Marvel Star Clark Gregg Says AI Threat Plays Big Role in Strike: ‘We’re Fighting to Keep the Soul in the Art Form’ (Video)

James Gunn is clarifying some rumors about the DC development slate starting with Superman: Legacy and a potential Justice League live-action film under his direction.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer handed UK cinema chain Vue its second biggest weekend in history as cinemagoers flocked in record numbers to catch the Barbenheimer double bill.  

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter The battle of the bomb versus the bombshell has gone global. Over the weekend, Greta Gerwig’s very pink fantasy-comedy “Barbie” collected a stunning $182 million at the international box office, bringing its worldwide total to $337 million. Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan’s R-rated historical drama “Oppenheimer” held its own, igniting to $93.7 million from 78 markets for a huge global tally of $174 million. The two seemingly different blockbusters, which were jokingly pitted against each other, crushed already-stratospheric expectations thanks to the cultural phenomenon known as “Barbenheimer.” Hundreds of thousands of moviegoers booked a double feature for the ages, attending same-day viewings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie is on track to be one of the hottest movies of the year.

Greta Gerwig had a clear vision for the story she wanted to tell with Barbie and rejected the idea of cutting a scene with Margot Robbie and an older woman on a bench.

J. Kim Murphy Greta Gerwig’s hot pink fantasia “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s intricately bleak historical drama “Oppenheimer” are both putting up box office openings to remember. In a summer movie season that has largely failed to keep spirits up, two bona fide blockbusters are showing that everyone can be a winner. But the more winning winner between the two — the number one movie in North America — is Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Barbie.” After scoring $22.2 million on Thursday, the highest preview ticket sales of the year, the big screen bonanza about Mattel’s ubiquitous doll kept the superlatives going on Friday, adding another $48.2 million from 4,243 theaters. That’s a $70.5 million total — the biggest opening day of the year, blasting past the $51.8 million earned by “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” in June.

Follow OK! on Threads here: https://www.threads.net/@ok_mag Daniel Radcliffe has joined more than 160,000 people at the picket line during the SAG-AFTRA strike.The former-child star, who rose to fame playing Harry Potter in the franchise, brought along his newborn son alongside his American actress girlfriend Erin Darke.The 33-year-old was seen cradling his son, who was born in April this year, in a support sling across his chest while he marched alongside other actors and writers in the industry. He becomes the latest major star to join the picket line in support at the first industry-wide strike against film and TV studios since 1980.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Toronto Film Festival is at a critical moment after three difficult years following the COVID-19 pandemic, but “the festival will take place,” says Cameron Bailey, CEO of TIFF. TIFF has typically been a star-studded affair and staple of awards season. However, what the red carpets at the gala premieres and tribute ceremonies that have gone to significant A-listers like Kate Winslet will ultimately look like, remains unknown. The longtime festival director doubled down on moving forward with this year’s festival, whether the big stars are in attendance or not. This comes amid ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that have halted the Hollywood industry, putting the remaining months of movies and TV shows into unknown territory.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is now playing in theaters nationwide, but one if its most emotional scenes might not have made it to the big screen had the filmmaker not held her ground against studio executives. In several interviews before the comedy’s theatrical release, Gerwig revealed that it was suggested she cut out the scene where Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets an elderly woman on a bench and tells her she’s beautiful. “I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s a legend. It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, ‘Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.’ And I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.'”

It’s Day 8 of the SAG-AFTRA strike and Day 81 of the WGA strike.

At its Max streaming event earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed a new era is coming for Harry Potter fans. The company announced a TV series based on all seven books about the boy wizard written by J.K. Rowling. See below for the most current answers to the most important questions about the project.

Challengers,” starring Zendaya, which had been set as the Venice Film Festival opener, has been pulled from the festival due to promotional complications prompted by the SAG-AFTRA strike. Venice has announced that the sexy sports comedy — in which Zendaya plays a former tennis prodigy turned coach entangled in a love triangle with two pro tennis players, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist — has changed its distribution strategy. The film’s promotion has been disrupted by the current actors strike, which prohibits SAG-AFTRA union members from doing any type of promotional activity. This means Zendaya, O’Connor and Faist would not have been able to launch the film on Aug. 30 on the Venice red carpet.

Zendaya tennis drama Challengers has become a high-profile casualty of the SAG-AFTRA strike with confirmation that its Venice Film Festival world premiere has been cancelled.

The much-anticipated Barbie film finally hits cinema screens today (Friday, July 21) - and keen-eyed moviegoers who also know their Love Island contestants might spot a familiar face while they're enjoying the summer blockbuster. Chris Taylor, who appeared on the ITV dating show's fifth season, makes a cameo which is understood to have come about all because of the film's star.

As the SAG-AFTRA strike begins its second week, there’s no indication that negotiations will resume between that guild or the WGA with AMPTP any time soon. And that’s bad news for studios, as actors on strike will begin not only to affect the production of new work, but the premieres of upcoming schedule films.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday. “The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

Warner Bros. is considering moving three highly anticipated movies to 2024 amid the two strikes happening in Hollywood: SAG-AFTRA and WGA.

Tehran, the Israeli spy thriller that airs globally on Apple TV+, has become one of the most high-profile TV series to land a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Josh Hartnett revealed to Playboy magazine in 2015 that he talked with Christopher Nolan about taking on the role of the Caped Crusader in the director’s “Batman Begins,” which launched Warner Bros.’ billion-dollar grossing “Dark Knight” trilogy. How far did those talks go before Nolan settled on Christian Bale instead? In a new interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Nolan confirmed talks with Hartnett took place, but his casting never got too serious. “No, it never got that far,” Nolan said when asked if he screen-tested Hartnett for the role of Batman. “I met with Josh and if I recall, he was a young actor whose work I was very interested in,” Nolan added. “I had an initial conversation with him but he had read my brother’s script for ‘The Prestige’ at the time and was more interested in getting involved with that. So it never went further than that.”

Margot Robbie had a vision when it came to producing Barbie — and was willing to say anything to get her movie made.  

Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated and highly-reviewed Oppenheimer has begun overseas rollout with strong results versus some of the director’s previous titles. On Wednesday, the Universal film opened in 10 offshore markets, grossing $2.4M and led by France and Indonesia. These are early days as the critically-lauded Cillian Murphy-led biographical drama/political thriller will be playing a total 78 markets through Friday, across over 9,600 locations, 13,000 screens, and more than 320 IMAX screens.

Margot Robbie is not only the star of “Barbie”, she’s also a producer on the hugely anticipated new movie, through her LuckyChap Entertainment production company.

Joe Manganiello is ready to make another woman smile!

Oppenheimer” and 89% and 8.2/10 for “Barbie“), Hollywood is looking at a skewed rerun of another box office showdown from July 2008.Fifteen years ago, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” broke the opening weekend record with $158 million, but Meryl Streep’s “Mamma Mia!” also nabbed what was at the time the largest Friday-Sunday debut ever ($28 million) against a $100 million-plus opener. History may be repeating itself, with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” looking to clear triple digits right as Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” hopes to open on par with the over/under $50 million launches of “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk.” The record set in 2008 against a Nolan epic may be set again this weekend *by* a Nolan epic.

McKinley Franklin editor It’s time to get cooking — again. Bobby Flay is gearing up for the second season of his cooking competition series, “Bobby’s Triple Threat,” with an impressive slate of famed chefs entering the kitchen. Season 2 is set to premiere on Tuesday, Aug. 22 at 9 p.m., Variety can reveal. Food Network has announced the culinary titans to compete on the new season: Tiffany Derry, Michael Voltaggio and Brooke Williamson, who will battle it out in head-to-head rounds against guest competitors for a chance to win $25,000. The guest competitors include “Iron Chef” stars Michael Symon and Jose Garces, “Chopped” judge Scott Conant, Kelsey Bernard Clark, Esther Choi, Kelvin Fernandez, Byron Gomez, Rashida Holmes, Mei Lin and Shota Nakajima.

The entertainment industry is heading for change as Hollywood actors join writers on the picket line.  

At a time when the industry is suffering through historic dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the motion picture industry is poised to see an enormous weekend at the box office with Warner Bros./Mattel’s long awaited toy feature adaptation Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s World War II era three-hour adult drama Oppenheimer reaping a combined $260M+ global start.

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.

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.

Christopher Nolan has confirmed that he will “absolutely” not be working on more films until after the Hollywood strikes end.This week (July 13), the cast of Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer walked out of the UK premiere at the moment an actors’ strike began.The national board of SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) – Hollywood’s largest union, which represents 160,000 actors and performers – voted unanimously to strike, according to The Los Angeles Times.SAG-AFTRA was seeking better pay and working conditions in the age of streaming, while other negotiations related to safeguards against the unregulated use of artificial intelligence in the industry.Thousands of Hollywood productions are therefore currently paused, and Nolan discussed the meaning of the strike in an interview with BBC News, saying: “It’s not about me.”Asked whether he would be working on new films during the strike, he responded: “No, absolutely. It’s very important that everybody understands it is a very key moment in the relationship between working people and Hollywood.“This is not about me, this is not about the stars of my film.”The AMPTP said in a statement that “a strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life”.“The Union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry,” it added.The separate WGA (Writers Guild Of America) strike, which began on May 2, occurred following unsuccessful negotiations with AMPTP, who represent major Hollywood studios like Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, Paramount, Warner Bros.