Happy Fourth! Heat waves and BBQs aside, the Hollywood news cycle has been less than quiet this holiday frame. Starting, yes, with the wedding smack in the middle of Gotham. There's also an excavation of DC Comics' major stumble and that massive spinoff play by the owners of NBCUniversal. — Erik Hayden
Ticker: David Ellison concedes a JV; Tom Hardy makes up with MobLand; Blake Lively reveals legal fees; Zach Cregger tackles a Gen Z obsession.
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The box office narrative machine is already on to the Minions & Monsters expectations game as the Illumination tentpole unfurls over the holiday. Yet the dust is only beginning to settle on Warner Bros.' Supergirl — and the reasons for why it disappointed.
Borys Kit finds out what happened in post: "Usually, test scores go up, up, and away. But this March, the scores for Supergirl actually went down when DC Studios held a bakeoff, testing competing cuts from filmmaker Craig Gillespie and from the studio, run by James Gunn and Peter Safran."
— "Gunn and Gillespie had creative differences over the direction of the movie, numerous sources tell THR, and the film never found its footing in the post-production process. The test scores, which are counted on a scale out of 100 points, never escaped the 60s, according to multiple insiders. Another insider said the movie’s top score was 70."
— "Deep into winter, test scores improved and hit the low 70s. However, rather than continue to tinker away on that cut, the studio decided to force a bakeoff by creating two cuts, one by Gillespie and one by the studio."
— "When the two competing versions tested, the scores surprisingly dropped significantly, although the studio’s inched out ahead of Gillespie’s … but by only two points, according to sources. Gillespie’s version scored strongly on song choices, pacing and villain. Eking out a win, even a middling one, the studio chose its cut as the one to go into theaters."
The report.
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On site, Steven Zeitchik muses about Taylor Swift's New York moment at Madison Square Garden: "Saying 'I do' right there on 34th Street in the heart of it all (if behind so many curtains one can’t really be sure) gives her the fairy-tale ending she has long imagined. ... Swift has been knocking on Gotham’s door evermore, seeking to join our pantheon of storied musicians associated with the city, our Lou Reeds and Lady Gagas and every third jazz great. But despite first buying a place here a dozen years ago and releasing that ode to the five boroughs, 'Welcome to New York,' later that same year, matters have not gone as smoothly as she might have hoped." The column.
+ Who was actually in the wedding party? Nicole Fell has the details. It was smaller than you think. (And, yes, Adam Sandler officiated.)
+ Winston Cho looks at the fine print of a maybe Travis Kelce-Swift.
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In a major move that rattled Hollywood this week, Comcast unveiled a plan to separate into two publicly traded companies through a tax-free spinoff of NBCUniversal and Sky.
A lot of attention was paid to who may want to snap up the solo NBCUniversal, but Alex Weprin poses the opposite question: What if new NBCU is a buyer?
"Would NBCU consider a deal for Take-Two Interactive, or Roblox? Co-CEO Michael Cavanagh is also said to be particularly bullish on experiences, and that could lead to some intriguing deal possibilities: Perhaps the struggling Six Flags could become a national home for NBCU-branded IP and attractions? Maybe a cruise line could be in play to catch up to Disney? Perhaps Sony or Lionsgate could become acquisition targets to try and catch to the bigger Paramount and Netflix? There seem to be real opportunities, should Cavanagh pursue them." The story.
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The U.S. men's first knockout stage victory at a World Cup in 24 years set a record for soccer in the United States. The U.S. win over Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1 averaged 24.43 million viewers. Fox Sports and Telemundo/Peacock have both enjoyed huge ratings increases over the 2022 World Cup so far. The audience for both the English- and Spanish-language broadcasts have doubled vs. 2022. Rick Porter's analysis.
+ "I was expecting to see our numbers grow. Was I expecting 122 percent over 2022? Probably not," says Joaquin Duro, evp sports for NBCU Telemundo. The interview.
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"It's us who have to pick up the $7 bottles of water and the $20 boxes of popcorn at every single show." — Chris Repollet, a Broadway cleaner at the New Amsterdam Theater (home to Aladdin), at a rally for higher wages and healthcare.
"I’m, like, F1 was made by AI. Wasn’t it?" — Jodie Foster, during an Aspen Ideas Festival panel, appearing to make a broader point about predictability.
"Any actor just wants to be a working actor. A lot more auditions have been coming in." — Anthony Pavone, Obsession director Curry Barker’s early collaborator and roommate.
"Decisions that once turned on whether a show was good increasingly turn on whether it’s safe, frictionless, and easy to sell." — David Collins, creator of Queer Eye, in a column on TV's risk-averse moment.
"You can’t help but be yourself around your dog." — Josh Horowitz, who has seen his podcast Who's a Good Guest? become a celebrity pit stop for stars and their pets.
Logline of the Week
"Titled Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, the unscripted series uses the re-created voice of actor Gene Wilder, who played Willy Wonka in the 1971 movie, as a key part of the game. Netflix and Eureka Productions, which is behind The Golden Ticket, got permission from Wilder’s estate and worked with AI company ElevenLabs." ->
By the Numbers
(Most-read stories on THR.com this week)
1) "Michael Weatherly Books NCIS Return"
2) "Obsession Hits Streaming"
3) "Dutton Ranch Hires New Season 2 Showrunner"
🚫 Deals of the Week
The planned merger of Lotte Cinema and Megabox, South Korea’s second- and third-largest multiplex chains, collapsed, ending a 14-month attempt to combine the two. The tie-up would have created Korea's largest theater chain, but talks stalled as Megabox's owner slid into a liquidity crisis.
Getty Images and Shutterstock, two of the top photo and video marketplaces, called off a $3.7 billion merger after hitting a U.K. regulatory roadblock.
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Spider-Man. Jurassic Park. Despicable Me. Moviegoers heading to air-conditioned theaters during the Fourth of July holiday can rely on seeing one of those Sony, Universal or Illumination franchises on the marquee over the past 25 years. But when zeroing in on the question of single-day grosses there's a leader that happens to be none of the above. Fittingly for the holiday, it's also a Michael Bay movie. Paramount and Hasbro's Transformers (2007), starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, still leads the way among top-grossing titles on the July 4 holiday with $29 million for the day. The leaderboard.
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"Money Left on the Table" |
"Look at the scramble to get tickets for Christopher Nolan’s epic Imax-filmed feature The Odyssey. Premium large formats (PLF) — think: Imax, Dolby — are the highest-yield seats in the building. They carry the best picture and sound, the highest ticket prices, and the strongest demand on opening. Yet for big studio films, those screens are often available for only two weekends, maybe three. Then the film is pushed out to make room for the next release, regardless of whether demand remains. That’s money left on the table, and it highlights a broader, recurring challenge. You see this in weeks three and four of a film’s release. The core audience hasn’t fully burned off. Late adopters are just arriving. Word-of-mouth is still strong. However, the premium screens are gone."
Joseph M. Singer's column.
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Lexi Minetree isn’t Reese Witherspoon, and she’s not trying to be. The 25-year-old tackles one of modern pop culture’s most beloved characters in Elle. With the approval of the original star, a slew of hot pink looks and the character’s signature optimism, Minetree proves she was born for the world of Legally Blonde. Nicole Fell's interview.
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Tracee Ellis Ross has never done Broadway. Her debut is a challenging one-person show in Every Brilliant Thing, where Ross, 53, takes over the role on July 7, succeeding Mariska Hargitay and Daniel Radcliffe. This show, with a 40-page monologue and a large degree of audience interaction, is a big leap for her first time on Broadway. But it’s also in keeping with Ross’s overall outlook on life. Caitlin Huston's profile.
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Steven Zeitchik poses this question: "What if you were talking to someone who’d never heard of America and who cared little about the idea of government or geographic borders? How would you communicate the place’s essential traits, the psychic weirdness, the messy contradictions — what movies would you tell them about then? Such are the criteria we used in devising this ranking of films about the American soul. Not the country’s history or institutions but the ineffable qualities of living here — a lot less Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a lot more Sorry to Bother You." The full list.
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Upcoming Releases
Notable movies heading to theaters
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One-liners from THR's team of film critics
FX's The Bear series finale is like "one last long hug before sending them on their merry way." Prime Video's Legally Blonde prequel series Elle "defies all narrative logic." Illumination's Minions & Monsters is "clever, before it caves to freneticism." Millie Bobby Brown’s Netflix sleuth returns for a "fun, forgettable" Enola Holmes 3. Jean Dujardin actioner Zorro is a "mostly appealing throwback" series. Angel Studios' George Washington biopic Young Washington is "like a Classics Illustrated comic book come to very stiff life."
And finally,
A Hollywood Flashback
"A generic juggernaut, as well as a story of appealing human dimension, Independence Day should set off box-office fireworks worldwide..."
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