Great Big Box Office Hits: Franchises of multiple kinds dominated the box office with Harry Potter 4, Star Wars Episode 3, and the launches of Chronicles of Narnia and Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy as half of the top ten list that year. Other huge hits were the romantic comedy Hitch, the Brangelina pairing of Mr & Mrs Smith, the remakes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, and King Kong, and the comedies Wedding Crashers and Meet the Fockers.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees: In the mid-Aughts the Oscars were veering away from big hits in their Best Picture lineups (to eventually rule-changing results) but Brokeback Mountain was the most successful of the lot with $178 million globally...
• /Film Michelle Yeoh may be headlining a Star Trek spin-offseries • Towleroad Greg Berlanti (Love Simon) plans to direct a Rock Hudson biopic • Variety This is so cool. The animation studio Aardman (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, etcetera) is transferring its ownership to its employees. Peter Lord will stay on as creative director
• MNPP Raúl Castillo joins the already amazing cast of Rian Johnson's Knives Out • Awards Daily Adam McKay promoting Vice says something he might regret about the difference between Cheney and Trump • Playbill Did you hear they're releasing another album for The Greatest Showman? This one is all covers. Kelly Clarkson is doing "Never Enough" • Kinja great deal if you're a Potter person. All 8 Harry Potter films on bluray for just $40 • Cinema Eye Honors, which honors documentary films (we guess it's the week for that?), release their nominations for the year with Bing Liu's Minding the Gap leading with 7 nominations and Bisbee '17, Hale County This Morning This Evening and Shirkers each receiving 5. All are eligible for the Oscars this year, too. • Boy Culture what Matt said about this odd quote from Michael C Hall on his sexuality • The Guardian Controversy! German Playboy has published an interview with Ennio Morricone in which he trashes Quentin Tarantino. Now Morricone says he never gave that interview and will take legal action.
R.I.P. • Variety Stan Lee, Marvel's figurehead and comic book legend, has died at 95. One assumes we have four final Stan Lee cameos coming up, though. He gets a bit in Into the Spider-Verse (yes, I've seen it but we're not allowed to talk about it yet). And surely he'll be in Captain Marvel, Infinity War Part 2, and Spider-Man: Far From Home, since they're all in post production already. • The Guardian Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in 2001 has died at 90.
Exit Video Here's another cover from The Greatest Showman Reimagined from P!nk and her daughter Willow Sage Hart
P.S. Alarming! Grammy winner Beck tweeted out that he was recording a score for Roma. Naturally this is upsetting because the movie has screened for months and actually has no score. The soundscape is so unique and immersive and tons of critics have praised the movie for this craftsmanship exactly. Why would they change it now after all the praise? I'm currently having nightmares of what happened to A Star is Born (1954) and The New World (2005) when the studio kept meddling after screenings with something that was already brilliant and perfect to the point where some people never could see the original version and in the case of A Star is Born it was lost for all time.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 10:00AM 
