Aladdin Box Office: Disney Opens Big On Memorial Day As Brightburn And Booksmart Struggle

Aladdin Box Office: Disney Opens Big On Memorial Day As Brightburn And Booksmart Struggle

Dumbo, who? Disney rebounded from that movie's disappointing opening early this year, finding a whole new world of money with Aladdin. The 2019 live-action remake is making good use of Memorial Day weekend, and it's expected to make over $100 million just at the domestic box office alone by the time the four-day holiday is over. There wasn't much magic at the box office for anyone else, with Aladdin leaving everybody in the dust, including the three repeats just behind it -- John Wick 3, Avengers: Endgame, and Detective Pikachu. You have to head down to #5 to find the first other newcomer in Brightburn, followed by Booksmart.

Check out the full top 10 chart from the domestic box office. The results below are just for the usual three-day Friday-to-Sunday tally, and more money will be made Monday to finish out Memorial Day weekend.

If Aladdin can reach $110 million on Monday, that will make it one of the top five Memorial Day openings ever, per Box Office Mojo stats. It seems to be trending toward the higher end of the initial estimates for its opening weekend box office. That said, there's no chance it will take the #1 Memorial Day weekend spot from the reigning champion, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which nabbed $139 million in its four-day debut.

Aladdin has already made more than $120 million at the international box office, for a current worldwide total of $207.1 million. It should easily pass Dumbo, which only has a current domestic total of $112,701,413 and a worldwide total of $348,096,055.

Speaking of Dumbo, though, it got a boost from Aladdin's opening. It actually just missed the top 10, placing #11 with a $1.046 million weekend. That's a +238.2% jump over its 18th place finish last week. Sometimes it seems like Disney is stacking these releases too close together, but as we saw from Captain Marvel when Avengers: Endgame came out, the releases don't cannibalize each other so much as give the previous film a nice ticket boost.

John Wick 3 was the top dog last week, finally dethroning Avengers: Endgame as #1 title on the weekend charts. They are both still toward the top this weekend, along with Detective Pikachu, which left the indie newcomers struggling for air. Brightburn is a superhero movie, but not a big studio comic book movie. It was made on a shoestring budget, so that $7.5 million isn't exactly a failure, but does it bode ill for the potential to continue the story from here? Same with Booksmart, which is one of the best-reviewed films of the year. It's earning raves, but only $6.5 million at the box office.

It's always tough to be a small film out there, but especially around a big holiday weekend like this. Brave of them to even try to take on Aladdin, John Wick, and Endgame with some counter-programming. But would another time of year have been more advantageous?

Looking ahead, next week is going to be another monster at the box office -- literally, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters ready to take your money. Rocketman will also open to try and claim the non-blockbuster crowd.

Who took your money this weekend and why? Poll time.

Olivia Wilde ‘Stole’ An On-Set Rule From Martin Scorsese In The Making Of Booksmart

Olivia Wilde ‘Stole’ An On-Set Rule From Martin Scorsese In The Making Of Booksmart

When taking on an intimidating new endeavor, it’s always helpful to take inspiration from those who are the best at what they do. After all, their methodology clearly results in success, and mirroring that methodology theoretically should result in mirrored success. This is something that is regularly seen in the movie world when filmmakers are preparing to make their first feature, and it’s a tradition that Olivia Wilde continued in the making of her directorial debut, the upcoming comedy Booksmart.

Specifically, she took a page out of the playbook of one of the greatest filmmakers of all time: Martin Scorsese. The two had the opportunity to collaborate in recent years working on the HBO series Vinyl (which Scorsese co-created and Wilde starred in), and that experience proved to be motivating for the actress-cum-director in the making of Booksmart. Speaking during a Los Angeles press event earlier this week, Wilde revealed that she borrowed an on-set tactic from the Oscar-winner, which was that all scripts and sides were not made available to the stars during production. Said Wilde,

I stole that rule from Martin Scorsese. I worked for him, and I was blown away by what happens when actors are not allowed to bring sides on set because it means that they are free to create, and with a very short schedule - like we had 26 days to shoot the film - I needed them to be ready when they got there to just play.

A script can often function as a safety net for actors, as they can look back on the material to remember specific lines, or it can help them find the proper emotion for a given moment in a larger story – but Olivia Wilde apparently wasn’t interested in letting her stars have that backup system. Instead, she felt it was more important for the cast to exist in the moment while cameras were rolling, and while it almost certainly led to deviations from what had been written, she felt that the freedom the environment provided was ultimately more important.

What makes this particular situation a little extra special, though, is that while Booksmart does feature some veteran adult stars - including Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, and Jason Sudeikis – most of the ensemble is made up of younger actors (some of whom are making their feature film debuts). This in mind, you’d think that Olivia Wilde’s borrowed approach from Martin Scorsese might be seriously intimidating, but evidently that wasn’t the case.

Instead, as Wilde explained, they apparently weren’t flustered by that aspect of the experience at all – which came as a bit surprise to the first-time director:

What was amazing is this cast is so brilliant that that was no big deal. I think there's much more experienced actors who would've been terrified by that rule, and they were like, 'No problem; watch me work.' So I'm very, very proud. I think half of the brilliance you see in the movie, if you see it, it's because of the energy they brought that day, and they're looseness, and they're will to give it their all.

Based on a script by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman, Booksmart centers on a pair of intelligent high school seniors (Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein) who start to feel a level of regret about their lack of high school partying when they realize that many of their more fun-oriented classmates still managed to get into good schools. They make the decision to subvert their reputations by attending an end-of-the-year blowout and letting loose for the first time in their lives – and it winds up leading to a fun adventure involving all kinds of strange roadblocks and weirdness along the way.

The film debuted earlier this year at the SXSW Film Festival, earning great reviews and heaps of buzz, and it won’t be long until audiences nationwide have the chance to see it for themselves. Booksmart will be heading into wide release next Friday, May 24th, so be sure to check it out, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more about the movie.

First Sonic The Hedgehog Trailer Gives Him Wild New Powers

First Sonic The Hedgehog Trailer Gives Him Wild New Powers

Studios have continued to try and crack the code of turning video games into movies the way they have with comic books and the result has been films with a lot of different looks and styles. Now, we have one of the most popular video game characters ever getting his first big screen adventure and it's...interesting, to say the least. Check out the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog and see what the blue speedster can do in a world of humans.

Of course, the movie starts showing off just how fast Sonic is, that's his whole gimmick, but here Sonic apparently can move so fast that he goes full Quicksilver in a sequence where the world around him appears to be standing still. Even Sonic doesn't usually go quite that fast.

In addition to that, we see a sequence where the famous gold rings that Sonic collects in the video game can apparently be used as portals that transport Sonic's human friends from on place to another. i guess now we know why he picks so many of them up.

Sonic is a character born in the 1990s and that vibe permeates the trailer. Possibly not more so than in seeing Jim Carrey's version of Dr. Robotnik, which is born from a very old school Jim Carrey performance. It feels like something out of an Ace Ventura movie and to be honest, I can get behind that. It's certainly not the version of Dr. Robotnik I was expecting, and I'm not sure what it means to the film as a whole, it may not really work, but if you're a fan of old school Jim Carrey, it's nice to see.

For those fans a little thrown off by Carrey's look, the end of the trailer gives us a version of Robotnik more in line with the classic video game version, though how one becomes the other we don't know.

For fans of the classic video game, there are plenty of fun references in the trailer. The Paramount logo is scene surrounded by gold rings. James Marsden's police officer is a resident of Green Hills, a reference to the first level of the original Sonic the Hedgehog video game. Even the film's tagline about every hero having a "Genesis," is a cute reference to the Sega video game console on which Sonic had his best adventures. Possibly his only good ones.

The plot of the film is a bit vague based on the trailer. Sonic needs to "save the planet" though it's not clear here from what. Robotnik appears to be chasing Sonic, not the source of whatever Sonic is trying to save us from so what that is we don't really know.

Sonic the Hedgehog fans were more than a little concerned when the first posters came out for the new film. The character's look was a little disconcerting. I'm not sure this trailer is going to alleviate anybody's fears. It's a little over the top and Sonic still looks, odd. Having said that, Sonic has been portrayed as being full of attitude in pretty much all of his incarnations so this isn't all that out of line even if it seems a bit much.

Sonic the Hedgehog hits theaters in November.

Why Pet Sematary Went With That Ending, According To The Filmmakers

Why Pet Sematary Went With That Ending, According To The Filmmakers

SPOILER WARNING: Major spoilers for the ending of Pet Sematary are in this post! Come back after seeing the 2019 movie, unless you have no plans to see it, in which case read on.

Fans of Stephen King and horror films were treated to Pet Sematary this weekend, which adapts the famed author's most grim and depressing novel. There's already been a lot of discussion over the changes the film made from the book, but the biggest change is definitely its ending. For book readers, it's basically an entirely different ending from the source material, and while I'm sure that fans will be debating whether or not it was for the better, the film's directors have their reasons for making the change.

Okay, big spoilers coming up right now. Last chance to turn away.

Pet Sematary follows the Creed Family, who move to Maine and discover that a cursed Indian burial in the woods behind their house can resurrect the dead. Those brought back are usually pretty murder-y. In the film, 9-year old Ellie Creed is run over by a speeding truck. In his grief, her father Louis buries her behind the pet cemetery, and she basically returns as a murderous demon.

In the books, the resurrected child is 2-year-old Gage, who kills his mother, Rachel, and is put down by Louis, who goes insane and decides to bury Rachel in the woods hoping it'll be better this time. However, in the movie, both Rachel and Louis are killed and resurrected by Ellie, and they become a demon zombie family, with little Gage appearing to be next in line.

That's a significant change, and co-director Kevin Kölsch told Collider that the ending changed organically during filmmaking and it wasn't a change they initially set out to make.

It wasn’t necessarily an idea like, ‘We have to change the ending.’ It was just sort of other things changed within the movie. We changed it from Gage to Ellie, then obviously Ellie then being this character that could now have the awareness to know what’s going on with her and to have conversations about it. It changed the scenes afterward.

There were multiple different versions of the ending that were written and a couple of them were shot. One of them was the original ending in the books, and when they showed both endings to test audiences, the new one got the best response, according to producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura.

A lot of times with endings, you kind of just let the audience tell you what they’re feeling. We got to screen both of them to people and it just seemed like audiences really responded to that one.

In fact, the filmmakers had three different ideas that were ranked by darkness and they ended up picking the darkest one. They never intended for Pet Sematary to have a happy ending, and screenwriter Jeff Buhler said it gave the film an extra punch.

It felt right to have an ending that had a little punch to it and was kind of a wink. Like, ‘We’re in a horror movie people, it’s Friday night, you’re out with your friends, have some fun.'

If you are reading this, you've hopefully already seen Pet Sematary, so share in the comments below what you thought of the ending and if it was better than the book.

Oscar Isaac Says Episode IX Will Be A Fulfilling End To The Skywalker Saga

Oscar Isaac Says Episode IX Will Be A Fulfilling End To The Skywalker Saga

It was only a little over three years ago that the Star Wars franchise returned to the big screen with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but already we’re nearing the end of another era. Along with being the last chapter of the sequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode IX will also be the final installment of the Skywalker saga that began with A New Hope all the way back in 1977. So obviously a lot is riding on Episode IX to deliver a satisfying conclusion to this corner of the Star Wars universe, and according to Oscar Isaac, the movie succeeds in that regard. In his words:

It is the end of the entire Skywalker saga. Nine stories. This is the culmination of the entire thing. What J.J. has done, and the entire Lucasfilm team, is incredibly fulfilling. It’s also special for us because you get to learn a lot more things about these characters.

In typical Star Wars fashion, Oscar Isaac is unable to talk specifically about what to expect from Star Wars: Episode IX, but during his visit to Today (via Indiewire), he promised that it will be a wonderful wrap-up to the saga we’ve watched unfold on-and-off over the last four decades. Along with hyping up Episode IX even more, Oscar Isaac has also made it clear in recent months that he had a blast shooting the movie, calling it a “looser” production compared to The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and that audiences will be “blown away.”

Since Star Wars: Episode IX is the final tale in the Skywalker Saga, one would imagine there will be callbacks to the original and prequel trilogies. While it remains to be seen how the prequels will factor in, the original trilogy will at least get some representation through Mark Hamill reprising Luke Skywalker (presumably as a Force ghost), Anthony Daniels reprising C-3PO and Billy Dee Williams finally returning to play Lando Calrissian on camera, though he did voice the character a few years back in Star Wars Rebels. Unused footage of Carrie Fisher in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi will also allow for Leia Organa to have a presence in the movie.

That said, the current Star Wars trilogy has been following a new generation of main characters, so it’s good to hear Episode IX will be revealing more about them. The Star Wars media empire is vast, so no doubt we’ll see Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron and plenty of other characters introduced during the sequel trilogy in more novels, comic books and video games in years to come. But for all we know, Episode IX could be the last time we see any of them on screen again, as the franchise looking to go in new directions with the Rian Johnson trilogy and the film series being worked on by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. It’s possible that a few decades down the line, we could see this particular gang again, just like how Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford returned, but for now, Episode IX is set to be their last cinematic appearances.

All we know for certain about Star Wars: Episode IX so far is that it will be set one year after the events of The Last Jedi. That movie ended with nearly all of The Resistance being wiped out, but thanks to Luke Skywalker’s sacrifice, the survivors were able to escape Crait and start rebuilding its numbers. However, Oscar Isaac said that that rather than become a massive force able to take on The First Order, the Resistance members in Episode IX operate as guerrilla fighters, so it won’t be easy for them to achieve victory once and for all.

Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20, so keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more details about the highly-anticipated movie. Don’t forget to look through our 2019 release schedule to learn what other major motion pictures are coming out later this year.

Sean Gunn Was Surprised By Guardians Of The Galaxy's Massive Success

Sean Gunn Was Surprised By Guardians Of The Galaxy's Massive Success

It seems so silly in hindsight knowing what we know now, but prior to its release, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was seen as a big gamble on the part of Marvel Studios. These were quirky D-list characters with zero name recognition that were almost completely divorced from the heroes the studio had spent six years building up. How could they possibly succeed?

Of course, Marvel knew better and Guardians of the Galaxy went on to become a major hit, so much so that even those who believed in the project were blown away. Among them was writer-director James Gunn’s brother, Sean Gunn, who plays Kraglin and the on-set Rocket Raccoon in the films. Sean Gunn was surprised by just how massive the first movie's success was, as he explained:

I always felt pretty confident that we would have something on our hands, at least that people liked, but I never ever imagined that it would be the massive, massive hit that it was. I never thought that they would be able to sell so much; that it would be marketed so well; and that kids would identify so well to it; and that people would compare it to their favorite 80s movies.

As someone who was aware of what his brother was capable of and had read the script, Sean Gunn knew that the doubters were wrong. He saw the potential of Guardians of the Galaxy and how special it could be, and that audiences would like it. Yet even with the confidence of having been a part of the film, Sean Gunn still couldn’t have predicted that it would be a hit on the massive level that it was.

As Sean Gunn told ComicBook.com, Marvel marketed this seemingly risky movie well and Guardians of the Galaxy wound up striking a major chord with audiences. Moviegoers of all ages found something to love, from younger audiences falling in love with the characters to how it reminded older audiences of the films of the 1980s. This brilliant alchemy resulted in an unqualified smash hit.

That first Guardians of the Galaxy came out in August of 2014 and went on to make $773.3 million worldwide to become one of Marvel’s biggest movies, surpassing all but Iron Man 3 and The Avengers at the time. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was even bigger and earned $863.7 million worldwide.

These former D-listers are now a billion dollar property and household names. They even have their own ride at Disneyland and one coming to Walt Disney World. That level of massive success probably would have surprised even the most pie-in-the-sky optimist of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians of the Galaxy succeeded on its own merits, but also because it no longer matters if characters are considered A-list. As Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Black Panther and Captain Marvel have proven, Marvel is the selling point that gets people in the door and then the characters do the rest.

The success looks to continue for the Guardian,  because Sean Gunn’s brother James is returning to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That film is still a few years away, but when it becomes another box office hit, no one will be surprised.

You don’t have to wait that long to see the Guardians though, because they, along with the rest of the MCU, are a part of this weekend’s Avengers: Endgame. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what you can look forward to this summer movie season.

Watch The Spider-Man: Far From Home Cast Surprise Disneyland Guests

Watch The Spider-Man: Far From Home Cast Surprise Disneyland Guests

One of the best things about Disneyland is that you can feel like you're inside the worlds of classic Disney animated movies, Star Wars, and Marvel Comics all at the same time. While most of the Marvel themed entertainment planned for Disneyland Resort is currently under construction, you can still get your picture taken with numerous Marvel heroes like Captain America and Spider-Man.

However, one group of kids got a bit more than they were expecting from the wall crawler yesterday when the cast of Spider-Man: Far From Home photobombed them. But that was nothing compared to what happened when Spider-Man removed his mask. Check it out.

A group of kids are simply having fun getting their picture taken with Spider-Man at Disney California Adventure. But then things get crazy when Zendaya, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Jacob Batalon, show up and join the photo. Even Spider-Man himself looks surprised to see them and is getting the audience to give them a round of applause. Of course, even that is a set up as the big reveal is that the costumed character playing Spider-Man is the same guy who plays him on the big screen, Tom Holland.

Getting a picture with Spider-Man is cool. Getting a picture with the Spider-Man is something else entirety. You cab hear the crowd going nuts in the video from Disneyland Insiders, especially when Holland reveals himself.

While Marvel is the hottest thing in the world right now thanks to the fact that Avengers: Endgame has become the second highest grossing movie of all-time in only two weekends, many fans are already looking forward to the next chapter. The newest trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home just dropped, something which almost certainly wasn't a coincidence considering the timing of this appearance, and that's got fans buzzing all over again.

The trailer drops the word "multiverse" into the conversation, which if true, is a game changer for the MCU. We've been told that the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be something quite different compared to what we're used to, and the fact that alternate realities could come into play would certainly qualify.

Tom Holland and company's appearance at Disneyland Resort is far from the first time we've seen celebrities invade an attraction related to their franchise. Johnny Depp has made appearances both in person and via screen to promote both Pirates of the Caribbeans films and the live-action Alice in Wonderland franchise. Mark Hamill has also dropped in on Star Tours.

Fans looking for even more Spider-Man at Disneyland won't have to wait too much longer. The new Marvel themed land that will opening only feet from where this clip was taken is set to debut in 2020 and we know it will include a Spider-Man themed attraction, though exactly how it will work remains clouded in Imagineering mystery.

Considering that the one existing Marvel attraction at Disney California Adventure, Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout, includes performances by the actors in the film franchise, it seems like there's a good chance Tom Holland could be part of the upcoming attraction, though that has yet to be confirmed.