Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
‘Deadpool’ tops charts yet again as ‘Reagan’ beats expectations
Just like in the movies, Deadpool can’t be killed.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” one of the defining movies of the summer, ruled the box office on a weekend with quiet openings and low theater attendance as the summer movie season came to an anticlimactic close.
For the second weekend in a row, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” Marvel’s smash hit that has shattered records and become the best-selling R-rated movie of all time, topped the charts, with other holdovers from the summer following behind. After six weeks in theaters, the film made $15.2 million domestically Friday through Sunday, and it’s expected to cross the domestic $600 million mark following Monday’s Labor Day holiday. The Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman superhero flick will be one of only 16 titles to hit that milestone.
“Reagan,” a biopic starring Dennis Quaid as the 40th U.S. president, was the only new release competitive with holdover films that opened earlier this summer. Exceeding projections, the first full-length film about President Ronald Reagan earned $7.4 million over the three-day weekend, with an estimated cumulative total of $9.2 million including projections for Monday.
Audiences have reacted to the movie positively, giving it an A CinemaScore and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics have been less receptive, giving it a 19% rating and deeming it rotten on the popular ratings site. It ranked No. 4 on the charts.
The summer movie season, which runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day, proved to be full of surprises, flops and overperformers. “Deadpool,” “Despicable Me 4,” “Inside Out 2,” and “Twisters” brought in impressive earnings and remained on the charts for several weeks after their releases, with all four titles claiming spots in the top 10 Labor Day weekend.
“If you were to write up a blueprint of perhaps the most unpredictable summer ever, 2024 might be just that,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “ May gave us a challenge, but June, July and the beginning of August really delivered.”
The cumulative summer box office clocked in at over $3.6 billion domestically – a dip of 10% from 2023’s $4 billion season that could likely be attributed to the “Barbenheimer” box office craze that drew crowds en masse to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” last summer.
The close of the season brought what Dergarabedian described as a “stranglehold” of familiar summer hits on box office rankings, with “Alien: Romulus” and “It Ends With Us” rounding out the top three for the second weekend in a row. Six of the top 10 films of the weekend had been playing for three or more weeks.
“Alien: Romulus” placed second, earning $9.3 million from Friday through Sunday. The sci-fi horror film directed by Fede Álvarez and starring Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced and David Jonsson, has earned $88.8 million domestically.
“It Ends With Us” ranked No. 3 for the third consecutive weekend, earning just over $7.4 million with a slight edge over “Reagan.” The Sony movie starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed, is projected to reach a domestic total of $136 million after the weekend.
In a surprise bump, “Twisters” rounded out the top five with $7.2 million in its seventh week in theaters. Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones star in the standalone sequel to the 1996 hit “Twister.”
“Afraid,” a horror-thriller with an AI villain, made $3.7 million in one of the weekend’s modest openings, with Sony projecting $4.5 million in earnings through Monday. It came in ninth place in weekend rankings. The Blumhouse Productions and Colombia Pictures release follows John Cho and Katherine Waterston as a couple whose family is chosen to test a new AI assistant. Unsurprisingly, the technology spins out of control and threatens the lives of the family and those around them.
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut “Blink Twice” landed softly the last weekend of August, and brought in $4.7 million in its second weekend.
In another quiet opening, “1992,” which centers on a turbulent Los Angeles amid deadly riots during the titular year, made a meager $1.4 million Friday through Sunday, with distributor Lionsgate projecting that total will bump up to $1.6 million after Labor Day. The film stars Tyrese Gibson, Scott Eastwood and Ray Liotta.
The drama is the third sluggish opening Lionsgate has seen at the unofficial end of summer. The video game adaptation “Borderlands” and a remake of “The Crow” both underperformed in August.
“Slingshot,” another new sci-fi release starring Laurence Fishburne and Casey Affleck, opened with $485,282 across 845 screens. Distributor Bleecker Street estimates the movie will reach $572,763 cumulatively after the holiday.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
ESPN networks, ABC and Disney channels go dark on DirecTV
ESPN has gone off the air on a major carrier for the second straight year during the U.S. Open tennis tournament and in the midst of the first full weekend of college football.
Disney Entertainment channels went dark on DirecTV Sunday night after the sides were unable to reach a new carriage agreement.
The move angered some sports fans, who posted their displeasure on social media. And the U.S. Tennis Association wasn’t pleased with another carriage dispute.
ESPN was showing the fourth round of the U.S. Open when it went off the air on DirecTV at 6:20 p.m.
That was a half-hour before the start of the match between Frances Tiafoe, an American who reached the 2022 U.S. Open semifinals, and Alexei Popyrin, an Australian who eliminated defending champion Novak Djokovic on Friday.
“It is disappointing that fans and viewers around the country will not have the opportunity to watch the greatest athletes in our sport take part in the 2024 U.S. Open due to an unresolved negotiation between DirecTV and Disney, resulting in the loss of access to ESPN. We are hopeful that this dispute can be resolved as quickly as possible,” the USTA said in a statement.
It also happened 10 minutes before the start of the college football game between No. 13 LSU and 23rd-ranked Southern California in Las Vegas.
ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina, also went off DirecTV.
Last year, Disney and Spectrum — the nation’s second-largest cable TV provider — were involved in a nearly 12-day impasse until coming to an agreement hours before the first Monday night NFL game of the season.
DirecTV said Disney offered an extension to keep the channels on the air in exchange for DirecTV having to waive all future legal claims that its behavior is anti-competitive.
“The Walt Disney Co. is once again refusing any accountability to consumers, distribution partners, and now the American judicial system,” said Rob Thun, DirecTV’s chief content officer, in a statement. “Disney is in the business of creating alternate realities, but this is the real world where we believe you earn your way and must answer for your own actions. They want to continue to chase maximum profits and dominant control at the expense of consumers — making it harder for them to select the shows and sports they want at a reasonable price.”
DirecTV has 11.3 million subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group, making it the nation’s third-largest pay TV provider.
Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, co-chairmen of Disney Entertainment, and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro issued a joint statement urging DirecTV to finalize a deal.
The statement added that “while we’re open to offering DirecTV flexibility and terms which we’ve extended to other distributors, we will not enter into an agreement that undervalues our portfolio of television channels and programs. We invest significantly to deliver the No. 1 brands in entertainment, news and sports because that’s what our viewers expect and deserve.”
The impasse comes as networks and distributors continue to be at odds over content. Distributors and subscribers would like to see a model where they can buy channels a la carte instead of subscribing to a bundling package.
Distributors are also frustrated with production companies putting some of their premium programing on direct-to-consumer platforms before they show up on channels. DirecTV cited the miniseries “Shogun” appearing on Hulu before FX.
“Consumer frustration is at an all-time high as Disney shifts its best producers, most innovative shows, top teams, conferences, and entire leagues to their direct-to-consumer services while making customers pay more than once for the same programming on multiple Disney platforms,” Thun said. “Disney’s only magic is forcing prices to go up while simultaneously making its content disappear.”
Besides all ESPN network channels and ABC-owned stations, Disney-branded channels Freeform, FX and National Geographic channel went dark on DirecTV.
Hip-hop artist Fatman Scoop dies at 53 after collapsing on stage
NEW YORK | Fatman Scoop, the hip-hop artist who topped charts in Europe with “Be Faithful” in the early 2000s and later lent his distinctive voice and ebullient vibe to hits by artists including Missy Elliott and Ciara, died after collapsing on stage at a show in Connecticut, according to officials and his family. He was 53.
The cause of his death wasn’t immediately clear.
He was performing at Hamden Town Center Park when he collapsed Friday evening, town chief of staff Sean Grace said Saturday. Mayor Lauren Garrett posted on Facebook that he had a medical emergency. Concertgoers and paramedics tried to aid the artist, who was taken to a hospital, she said.
His family said in an Instagram post that “the world lost a radiant soul, a beacon on stage and in life.”
With a gravelly voice and dance-floor-friendly sensibility, Fatman Scoop was a mainstay of club playlists around the turn of the millennium. But if the world knew him as the “voice of the club,” his family cherished him as “the laughter in our lives, a constant source of support, unwavering strength and courage,” his relatives said.
“His music made us dance and embrace life with positivity. His joy was infectious and the generosity he extended to all will be deeply missed but never forgotten,” they added, saying he leaves a legacy “of love and brightness.”
Born Isaac Freeman III, Fatman Scoop was from New York City’s Harlem neighborhood and broke out with 1999’s “Be Faithful.” What started as a minor success in the U.S. took off in Europe with a 2003 re-release, hitting No. 1 on the singles charts in the U.K. and Ireland.
The next year, he appeared on the U.K. television series “Chancers,” in which musicians mentored artists who wanted to make it in the U.S., the BBC reported. He also was a contestant on “Celebrity Big Brother 16: UK vs USA,” which was filmed in the U.K. and aired in 2015.
Scoop — sometimes stylized as Fat Man Scoop or FatMan Scoop — collaborated with Elliott on “Lose Control,” a 2005 song of the summer that also featured Ciara. The track won a short-form music video Grammy at the 2006 award show.
The same year as “Lose Control,” he was featured on Mariah Carey’s “It’s Like That.” He also was featured on tracks from Timbaland, David Guetta, The Situation and Skrillex, among other artists. In 2018, he reunited with Elliott and Ciara for a remix of the latter’s “Level Up.”
Elliott praised Scoop’s “VOICE and energy” Saturday on X, saying he had contributed to many songs that made people happy over more than two decades.
“Your IMPACT is HUGE & will be NEVER be forgotten,” she added.
His longtime booking agency, MN2S, described him as an artist with “boundless enthusiasm,” a passion for music and a voice and personality that “made an indelible mark on the industry.”
His MN2S representative, Sharron Elkabas, said in a statement Saturday that she had spoken to him a few days earlier.
“He was in such good spirits. It’s hard to believe he is no longer with us,” she said.
—From AP reports
