Inside Jurassic XXL's Genysis

Proving difficult to recapture a surprise novelty hit audience?You guys. I'm disappointed in the American public. Here we are on a national holiday weekend and they're still going to the dinosaur island off the coast of Costa Rica and a reheated pointless Terminator reboot of much better work from the world's most successful Canadian director! And they're doing that when the All American Pixar is knocking it out of the park with a story about a Midwestern girl moving to San Francisco and Channing Tatum and friends having a road trip strippers party from Florida to South Carolina. But America wants what it wants and in this case they wanted the microwave-reheated franchises from beyond our borders. 

Early estimates had Inside Out leading but when later estimates came it it fell back into second place which means it now takes the record from My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) of the highest grossing movie that never had a #1 weekend. And the record will hold since there's no way it hits #1 next weekend with Minions opening to steal the family dollar away.

UPDATE With actuals in My Big Fat Greek's Wedding on most successful film that was never #1 at the box office lives on, since Inside Out just barely edged out the dinosaurs.

BOX OFFICE
July 3rd-5th Weekend
(some "new" titles have cumulatives since they opened early for the holiday)
01 Inside Out $29.7 (cum. $245.8) Inside Out Articles 
02 Jurassic World $29.2 (cum. $556.5) Jurassic Articles 
03 Terminator Genisys NEW $27 (cum. $42.4)
04 Magic Mike XXL NEW $12.8 (cum. $27.8) Review
05 Ted 2 $11.1 (cum. $58.5)
06 Max $6.6 (cum. $25.3)
07 Spy $5.1 (cum. $97.5)
08 San Andreas $2.8 (cum. $147.1)
09 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl $1.2 (cum. $3.9) Michael's Review 
10 Dope $1.1 (cum. $14.1) Sundance capsule

11 Mad Max: Fury Road $1 (cum. $149) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
12 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $.8 (cum. $454.2) Review & Marathon & Podcast 
13 Love & Mercy $.7 (cum. $10.5) Best Actor
14 Pitch Perfect 2 $.5 (cum. $182.3) 
15 Insidious: Chapter 3 $.5 (cum. $51.2)
16 I'll See You In My Dreams $.4 (cum. $5.8) Best Actress

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
Do tell. 

Box Office: Ted 2 No Match for Jurassic 4 & Inside Out 1

Weird. Despite a lot of love for Seth MacFarlane's Ted (2012) just three years ago its sequel significantly underperformed with a much weaker opening... like $21 whole million weaker. I say weird because nowadays audiences tend to run screaming with wallets wide open to anything sequelish that they liked before. Witness the explosive returns for Pitch Perfect 2 (which has tripled the gross of its predecessor... also three years old). Speaking of sequels... Jurassic World is now the biggest grosser of 2015 and its only in its 3rd weekend with a typically huge box office holiday fast approaching. The weird thing is that people don't seem to love it. They only seem to love being able to return to that park... which bodes really well for Jurassic Park-World 5,6,7, etcetera one supposes. 

Magic Mike XXL and Terminator 5 arrive Wednesday but neither are as family oriented as the current top two so the holiday week could well be huge for all four. Unless Terminator G goes the way of Ted 2 under the 'nah, been there' umbrella?

WIDE RELEASE BOX OFFICE
June 26th-28th Weekend
01 Jurassic World $54.2 (cum. $500) Jurassic Articles 
02 Inside Out $52.1 (cum. $184.9) Inside Out Articles
03 Ted 2 NEW $33
04 Max NEW $12.2
05 Spy $7.8 (cum. $88.3) Rose Byrne FYC
06 San Andreas $5.2 (cum. $141.8)
07 Dope $2.8 (cum. $11.7) Sundance capsule
08 Insidious Chapter 3 $2 (cum. $49.7)
09 Mad Max: Fury Road $1.7 (cum. $147)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
10 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $1.6 (cum. $452.4) Review & Marathon & Podcast

Notes
Jurassic World is the first film to hit $500 million in US theaters since The Avengers (2012). The latter went on to gross $623.3 million but it took a week longer to hit the half billion mark. Jurassic World may well surpass The Avengers but I hope Avatar's $749 million US record is safe since Jurassic World would be a really lame #1 of all time since it's basically a remake. Finally, incredibly Cinderella is still in theaters, albeit only 235 of them, but in its 16th week it has now passed the $200 million mark and seems likely to end the year in the box office top ten (it's number #4 right this moment but will soon slip a rung). The fairy tale doesn't come to BluRay and DVD until September 15th.

What did you see this weekend?

Get Ready for a Third Round of 'Pitch Perfect'

Margaret here with breaking news: Hollywood loves money, water is wet and Pitch Perfect 3 is officially in the works.

Pitch Perfect 2 is still in theaters, and presumably since it's nearing a $300 million worldwide take (which would be more than respectable even without its vastly profitable soundtrack tie-in), Universal has just announced that they've staked out July 21, 2017 for the threequel. 

Critics were less than enthused about the second installment, but heaven knows if they can squeeze three movies out of The Hangover and Meet the Parents then there's no harm in in making room for movies starring and produced by women in the franchise club.

Screenwriter Kay Cannon is in talks to return for round three, and while there's no word on whether Elizabeth Banks will be back to direct, it has been announced that both Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick are on board.

See how ecstatic she looks? 

The question is... how? Considering how inevitable another sequel seemed, it was strange to see the Pitch Perfect 2 screenplay consistently cutting off potential avenues for a sequel.

Of course, the most sensible (read: boring) solution would be to repeat the premise with a new slate of actors and have the original stars cameo in mentorship roles. But it's early yet, and we can hold out hope for a dramatic creative swerve. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a gritty game-change chronicling the harsh reality of post-college a cappella life, where the gang reunites to busk in the big city by night while by day they try to break into an unsympathetic industry. Featuring lots of shaky-cam, naturally. In what direction would you steer the Pitch Perfect series?
 

Studio Rights Wars: The Internet Doesn't Care If Rumors Are True or False.

I've expressed dismay many times here at TFE that what the internet mostly wants is rumors and future film nonsense rather than discussion of actual films that exist and that people can see. (Bet you ANYTHING that the word count on Star Wars "stand-alone" films that don't exist and won't for years is higher than the word count on Ex Machina which does exist and is amazingly worth discussing.) The Daily Beast has a current piece about rumors that seem to have erupted from actual facts (Marvel cancelling some series, toys, and retconning some characters including The Scarlet Witch -- all things that have always happened before billion dollar movies were involved and also within series where no billion dollar movies are involved). The piece suggests that Marvel is sabotaging Fox's efforts on X-Men and Fantastic Four. It's frankly a bizarre claim, even though it is more than obviously true that Marvel would want the rights back to these properties.

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Tim's Toons: Animated Features at Cannes

This week, the Cannes Film Festival was home to the premiere of Inside Out, the new film by Pixar Animation Studios, and one of its best-reviewed pictures. The film is playing out of competition, as has been the recent tendency of most Hollywood products, and animation in particular. It has been a special habit of films made by DreamWorks Animation in the 21st Century, with all sorts of things from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron in 2002 up to How to Train Your Dragon 2 last year muscling their way onto the Croisette.

There has, however, been a small but meaningful history of animated movies to have been given slightly more honorable treatment, and allowed to play in the big kids’ sandbox. Since the festival’s first edition in 1946, there have been seven animated features entered into the main competition, if my count is right, and they make for a fascinating cross-section of how the international cinema scene regarded the state of that particular art across the years. Here, in order, are those seven films.

Make Mine Music (1946)
The eighth feature made by the Disney studio, and the third of that company’s dubious “package films”, attempts to make entire features by jamming a bunch of short films into one vague thematic frame. Like any anthology, it has peaks and valleys, though the latter dominate, and the film is infinitely less impressive than its quasi-sequel Melody Time. Let us not be baffled by its Cannes slot; this was the fest’s first year & they were figuring it out, everybody loves Disney, and it’s a nice post-war feel-good effort. It won Best Animation Design, a discontinued award.

six more after the jump including Persepolis and... Shrek 2 (!?)

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