John Malkovich Confirms He'll Play Spider-Man 4's Vulture
I won't blame you if you've lost track of the Spider-Man 4 rumor mill by now. After hearing rumors about Rachel McAdams playing Black Cat and Anne Hathaway playing Vultress and production getting delayed and then production actually being delayed, it's hard to know anything certain about the project beyond the fact that Sam Raimi and a handful of Sony executives are probably glaring at each other across a conference room table as we speak.
But into the void steps John Malkovich, who has been rumored for months to be Raimi's choice to play The Vulture, the primary villain for this installment of the saga (but, if Sony has their way, not the only villain). According to Bad Taste, Malkovich was over in Italy on a TV sports show (???) and confirmed that he's on board the film, and is waiting for the final script to be sent along. Easier said than done, of course, given that the script is what the studio and the director are battling over right now. But it's good to know that Malkovich is willing to wait it out, and no matter what else goes wrong with Spider-Man 4, we'll at least be continuing the tradition of great villains.
'Avatar' remains in orbit with $48.5M weekend
LOS ANGELES – James Cameron's "Avatar" continues to race up the box office charts, remaining No. 1 domestically for the fourth straight weekend with $48.5 million and placing second among all-time top-grossing films worldwide.
The science-fiction saga from 20th Century Fox added $143 million overseas to raise its international haul to $906 million. With $429 million domestically, "Avatar" has pulled in $1.34 billion worldwide, behind only Cameron's "Titanic," which took in $1.8 billion.
In just 24 days, "Avatar" shot past the $402.1 million domestic total of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" to become the No. 1 release of 2009. Cameron's tale of humans and aliens in conflict on a distant world now stands at No. 6 on the all-time domestic chart.
The film has just over $100 million to go to pass the No. 2 domestic hit, "The Dark Knight" at $533.3 million.
"I think we'll get there very soon," said Bert Livingston, 20th Century Fox distribution executive. "I believe anything is possible with this picture. Nothing would surprise me. There's a still a long way to go, and it's going to keep on playing and playing."
The No. 2 and No. 3 box office draws remained unchanged from the previous weekend, with the Warner Bros. hit "Sherlock Holmes" in second place at $16.6 million and 20th Century Fox's "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" in third at $16.3 million. "Sherlock Holmes" raised its domestic take to $165.2 million, and "Alvin and the Chipmunks" lifted its total to $178.2 million.
Among new movies, Lionsgate's vampire thriller "Daybreakers" had the best premiere, coming in at No. 4 with $15 million. "Daybreakers" stars Ethan Hawke as a reluctant vampire racing to find a substitute for human blood in a world overrun by the undead in the near future.
Universal's romantic comedy "Leap Year" opened at No. 5 with $9.2 million. The movie stars Amy Adams as a woman who finds love in an unexpected place as she chases across Ireland to propose to her boyfriend.
The Weinstein Co. comedy "Youth in Revolt," debuted at No. 9 with $7 million. The film features Michael Cera as a teen going to extremes to win the heart of his dream girl.
"Avatar" had the best fourth weekend ever for a film, easily surpassing the previous high of $28.7 million for "Titanic," which dominated the box office for nearly four months.
The coming weekend likely will be another big one for "Avatar," with many people off next Monday for Martin Luther King Day.
Hollywood's box office roll has lingered in 2010. Overall domestic revenues came in at $156 million, up 6.6 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Gran Torino" led with $29.5 million, according to box office tracker Hollywood.com.
It was the eight-straight weekend of rising ticket sales.
"The winning streak just continues," said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. "The momentum of 2009 is just carrying over into 2010."
Hollywood put up record revenue of $10.6 billion domestically in 2009, easily surpassing the previous high of $9.7 billion in 2007.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Avatar," $48.5 million.
2. "Sherlock Holmes," $16.6 million.
3. "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," $16.3 million.
4. "Daybreakers," $15 million.
5. "It's Complicated," $11 million.
6. "Leap Year," $9.2 million.
7. "The Blind Side," $7.8 million.
8. "Up in the Air," $7.1 million.
9. "Youth in Revolt," $7 million.
10. "The Princess and the Frog," $4.7 million.
Kids comeback
TORONTO - Of all the Kids in the Hall fans who have been waiting for the beloved comedy troupe to return to series television, perhaps none has been as eager as group member Scott Thompson.
The quintet brings their absurdist comic mystery, "Death Comes to Town," to CBC-TV on Tuesday, and the funnyman says if it were up to him it would have come years earlier. He says his own professional pursuits sputtered after the Kids retired their CBC sketch comedy show in 1994 and that his stage career virtually imploded in 2001 when he sunk all his money into an ill-timed show about terrorism in New York City.
Thompson says it was the Kids' well-received reunion tour in 2008 that reignited the creative juices of the group, inspiring them to brainstorm an eight-part miniseries about a codpiece-wearing demon who arrives in a quirky Ontario town to collect a few souls.
"This show has been the panacea for all five of us.... for me, it's definitely what I've been waiting for," Thompson says in a recent interview, adding that he long wished for a TV reunion - "probably since '96," he jokes.
Thompson says he had hit "rock bottom" by the time Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald, Dave Foley and Bruce McCulloch agreed to regroup, but he was dealt another blow just as the revered comics began work on new material - cancer.
He was diagnosed last March with non-Hodgkin's gastric lymphoma, an aggressive form of stomach cancer, and told it was inoperable.
"We were getting ready to write the first drafts of the series and I got thrown overboard by my diagnosis," says Thompson, who was living in L.A. at the time.
"It completely threw me so I had to come home (to Toronto)."
Thompson says he underwent six bouts of chemotherapy and was determined to get well enough to shoot the miniseries before summer was over.
"For me, it was that light in the darkness for all those months," says Thompson, whose characters on the show include ditsy meteorologist Heather Weather, Dusty the coroner and Crim, the hand sanitizer-sniffing town ne'er-do-well.
"I just kept focusing on it and going, 'I have to be well enough to shoot this series. First of all, I can't die - that's not going to be good. And I'm not giving these parts to Mark and Dave, forget it."'
The irony of working on a series about death was not lost on anyone, adds Thompson.
"I got pretty sick and I couldn't really participate for a certain period," he notes. "In the writers' room they just set up a bed for me - they put a mattress on the floor and whenever I would feel well enough to join in I would and then if I was going to vomit I'd go outside, have some medical marijuana, and come back in."
Shooting was postponed so that Thompson could complete his chemotherapy before appearing in front of the cameras. He wrapped up the rigorous treatments on Aug. 1 of last year and was shooting the series in North Bay, Ont., by Aug. 15.
"They were amazing," Thompson says of his comedy partners. "They treated me like nothing was different, they mocked me ruthlessly, made fun of my cancer and it's what I needed."
Two days after the seven-week shoot ended, Thompson began a four-month stint of radiation. He says he's now cancer-free.
McKinney, who largely appears half-naked in his role as the surly, single-toothed Death, says the reunion was so much fun there's talk of more collaborations. In the meantime, negotiations are ongoing to land a broadcast deal for "Death Comes to Town" in the United States.
Of all the Kids, he and Foley have arguably maintained the strongest public profile since the group left television roughly 15 years ago. McKinney built a successful career as a writer on critically acclaimed series including NBC's shortlived "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," the defunct Canadian drama "Slings and Arrows," and the dark comedy "Less Than Kind," which begins a second season on HBO Canada next month.
Foley went on to a steady stream of TV and film gigs, including a starring role in the NBC sitcom "NewsRadio," recurring guest spots on big-network shows "Will and Grace," "Scrubs" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine," and voiceover work including 1998's "A Bug's Life."
McCulloch moved on to feature film directing, helming Molly Shannon's comedy "Superstar" in 1999 and the Tom Green farce "Stealing Harvard" in 2002, and later creating and writing the shortlived ABC sitcom, "Carpoolers" in 2007. McDonald's string of character roles included stints on "That '70s Show" and "Less Than Kind," and he recently toured a one-man show, "Hammy and the Kids."
Interspersed were various shortlived Kids reunions that included the poorly received 1996 film "Brain Candy" and three tours in the last 10 years. Thompson says group members - notoriously fractious when they were together - stayed close even as each went in different directions, with Thompson increasingly eager to try a TV comeback.
"The first few years (after the sketch show ended) I was convinced that the rest of my career would just be an ongoing slope up. And then the slope ended and there was a precipitous drop," says Thompson, whose post-Kids days included recurring roles on "The Larry Sanders Show" in 1998, "Providence" in 2001, and "Carpoolers" in 2007.
"And then, as I was dropping, about halfway to the bottom I went, 'Geez, maybe it'd be good if the Kids in the Hall did something more in television.' And then I hit rock bottom. And then I woke up and the next thing I knew, it was happening."
Hardly kids anymore, the offbeat comics appear thicker around the middle and greying on top, but a glimpse at the new series reveals the same ludicrous sensibility that earned them a cult-like following. Characters on the half-hour show include McCulloch's Ricky, a 600-pound, shamed hockey player; McDonald's Marnie, a senile pizza delivery lady; and Foley's kindly Doc Porterhouse, who offers a free kitten with every abortion procedure.
Looking back on the past year, Thompson calls it both the best and the worst of his life. But after overcoming devastating health and career woes he says he feels invigorated and excited by the future, and especially proud of returning to the spotlight with his comedy "brothers."
"I'm so excited, I'm so happy," Thompson says. "Imagine - I'm alive, I'm cancer free and I'm on the verge of a comeback."
"Death Comes to Town" debuts on CBC-TV on Tuesday.
Leno to leave prime-time
PASADENA, Calif (AP) — NBC decided to end the Jay Leno experiment when some of its affiliates started talking about dropping the nightly prime-time show, its top entertainment executive said Sunday.
NBC Universal Television Entertainment Chairman Jeff Gaspin said Sunday that Leno’s nightly prime-time show will end with the beginning of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 12. NBC wants Leno to do an 11:35 p.m. show each night, a return to his old time slot, Gaspin said.
Gaspin said despite lower ratings for NBC at 10 p.m. compared with last year, the network was making money off the show.
But affiliates were upset that the show was leading fewer viewers into their late news programs, costing them significant advertising revenue. Some affiliates told NBC in December they would go public soon about their complaints if a change wasn’t made, or even take Leno’s show off the air.
“The drumbeat started getting louder,” Gaspin said.
Gaspin has proposed moving Conan O’Brien’s “Tonight” show to 12:05 a.m., and Jimmy Fallon’s show would start an hour later. But the late-night hosts had not agreed to the move. Gaspin said he expected NBC’s late-night situation to be cleared up by the start of the Olympics.
Asked if O’Brien and Fallon expressed anger at his proposal, Gaspin said both men were professional and understanding when they talked.
“Beyond that, it was a private conversation,” Gaspin said.