Month: February 2018

Black Panther continues box office reign with $108 million second weekend

Black Panther is still king.

Ryan Coogler’s superhero blockbuster is set to score the second-highest sophomore weekend ever at the domestic box office, earning an estimated $108 million from 4,020 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. The film will therefore trounce three newcomers — the R-rated comedy Game Night, the sci-fi thriller Annihilation, and the YA romance Every Day — while declining just 47% from last week’s record-breaking debut.

Black Panther marks the fourth film ever to top $100 million in its second frame, joining Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($149.2 million), Jurassic World ($106.6 million), and The Avengers ($103 million). After 10 days in theaters, Disney’s latest Marvel movie is up to an estimated $400 million domestic total. It has also taken in about $304 million overseas ($83.8 million this weekend), for a worldwide cume of $704 million.

Directed and co-written by Coogler, Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman as the eponymous superhero, a.k.a. T’Challa, who guards and governs the secretive, technologically advanced nation of Wakanda. The star-studded cast also includes Michael B. Jordan, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Andy Serkis, and Letitia Wright. The film has garnered glowing reviews and an A-plus CinemaScore.

Coming in a distant second is Warner Bros. and New Line’s Game Night, with about $16.6 million from 3,488 theaters.

Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Vacation) and starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams, the film centers on a group of friends whose regular game night turns into a real-life murder mystery. Game Night received generally positive reviews from critics and a decent B-plus CinemaScore from audiences.

The weekend’s other newcomers, Paramount’s Annihilation and the newly relaunched Orion Pictures’ Every Day, will arrive in the No. 4 and No. 9 spots. Annihilation is on track for an estimated $11 million, while Every Day is eyeing about $3.1 million.

Based on the first installment of novelist Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina), Annihilation stars Natalie Portman as a biologist who ventures into an environmental disaster zone seeking answers about what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac). Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson costar. Although the film scored strong reviews, moviegoers gave it a tepid C CinemaScore.

Every Day, adapted from the David Levithan novel of the same name, fared better in audience polling, earning a B-plus CinemaScore, though critics’ reviews were poor. Angourie Rice stars in the love story about a 16-year-old girl who falls for a body-hopping spirit named A. Michael Sucsy (Grey Gardens, The Vow) directed.

According to ComScore, overall box office is up 12.7 percent year-to-date. Check out the Feb. 23-25 figures below.

1. Black Panther — $108 million
2. Game Night — $16.6 million
3. Peter Rabbit — $12.5 million
4. Annihilation — $11 million
5. Fifty Shades Freed — $6.9 million
6. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle — $5.7 million
7. The 15:17 to Paris — $3.6 million
8. The Greatest Showman — $3.4 million
9. Every Day — $3.1 million
10. Met Opera: La Boheme — $1.9 million

Fifty Shades Freed whips Peter Rabbit, 15:17 to Paris at the box office

Fifty Shades Freed is flogging its box office competition.

The final installment of Universal’s erotic trilogy based on the books of E.L. James is on track to debut with about $38.8 million from 3,768 theaters in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, outpacing fellow newcomers Peter Rabbit and 15:17 to Paris while unseating Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

Freed’s bow will come in below those of its predecessors: Fifty Shades Darker opened to $46.6 million last year, and Fifty Shades of Grey opened to a whopping $85.2 million in 2015. But the series is an undeniable box office success. The trilogy reportedly cost a combined $150 million to produce, and on it Friday crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide. (Through Sunday, Freed is poised to take in about $98.1 million overseas, for a global total of $136.9 million.)

Directed by James Foley and once again starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, Fifty Shades Freed continues the story of budding book editor Anastasia Steele, kinky billionaire Christian Grey, and their tumultuous romance. The film received largely negative reviews from critics but a so-so B-plus CinemaScore from moviegoers.

Hopping to second place and coming in ahead of analysts’ projections is Sony’s hybrid live-action and animated family comedy Peter Rabbit, with an estimated $25 million from 3,725 locations.

Based on Beatrix Potter’s children’s stories about a mischievous bunny, Peter Rabbit stars James Corden in the title role, along with Domhnall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, and Daisy Ridley. Will Gluck directed the movie, which has garnered mixed reviews but a respectable A-minus CinemaScore.

The weekend’s third new release, Warner Bros’. thriller The 15:17 to Paris, will pull into the station with an estimated $12.6 million from 3,042 theaters — in line with analysts’ modest expectations and good for the No. 3 spot.

Based on the true story of three Americans — Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos — who helped thwart a terrorist attack on a Paris-bound train, the film comes as the third installment of director Clint Eastwood’s unofficial trilogy about modern-day heroism, following Sully and American Sniper. The film notably stars non-actors Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos as themselves.

Reviews for 15:17 have been poor, and moviegoers gave it a B-minus CinemaScore.

Filling out the top five are two holdovers that have demonstrated impressive staying power: Sony’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (last week’s No. 1 movie), with about $9.8 million, and Fox’s The Greatest Showman, with about $6.4 million. Those figures bring their respective domestic totals to $365.7 million and $146.5 million.

According to ComScore, overall box office is down 1.8 percent year-to-date. Check out the Feb. 9-11 figures below.

1. Fifty Shades Freed — $38.8 million
2. Peter Rabbit — $25 million
3. The 15:17 to Paris — $12.6 million
4. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle — $9.8 million
5. The Greatest Showman — $6.4 million
6. Maze Runner: The Death Cure — $6 million
7. Winchester — $5.1 million
8. The Post — $3.5 million
9. The Shape of Water — $3 million
10. Den of Thieves — $2.9 million

‘Beside Bowie’: New Documentary Traces Life of Guitarist Mick Ronson

Roughly three years before David Bowie died, the man who sold the world sat down with a recorder to capture his memories of Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson on tape. He was urged to do so at the behest of Mick’s widow Suzi Ronson, Bowie’s former hairdresser and the creator of his legendary Ziggy Stardust orange space mullet. Mick had been dead for two decades at that point, but few people outside of hardcore Bowie aficionados were aware of his axeman’s massive contributions to popular music – and she wanted to alleviate that. “David was worried at that time that Suzi might not have been up to making a documentary,” says filmmaker Jon Brewer. “But what he did for her was create these audio bites that were almost like narration.”

Suzi Ronson eventually turned over the Bowie tapes and a lot of raw film to Brewer, a rock manager that worked with everyone from Yes to Mick Taylor – and even the Thin White Duke himself in the 1970s. In recent years, however, he’d become a highly accomplished rock documentarian (B.B. King: The Life of Riley, Nat King Cole: Afraid of the Dark.) More importantly, Brewer knew Bowie’s story inside and out, going all the way back to his unsuccessful attempts to break the former David Jones in America right around the time he released The Man Who Sold the World in 1970. He also knew Ronson and shared Suzi’s dream to finally tell the guitarist’s story on the big screen – which resulted in Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story, currently streaming on Hulu.

Woven together with thrilling archival footage, Bowie’s beyond-the-grave narration and the new interviews, the film tells the tale of a guitar virtuoso from the working class of Hull in Northern England that found himself thrust into the middle of the Glam Rock scene just as it was finding a global audience. He became the Keith Richards to David Bowie’s Mick Jagger in Spiders From Mars, but it all ended on July 3rd, 1973 when Bowie shocked the world by announcing the group would never play together again. (Brewer also cast a wide net when seeking out interview subjects, landing Bowie’s ex-wife Angie, producer Tony Visconti, Hunky Dory pianist Rick Wakeman, Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter and Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, a Bowie/Ronson super fan that got to sing backup for them at their final onstage appearance at the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness.)

The heart of the movie concerns Ronson’s working relationship with Bowie and the instrumental role he played in the creation of Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. “I think, personally, that Mick Ronson should have got more credit with respect for the writing and certainly arranging all of that material,” says Brewer. “It should have been credited to Bowie/Ronson … and I think Bowie would have said that, too. As Morrissey said, he was the balls to Bowie at that time. He was the engine.”

But once the Spiders From Mars ended, the artist’s management made the disastrous decision to try and turn Ronson into a solo star. “He never was a frontman,” says Brewer. “What he was was a great guitarist and a great arranger and probably would have been a great, great producers had he lived.”

After the Spiders From Mars, Ronson had a short stint as a guitarist in Mott the Hoople and played with Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975/76, though the film reveals he never much cared for Dylan’s music. In the 1980s, Ronson arranged John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” and produced many other albums, but money was always tight – and escaping Bowie’s shadow proved to be impossible. When Ronson found out he had terminal liver cancer in the early 1990s, he began work on the solo album Heaven and Hull, which features a reunion with David Bowie. They also worked together on 1993’s Black Tie White Noise. “They were going to do all sorts of things together in the 1990s,” says Brewer. “But they just ran out of time.”