Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
‘Terrifier 3’ slashes ‘Joker’ to take No. 1 at the box office
NEW YORK | The choices on the movie marquee this weekend included Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, a film about Donald Trump, a “Saturday Night Live” origin story and even Pharrell Williams as a Lego. In the end, all were trounced by an ax-wielding clown.
“Terrifier 3,” a gory, low-budget slasher from the small distributor Cineverse, topped the weekend box office with $18.3 million, according to estimates Sunday. The film, a sequel to 2022’s “Terrifier 2” ($15 million worldwide in ticket sales), brings back the murderous Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and lets him loose, under the guise of Santa, at a Christmas party.
That “Terrifier 3” could notably overperform expectations and leapfrog both major studios and awards hopefuls was only possible due to the disaster of “Joker: Folie à Deux.” After Todd Phillips’ “Joker” sequel, starring Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a much-diminished start last weekend (and a “D” CinemaScore from audiences), the Warner Bros. release fell a staggering 81% in its second weekend, bringing in just $7.1 million.
For a superhero film, such a drop has little precedent. Disappointments like “The Marvels,” “The Flash” and “Shazam Fury of the Gods” all managed better second weekends. Such a mass rejection by audiences and critics is particularly unusually for a follow-up to a massive hit like 2019’s “Joker.” That film, also from Phillips and Phoenix, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide against a $60 million budget.
The sequel was pricier, costing about $200 million to make. That means “Joker: Folie à Deux” is headed for certain box-office disaster. Globally, it’s collected $165.3 million in ticket sales.
“This is an outlier of a weekend if ever there was one,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “If you had asked anyone a month ago or even a week ago: Would ‘Terrifier 3’ be the number one movie amongst all these major-studio films and awards contenders? To have a movie like this come along just shows you that the audience is the ultimate arbiter of what wins at the box office.”
The “Joker” slide allowed “The Wild Robot,” the acclaimed Universal Pictures and DreamWorks animated movie, to take second place in its third weekend with $13.4 million. Strong reviews for Chris Sanders’ adaptation of Peter Brown’s book have led the movie, with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the robot protagonist, to $83.7 million domestically and $148 million worldwide.
The young Donald Trump film “The Apprentice,” distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment in 1,740 theaters, opened in a distant 10th place, managing a paltry $1.6 million in ticket sales. While expectations weren’t much higher, audiences still showed little enthusiasm for an election-year origin story of the Republican nominee.
If headlines translated to ticket sales, Ali Abbasi’s film might have done better. “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as Trump under the mentorship of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), has been making news since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, up to its last-minute release just weeks before the election. The Trump campaign has called the movie “election interference by Hollywood elites.”
Abbasi’s film, set in the 1970s and 1980s, tested moviegoer’s appetite for a political film in an election year. Major studios and specialty labels passed on acquiring it in part because of the question of whether a movie about Trump would turn off both liberal and conservative moviegoers, alike. “The Apprentice” will depend on continued awards conversation for Strong and Stan to make a significant mark in theaters before voters turn out at the polls.
Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” failed to ignite its nationwide expansion. The film, with an ensemble cast led by Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels, collected $3.4 million from 2,288 locations. The Sony Pictures release, about the backstage drama as the NBC sketch comedy show is about to air for the first time in 1975, will likely need to make more of an impact with audiences to carry it through awards season.
“Piece by Piece,” a Pharrell Williams documentary-biopic hybrid animated in Lego form, had also been hoping to click better with moviegoers. The acclaimed Focus Features release, directed by veteran documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), opened with $3.8 million from 1,865 theaters.
But the debut for “Piece By Piece,” while low for a Lego animated movie, was very high for a documentary. “Piece By Piece,” which had the weekend’s best CinemaScore, an “A” from audiences, could play well for weeks to come. The film, which was modestly budgeted at $16 million, is also likely to end up the year’s highest grossing doc — if “Piece by Piece” can be called that.
“We Live in Time,” the weepy drama starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, had one of the year’s best per-theater averages in its five-screen opening. The A24 release, which will expand nationwide next weekend, debuted with $255,911 and a $51,000 per-screen average.
Outside of the success of Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (which pulled in $7.1 million in its six weekends of release despite recently launching on video-on-demand), Hollywood’s fall has struggled to get going. Low-budget horror, like “Terrifier 3,” continues to be one good bet in theaters, but this autumn has been mostly characterized by bombs like “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “Megalopolis.”
This time last year, Taylor Swift was giving the box office a massive lift with “The Eras Tour.” This weekend compared with the same time last year was down 45% according to Comscore.
Historic Jersey Shore amusement park closes after generations of thrills
OCEAN CITY, N.J. | For generations of vacationers heading to Ocean City, the towering “Giant Wheel” was the first thing they saw from miles away.
The sight of the 140-foot-tall ride let them know they were getting close to the Jersey Shore town that calls itself “America’s Greatest Family Resort,” with its promise of kid-friendly beaches, seagulls and sea shells, and a bustling boardwalk full of pizza, ice cream and cotton candy.
And in the heart of it was Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, an amusement park that was the latest in nearly a century-long line of family-friendly amusement attractions operated by the family of Ocean City’s mayor.
But the rides were to fall silent and still Sunday night, as the park run by Ocean City’s mayor and nurtured by generations of his ancestors, closed years, the victim of financial woes made worse by the lingering aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Superstorm Sandy.
Gillian and his family have operated amusement rides and attractions on the Ocean City Boardwalk for 94 years. The latest iteration of the park, Wonderland, opened in 1965.
“I tried my best to sustain Wonderland for as long as possible, through increasingly difficult challenges each year,” Mayor Jay Gillian wrote in August when he announced the park would close. “It’s been my life, my legacy and my family. But it’s no longer a viable business.”
Gillian did not respond to numerous requests for comment over the past week.
Sheryl Gross was at the park for its final day with her two children and five grandchildren, enjoying it one last time.
“I’ve been coming here forever,” she said. “My daughter is 43 and I’ve been coming here since she was 2 years old in a stroller. Now I’m here with my grandchildren.”
She remembers decades of bringing her family from Gloucester Township in the southern New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia to create happy family memories at Wonderland.
“Just the excitement on their faces when they get on the rides,” she said. “It really made it feel family-friendly. A lot of that is going to be lost now.”
There were long lines Sunday for the Giant Wheel, the log flume and other popular rides as people used the last of ride tickets many had bought earlier in the year, thinking Wonderland would go on forever.
A local non-profit group, Friends of OCNJ History and Culture, is raising money to try and save the amusement park, possibly under a new owner who might be more amendable to buying it with some financial assistance. Bill Merritt, one of the non-profit’s leaders, said the group has raised over $1 million to help meet what could be a $20-million price tag for the property.
“Ocean City will be fundamentally different without this attraction,” he said. “This town relies on being family-friendly. The park has rides targeted at kids; it’s called ‘Wonderland’ for a reason.”
The property’s current owner, Icona Resorts, previously proposed a $150-million, 325-room luxury hotel elsewhere on Ocean City’s boardwalk, but the city rejected those plans.
The company’s CEO, Eustace Mita, said earlier this year he would take at least until the end of the year to propose a use for the amusement park property.
He bought it in 2021 after Gillian’s family was in danger of defaulting on bank loans for the property.
At a community meeting last month, Gillian said Wonderland could not bounce back from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, the pandemic in 2020 and an increase in New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15.49 an hour that doubled his payroll costs, leaving him $4 million in debt.
Mita put up funds to stave off a sheriff’s sale of the property, and gave the mayor three years to turn the business around. That deadline expired this year.
Mita did not respond to requests for comment.
Merritt said he and others can’t imagine Ocean City without Wonderland.
“You look at it with your heart, and you say ‘You’re losing all the cherished memories and all the history; how can you let that go?’” he said. “And then you look at it with your head and you say, ‘They are the reason this town is profitable; how can you let that go?’”
‘Game of Thrones’ Iron Throne fetches nearly $1.5M at auction
“Game of Thrones” fans came out in droves to bid on hundreds of costumes, props and other items from the series in an auction that raked in over $21 million.
From Thursday through Saturday, the Heritage Auctions event in Dallas featured over 900 lots including suits of armor, swords and weapons, jewelry and several other items of significance from the HBO series.
The top-dollar item was the very thing the characters in the series vied for throughout its eight-season run: the Iron Throne. After a six-minute bidding war, the throne sold for $1.49 million.
The replica was made of plastic and molded from the original screen-used version, then finished off with metallic paint and jewel embellishments. In the series, the throne was forged with dragon breath that melted the swords of a thousand vanquished challengers and became a symbol of the struggle for power throughout the show’s run.
Heritage Auctions said in a statement Sunday that the event brought in $21.1 million from more than 4,500 bidders. The auction marked Heritage’s second-best entertainment event, just shy of the record set by a Debbie Reynolds sale it held in 2011.
Heritage Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena said in a statement he knew the auction would resonate.
“These are extraordinary treasures made by Emmy-winning costume designers and prop makers, who worked tirelessly to adapt George R.R. Martin’s wonderful novels,” Maddalena said. “People wanted a piece of that ‘Game of Thrones’ magic.”
Beyond the coveted Iron Throne, over 30 other lots commanded six-figure price tags.
Jon Snow’s signature sword, Longclaw, wielded onscreen by Kit Harington, sold for $400,000 and his night’s watch ensemble, featuring a heavy cape, went for $337,500. Both items kicked off prolonged bidding wars.
Starting bids ranged from $500 to $20,000, but several items went for thousands of dollars more. Such was the case for several cloaks and dresses worn by Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister. A gray suede ensemble worn by Daenerys sold for $112,500, exactly $100,000 over its starting bid, and the red velvet dress Cersei wears in her final appearance on the show went for $137,500, which was $122,500 over its starting bid.
Suits of armor also proved popular, especially when they included sought-after weapons. Jaime Lannister’s black-leather armor ensemble fetched $275,000 and his Kingsguard armor — including his iconic Oathkeeper longsword — went for $212,500. Queensguard armor worn by the character Gregor ‘The Mountain’ Clegane sold for $212,500.
In an interview when the auction was announced in September, Jay Roewe, HBO’s senior vice president of global incentives and production planning, said the sale speaks to the series’ staying power five years after its finale.
“’Game of Thrones’ was a zeitgeist moment in our culture. It was a zeitgeist moment in high-end television. It was a zeitgeist moment in terms of HBO,” he said. “It’s impacted the culture.”
—From AP reports
