How ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ Locked Out ‘Indiana Jones’ At Box Office & Brought Sony Horror Fare Back From The Dead

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Barbenheimer” is officially here, and the battle between the bomb and the bombshell is about to ignite the box office. Greta Gerwig’s cotton candy-colored “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie as the plastic, fantastic doll, is expected to generate a huge $95 million to $110 million from 4,200 North American theaters over the weekend. Given the omnipresence of “Barbie” (the marketing is practically inescapable, with enough memes and marketing tie-ins to last a lifetime), initial estimates are all over the place. Warner Bros. is projecting a more conservative $75 million to start, while rivals and exhibitors believe the PG-13 movie could make as much as $140 million between Friday and Sunday.

On the edge of what is bound to be the domestic box office’s third $200M+ weekend thanks to Barbie and Oppenheimer, the motion picture industry’s fret is whether the great post-pandemic moviegoing rebound is about to screech to a halt due to the SAG-AFTRA strike and actors prohibited from promoting.

It’s Day 5 of the SAG-AFTRA strike and Day 79 of the WGA strike. 

Naman Ramachandran Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One” was the dominant force at the U.K. and Ireland box office with a mighty £10.3 million ($13.2 million), per numbers from Comscore. The Tom Cruise vehicle opened on Monday, July 10, instead of a traditional weekend slot. Even with just the July 14-16 weekend numbers, the seventh instalment in the franchise scored £6.3 million, comfortably making it the No. 1 film in the territory. In second place, Disney’s “Elemental” collected £2.4 million in its second weekend for a total of £6.6 million. Another Disney title, “Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny,” whipped up £1.7 million in third place in its third weekend for a total of £16.3 million.

Sabbatical Entertainment Sets Distribution Partnership With V Channels Media

After months of waiting, the movie event of the year is finally imminent: Barbenheimer.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christian Bale is probably not going to play Batman again after “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises.” The Oscar-winning actor told ScreenRant last summer that he would only play Batman for a fourth time if Christopher Nolan was directing, but Nolan doesn’t appear to be interested in returning to the comic book genre. YouTuber HugoDécrypte asked Nolan point blank if he would make “another superhero movie.” Nolan bluntly answered, “No.” The question came during a speed round in which HugoDécrypte also asked the “Oppenheimer” filmmaker if he “could make a TV show one day.” Nolan also answered “no.” The director wasn’t as definitive when asked if he would want to direct a “Star Wars” movie. Nolan passed on giving an answer.

The story of how “Minx” Season 2 was moved to Starz is almost as interesting as the content in the actual show. You see, after Season 2 had been shot, Warner Bros.

Sean Gunn, the actor who played the lovable townsman on the hit show, is calling out Netflix for his lack of residual pay. Sean, the 49-year-old brother of Marvel and DC director James Gunn, shared with on Friday that he was out on the picket line for the first day of the SAG-AFTRA strike to mainly «protest Netflix.» The streaming service currently streams all seven seasons of as well as the 2016 revival, . Sean played Kirk in all seven seasons of the show, as well as all four episodes of the revival, both of which star Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel as the beloved mother-daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore«I was on a television show called for a long time that has brought in massive profits for Netflix,» Sean told. «It has been one of their most popular shows for a very long time, over a decade.

removed his interview from the social network on Friday “because it did not note that the residuals Gunn was referencing are paid by the studio [Warner Bros. Discovery] and not the streamer, Netflix” — a move Gunn said was “absolutely absurd.”“I never even used the word ‘residuals’ in my interview. The point I was making is that we don’t see any residuals for number of views on Netflix.

Christopher Nolan sees the insistence by striking SAG-AFTRA and WGA members that studios and streamers limit the use of artificial intelligence stems directly from the explosion of streaming over the past decade-plus.

Joey King is on the picket lines to fight for a fair deal for all SAG-AFTRA members!

that was hoped to have come from Cruise’s box office triumph with “Top Gun: Maverick” last year.On the other hand, “Dead Reckoning” is enjoying much stronger word of mouth than “Indiana Jones 5” with an A on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 96% critics and 94% audience. “Dead Reckoning” has also been reported to have stronger opening days in key overseas markets like South Korea and Great Britain, grossing $82 million internationally through Friday as it is on course for a $240 million global start.

Sean Gunn, who played Stars Hollow’s eccentric wannabe filmmaker Kirk on “Gilmore Girls”, is among the actors who hit the picket lines on Friday after SAG-AFTRA voted to strike.

shared a heartfelt message to his 3.2 million Instagram followers on Thursday night citing that he won’t be able to promote the upcoming superhero film due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.“We had so much great stuff aligned and I really wish that we could get it to you guys but we need to stand on the right side of history and because of that we’re planting our feet in the ground,” Maridueña said. “With that being said, this is a fantastic movie and you know, it needs to be seen on the bigger screen.”Maridueña also asked fans to support the movie and he gave a shout out to the Blue Beetle Battalion which have posting viral content on social media about the movie.

#SAGAFTRA Picket Line Interview: #MCU Legend & #SAG, #WGA & #DGA member @ClarkGregg says "I feel like we're kind of fighting to keep the soul in the art form" pic.twitter.com/7SWpjbvqGbGregg wasn’t the only actor on the picket line concerned about AI. Christopher Clawson, another SAG member who also happens to have a master’s degree in innovation and technology from the University of San Diego, hopes to see the unions “come up with a very specific language that will protect performers.”“The thing that scares me is that the studio’s know more about what these capabilities are, than the union,” Clawson said. “Because they’re the ones who get pitched this stuff, you know? They’re the ones with the deep pockets.

San Diego Comic-Con had Hall H had been reserved two Saturdays from now for a presentation by Legendary, which I hear was to strut out Dune: Part Two and the studio’s next Monsterverse movie. However, that’s not happening now due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Ty Pennington had a severe health scare after a short stint in the Barbie world.

William Earl During a press conference Thursday, SAG-AFTRA leadership announced that the union was going on strike, and picketing started up Friday. In New York, the four locations were announced as HBO / Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery / Netflix HQ, Paramount and NBC Universal. In Los Angeles, 8 sites were announced, including Warner Bros., Amazon / Culver Studios, Fox, Paramount, Netflix, Sunset / Gower, Disney and Sony. Corporate greed was at the center of messaging on day one of joint picketing from SAG-AFTRA and the WGA. When the bus carrying SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and the rest negotiating committee arrived outside of Netflix offices, they were mobbed by media and fellow protesters as they inched their way down the sidewalk along Sunset Boulevard.

Well, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav already put his foot in his mouth responding to the WGA writers’ strike, so now it’s Bob Iger‘s turn.

Naman Ramachandran A month after it said it was exploring the possible acquisition of “Fleabag” and “The Traitors” producer All3Media, U.K. broadcaster ITV is no longer actively exploring it. In a filing with the London stock exchange on Friday, the “Love Island” broadcaster said: “Further to its announcement on 16 June 2023, ITV plc confirms it continues to monitor but is no longer actively exploring the possible acquisition of All3Media. ITV plc assesses all potential value-creating M&A opportunities against its strict financial criteria and disciplined capital allocation framework.” ITV’s statement of interest in June, where it said that it is “actively exploring the possible acquisition of All3Media,” came with the caveat, “there can be no certainty as to whether any transaction will take place, nor as to the terms of any such transaction. A further announcement will be made if and when appropriate.”

It doesn’t look like ITV will be buying The Traitors producer All3Media.

Fortunately for HBO, “House Of The Dragon” is permitted to carry on with season two filming in the U.K., despite the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” almost pulled an “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” by opening with an extended sequence featuring a de-aged version of its main star. “Dial of Destiny” de-aged Harrison Ford to mixed results for a 25-minute opener. “Dead Reckoning” director Christopher McQuarrie ultimately nixed an idea to de-age Tom Cruise because the technology just isn’t convincing enough yet. “Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” McQuarrie told GamesRadar+ and Total Film. “We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging.”

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Jeff Zucker is not shopping for CNN, according to one of the backing partners of his new media venture. Gerry Cardinale, the private equity player and founder of RedBird Capital, partnered with International Media Investments last year to launch a $1 billion media acquisitions engine run by Zucker. Reports were rampant in June that Zucker was looking to take CNN off the hands of Warner Bros. Discovery, after running the news network for decades before resigning in 2022 over a consensual workplace affair. “No,” Cardinale said on Thursday when asked if he and Zucker were looking to buy CNN, speaking on stage at the Variety and Sportico Sports and Entertainment Summit in West Hollywood. “I would not have the longevity that I’ve had if I ran my business running around town talking about deals in a way that’s, frankly, disrespectful to David Zaslav. I’m kind of amused and irritated by it.”

House of the Dragon” can continue filming in the U.K. despite the SAG-AFTRA actors strike, Variety can reveal. Just as the U.S. actors union announced a strike Thursday, sources confirmed that production is planned to proceed as scheduled on the second season of the “Game of Thrones” prequel. The HBO series’ cast is composed of primarily U.K. actors who are working under contracts governed by the local union, Equity. As such, the series is technically allowed to continue filming because Equity members aren’t legally allowed to strike in solidarity with the U.S. union.

AMPTP from the June 30 deadline through July 12, the actors guild formally called for a strike during a press conference on July 13 led by SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and lead negotiator Duncan Crabtree. With Hollywood already largely shut down this summer by the writers strike, which has been ongoing since May 2, the actors strike will complicate things even further. First and foremost, all production will now be forced to shut down completely. Prior to this, some projects had managed to stay up and running by working off of already completed scripts and simply not having any writers on set — including big-budget productions like the second season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” Amazon just recently wrapped filming on Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” in the U.K., making it one of the priciest shows to come in under the wire. Variety has confirmed that “House of the Dragon” will remain in production, however.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Brooklyn Peltz Beckham’s respective legal battles captivated our attention, so Discovery ordered a pair of investigative documentaries.

H.E.R. is going to do, it's wow a crowd.The 26-year-old singer delivered a stunning performance during Wednesday's 2023 ESPY Awards, playing her latest single, the elegant power ballad «The Journey,» as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of basketball coach Jimmy Valvano's inspirational speech at the first ESPYS in 1993 when he was terminally ill with cancer.Valvano was an American college basketball player, coach and broadcaster who served as head coach at North Carolina State University and led his team to win the 1983 NCAA men's basketball title against the heavily favored Houston Cougars.Per , Valvano's famous speech implored the audience to laugh, think and cry each day. He also announced the formation of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, whose motto would be «Don't give up.

Barbie film to be shown in the country’s cinemas, but have asked Hollywood distributors to blur the lines on a child-like drawing of a world map, which allegedly shows China’s disputed maritime claims.The film about the Mattel doll – directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling – is set to open in the south-east Asian nation on July 19.The censors began examining Barbie last week after Vietnam reportedly banned the film over scenes featuring a map showing the so-called nine-dash line, which China uses to justify its claim to the South China Sea.Beijing claims territorial ownership over almost the entire South China Sea, despite rival claims from other south-east Asian countries, including the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.However, after “meticulous” scrutiny of the film, Philippine censors were satisfied that the “cartoonish map” did not depict the nine-dash line.“Instead, the map portrayed the route of the make-believe journey of Barbie from Barbie Land to the ’real world’, as an integral part of the story,” the censorship board said (via The Guardian).“Rest assured that the board has exhausted all possible resources in arriving at this decision as we have not hesitated in the past to sanction filmmakers/ producers/distributors for exhibiting the fictitious ’nine-dash line’ in their materials.”Despite being satisfied, the censors have still asked Hollywood studio Warner Bros. to “blur” the controversial lines on the map.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Despite reports over the years that Warner Bros. was courting the likes of Donald Glover, Ezra Miller and Ryan Gosling to play Willy Wonka, it was only Timothée Chalamet who got the offer to lead director Paul King’s prequel musical “Wonka.” And Chalamet didn’t even have to audition. King recently told Rolling Stone that he was a Chalamet “stan” and thus knew the actor had the singing and dancing chops required to play Wonka. “It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King said. “But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical performances are on YouTube and have hundreds of thousands of views. So I knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director As thousands of moviegoers gear up for double features of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” one person taking joy in the “Barbenheimer” craze is Nolan himself. Although his movie will be battling “Barbie” at the box office, Nolan recently told IGN that “it’s terrific” to have both summer tentpoles open on the same day. “Summer, in a healthy marketplace, is always crowded, and we’ve been doing this a long time,” Nolan said. “I think for those of us who care about movies, we’ve been really waiting to have a crowded marketplace again, and now it’s here and that’s terrific.” Cillian Murphy, who stars in the title role of “Oppenehimer,” agreed with Nolan, telling IGN: “I think it’s great. I mean, I’ll be going to see ‘Barbie.’ I can’t wait to see it. I think it’s just great for the industry and for audiences that we have two amazing films by amazing filmmakers coming out the same day. Could spend a whole day in the cinema, what’s better than that?”

Besides TV Academy Chairman and CEO Frank Scherma’s brief reference to “the ongoing guild negotiations” at the top of the nominations announcement, today has been mostly Emmy business as usual, with television industry types and fans celebrating the ones who landed nominations and lamenting those who were snubbed.

K.J. Yossman Those six fateful words — “You skiied into my effing back” — are set to be immortalized on the small screen thanks to a new documentary about Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski crash lawsuit. Production company Optomen (“Johnny vs Amber,” “Kim vs Kanye: The Divorce”) are continuing their “Vs” series for Discovery+ with a doc about the “Sliding Doors” star’s legal woes. The civil trial earlier this year saw Paltrow sued by – and then counter-sue – retired optometrist Terry Sanders, after the duo collided on a Utah ski slope in 2016. Sanders claimed his entanglement with the “Goop” founder caused him to suffer physical injuries and emotional distress while Paltrow, for her part, lost half a day of skiing.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic HBO dominating the Emmy nominations is hardly a surprise, given both historical trends and the year they’ve had. But it couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. Amid endless media speculation around the cuts and bad P.R. missteps of Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, HBO — notionally the jewel in the crown of the newly-formed WBD’s television empire — cleaned up. In the best drama race, HBO picked up a startling four nominations (for “House of the Dragon,” “The Last of Us,” “Succession” and “The White Lotus”). In a happy coincidence, those four nominations, which tie an all-time record, represented the two halves of what HBO has lately done well, between pushing IP-driven storytelling to new heights in the cases of “House of the Dragon” and “The Last of Us” and turning carefully wrought, creator-driven drama into organic zeitgeist hits with “Succession” and “The White Lotus.”

Barbie won’t be banned in the Philippines after all, following a week-long review by local censors and government officials, although a scene with a controversial map of the South China Sea might be blurred for release.