Originally published June 19, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
After a fantastic opening weekend and even better follow-up (where it only fell 45%), Wonder Woman was finally knocked off the top of the US box office this weekend by Cars 3. However it wasn’t all bad news. The movie earned another $40 million and its worldwide total is now $571 million. It’s currently the second biggest movie to be directed by a woman, and will easily pass Mamma Mia‘s $606 million next week. Read more here.
FIFTY SHADES OF ON-SET BUST UPS
Given that Sam Taylor-Johnson didn’t return for this year’s woeful Fifty Shades Darker, it should come as no surprise that the director has spoken out issues she had on-set of Fifty Shades of Grey with creator E.L. James. “With the benefit of hindsight would I go through it again? Of course I wouldn’t. I’d be mad,” she told The Sunday Times. It was a struggle and there were lots of onset tête-à-têtes, with me trying to bat it into the [right] place. I like everyone — and I get really confused when they don’t like me. I was so confused by E.L. James. I don’t understand when I can’t navigate a person, when there’s no synergy.” Johnson explored these comments further with The Hollywood Reporter, which you can read here.
Just one week after Kevin Feige said there were no plans for Venom, Black Cat or Silver Sable to appear in the MCU, former Sony president Amy Pascal has said that the characters and their spin-offs will take place in the same universe as Spider-Man: Homecoming. There was a rumour that these spin-offs wouldn’t feature the Wall Crawler, but perhaps these plans have changed. Either that, or Venom and Silver & Black will be a part of the Homecoming Spider-Verse, but not the MCU. Maybe? We’re not sure anymore. Read more here.
Josh Hartnett has the distinct honour of turning down the chance to play Spider-Man, Superman and Batman, and the actor spoke about passing on Batman Begins with The Associated Press over the weekend. “In that instance, I think my regret mostly was not forming the friendship or the creative partnership with that director, more than it was [not] doing Batman,” he said. “It wasn’t about not doing studio films. At the time, what I was interested in was…the film that I did instead of that was a tiny film about a guy with Asperger’s Syndrome, falling in love with a woman with Asperger’s Syndrome. It was a true story [called] Mozart And The Whale. It was more a question of what I wanted to do as opposed to what I didn’t want to do, and I always try to look at things that way.” Read more here.
THOSE ALIEN BASTARDS ARE GONNA PAY FOR SHOOTING UP MY RIDE
Although it was released in the mid-1990s and the character’s popularity is at its lowest thanks to the disasterous release of Duke Nukem Forever, the long-gestating live-action Duke Nukem is moving forward. “We’re working on Duke Nukem,” said Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford at E3. “I can’t announce it, but it’s blown my mind, there’s been a lot of production companies have come at us. We’re putting together a deal right now with a major motion picture studio; I’ll tell you off the record if you want to know. It’s the exact right people that should be doing a Duke Nukem film and we’ll see what happens. It’s unbelievable, I think that’s very likely a thing.” Read more here.
We know the cast will be rather large for Avengers: Infinity War, and Scarlett Johansson said in an interview over the weekend that one scene will feature more than 30 of the characters. “I am in it, and at one point I think that the Infinity Wars – I think at one point there are 61 or 62 Marvel characters in it. There’s a lot… In one particular scene, there’s like 32. There’s a lot. There’s so many of us, I don’t even know who’s a Marvel character and who’s a crew member, honestly.” Read more here.
Following the rather poor domestic release of The Mummy, Top Gun superfan Neil Calloway has written a piece asking for Hollywood to start saying no to Tom Cruise, which you can read here.
