timing and they had a great chemistry together. So a lot of the buddy comedy came through meeting and collaborating with Marsai. A big part of the collaboration between us came because she was really able to inform me about the pressures of social media and bullying. She has her finger on the pulse of her generation.





Early in the process, Little was going to primarily take place in the halls of Jordan’s old middle school, but Marsai Martin’s ability to take more on blew the writer/director away. The comedy instead is more about the growing relationship and hilarious quips between little Jordan and Issa Rae’s April as they form an unlikely friendship through the events on the film.


Marsai Martin also helped Tina Gordon implement how relevant social media is on her young generation and place it in the DNA of the film, in addition to it touching on the prevalence of bullying in middle school as well. When I asked the youngest executive producer ever if the job she took on was a different experience then she was expecting, here’s what she confidently said:



I thought it was going to be more difficult because it is my first film. I was going to be nervous and I just had to get my mind right and really pay attention, but then they just made it so comfortable for me. Most of the people on set I probably knew already or seen them on Black-ish. It was more like a reunion when working with Regina and Issa, they just made it comfortable for me and it was all fun.





This 14-year-old is thriving in the cutthroat world of Hollywood without batting an eye. Marsai Martin did seem to place the right people around her for her film debut, as she had previously worked with both of the film’s stars before and much of the crew behind Black-ish followed her for Little. Think we’re going to have to watch out for this one! You can catch Little in theaters this Friday, April 12.

 

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