BadOlCatSylvester

Honestly, it's so fucking refreshing to see some actual direction and leadership at DC now. James Gunn is a no-bullshit leader who will waste no time debunking wild rumours before they spread everywhere. It's such a stark contrast to the Johns+Berg and Hamada eras where everyone and everything was getting a new movie every hour and weird, obscure characters were getting priority over fixing the classic heroes. For Allah's sake, Hamada was giving the fucking Wonder Twins and Black Canary their own movies before even thinking about getting Henry Cavill back as Superman.

I'm not really surprised that a distinctly British third adaptation of a British literary character isn't really breaking out in America. It's not like the same director's Paddington movies made all that much there either. Today's youth potentially not being familiar with Wonka as a character is another hurdle. Still, a $120M domestic total is not bad at all, especially in a genre that hasn't seen a real hit in years, and its overseas revenue should make up for any American shortcomings. I do think The Colour Purple, a movie with a story far more appealing to Americans, is going to steal its thunder and win December overall in America.

Musicals have beeen consistently underperforming or outright bombing these past few years, especially after C-Day, so I don't blame Hollywood for being wary here. Hopefully Wonka overcomes its initial surprise musical hurdles and does as well in America as it has been doing overseas so far. It's a great movie and it deserves money.

A behind the scenes featurette has been released as well, presumable the one that was shown at CinemaCon:

I honestly wouldn't blame Wan at all if this is his Hobbit moment and drives him away from filmmaking for good. Peter Jackson's basically retired now aside from the occasional documentary movie where he doesn't have to film any new footage. If that Blumhouse+Atomic Monster merger comes to fruition then Wan will be similarly set for life. But I do hope he still keeps making movies even after Aquaman 2 flops.

$275M? Make that at least $350M, if not more.

So can we expect Sam's goatee to be removed with CGI? And are they going to have Torres make a bunch of brunch jokes?

Looking great! Did anyone else catch the infamous "SILENCE!" scene that the Lynch movie butchered?

I mean, @keysersoze123 above is expecting a noticeably bigger Friday than Deadline's, so the latter might be lowballing here. Let's just wait for the final number tonight.

Oops. I guess I forgot.

That's a lot better than I'd expected. If Deadline's Minus One hold comes to fruition then we all owe @Shawn Robbins an apology as he'd have seen it coming far earlier than the rest of us.

Oh yeah, Rebel Moon, I forgot about that for a couple of seconds.

The top movie of a December weekend being in the low double digits is borderline depressing for exhibition. But on a per-movie basis, that's a great start for Heron. It'll come very close to Ponyo's entire domestic run with just its opening weekend. It is a very surreal and somewhat confusing movie though, so word of mouth might not be great.

I don't know if lack of competition is as much of a benefit as it once was. If none of the holiday offerings are appealing, then people just won't go to the movies. I'm sure Netflix has a big release around that time, and Disney+ has Percy Jackson.

I've been saying for a while that Wonka could be another Mary Poppins Returns in the making, in that it's a very old character that the rights holder overestimated modern audiences' interest in. This issue is nothing new of course, as both John Carter and The Lone Ranger suffered from it. At least Mary Poppins didn't, and Wonka most likely won't, do anywhere near as poorly as those. Wonka should end with a decent if unremarkable $250M-$300M worldwide total. I still think there's a chance it could outgross Aquaman 2 worldwide.

I haven't been hearing very nice things about the past two episodes though, and apparently the 50s storyline being absent in those is the main reason why they haven't been well received by the fans going off of the Godzilla subreddit. I'll get back to the series (I've watched the first three episodes so far) once I'm less busy with other matters, but this further hammers home that this franchise just isn't capable of writing compelling family drama, which is why I feel largely indifferent towards the modern storyline aside from Kurt Russell and all the Godzilla references. It's no coincidence that the 50s storyline, which is really good and carries the show, has a lot of the same elements that made Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla vs Kong much more warmly received than the rest of the franchise: adventure, mystery and exploration. So the episodes without that storyline, episodes where the bland modern day drama takes center stage, being poorly received in fan circles doesn't surprise me much.

Only the best results are worthy for the greatest superhero of all time.

Both Disney and Marvel should be thanking their gods that Ryan and his buddies agreed to return. They'd better stay the hell out of their way for this, because they need Deadpool more than Deadpool needs them.

She most likely knows this is going to flop and is wisely keeping her head down in order to dodge the incoming shitstorm. I imagine most of the rest of the cast and crew might be feeling the same way.

Honestly, since this movie is going to flop anyway, I'd rather they just kill the baby and go down in a blaze of glory.

Those are some impressive numbers for Godzilla there. It's a shame it lost the top spot for Tuesday, but it still scored a big increase. Our distributors here need to start talking to Toho for the distribution rights, because all the raves are making me want to see it!

Warner was definitely a mess under Tsujhara. Just look at DC announcing 50 movies per week under his reign, most of them focusing on weird and obscure characters while Henry Cavill's Superman collected dust on their shelves. Most of those quietly died in development hell over the years, and the ones that did make it mostly underperformed or bombed. Thankfully James Gunn seems to be building an actual foundation with Superman and Batman movies and a Green Lantern TV series being a part of their introductory slate. The rest of the League will likely have to wait until the stench of the DCEU has faded away, but hopefully we'll get to them after this initial slate gets completed.

I doubt they'll even bother with a press tour. At most you'll see Jason Momoa appear in talkshows since he's got Minecraft coming up for Warner and I imagine they want to still have a relationship with him, especially in the event the Lobo rumours are true.