Firstly, Player Affinity apologies for no DISCussion last week. But being the last week prior to Christmas, the show must go on! If you are looking for a last minute stocking stuffer then you are in luck: I am happy to report that there are many options for your mum, dad, brother, sister or BFF.
Tron Legacy made money this weekend, despite hesitant reviews and weak source material. “Legacy” added $43.6 million to the box office grid state side; another $23 million was raised overseas. But $66.6 million is a long ways to paying back a $170 million production budget (and that does not include the massive marketing campaign). It greatly beat out its most comparable visual film Speed Racer which flopped massively in May 2008.
Apparently the third time isn’t always a charm; Jon Favreau has stepped out of the Iron Man 3 director’s chair. Vulture got the scoop from some Marvel insiders, and Favreau’s leaving seems to be for one of three reasons: creative, financial, or both.
The “Chronicles of Narnia” series came to an unfortunate end this weekend. The franchise that launched in 2005 with “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” burned out with “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” The third and final entry tallied $24.5 million in sales with just over 54% of sales from 3D viewings. Disney smartly dropped the series after two installments when “Prince Caspian” made less than half its predecessor’s gross. Fox assumed it could turn the series into a hit, but “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” made less than half the opening weekend business of “Prince Caspian.”
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy helped launch the careers of several prominent actors. By the time she played Galadriel, Cate Blanchett was an Oscar nominee but hadn’t connected much with the public, and up-and-comer Orlando Bloom was a complete unknown in Hollywood when stepping into the role of Legolas. Well, that all changed when this adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien-penned novels set the box office on fire: Blanchett now has an even balance of blockbuster and character-driven roles, while Bloom was able to snag some huge paydays for the Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Now it looks like the two actors will be making a return to Middle-earth in Jackson’s telling of The Hobbit; Deadline Hollywood reports that Blanchett is officially on board to reprise the role of Galadriel, while Bloom is apparently close to a deal.
Handing the directing duties of The Hobbit over to Peter Jackson has definitely helped Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) to free up space for his longtime labor of love, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog tells us that television actor Campbell Scott will step into the role of Peter Parker’s father. Meanwhile, Julianne Nicholson might be playing Parker’s mother. Irrfan Khan of Slumdog Millionaire fame and Annie Parisse (TV’s Rubicon) are in discussion to play Nels Van Adder and his wife, respectively
There is something for everyone with this week’s releases. A wide range of genres are coming to DVD and Blu-ray; animation, comedy, horror, action, sci-fi, drama, a documentary and one of the biggest films of 2010. Inception was one of the most anticipated films of 2010, a bold intelligent sci-fi film from the director of The Dark Knight, Chri
MTV’s Rick Marshall visited Jon Favreau at the editing studio of his next film Cowboys and Aliens to ask him about all of the different films being made within the Marvel universe. Unfortunately, the acclaimed Iron Man director knows very little of these projects, including his very own Iron Man 3. Check out what he had to say, along with some commentary sprinkled throughout.
This weekends box office revenue bleeds harder than Kanye West after he stole the microphone from Taylor Swift. Holdovers held the top spots while the sole newcomer barely landed inside the top ten. Tangled dominated theater business for the second week in a row, narrowly displacing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 which overtook it last week. It was a horserace most people couldn’t be bothered with. Tangled enticed $21.5 million in sales and “Harry Potter” shrunk to $16.7 million.
