Bob Mondello

So it turns out Craven's dad was right.

The character recovers, but his movie won't. With an opening of barely $11 million for the weekend, Craven the Hunter, which cost more than $100 million to make, now has the record for the lowest opening ever for a Marvel movie.

The film had been sitting on the shelf through much of the pandemic and was probably not helped by the decision to open it in early December, traditionally a rough box office period. Not rough for Wicked or Moana, though, each of which more than doubled Craven's box office take for the weekend. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

When I was wounded in Vietnam with shrapnel, instead of just taking my arm off, The medics took the time to just pick out the pieces. That's the way that we need to be addressing these issues. It needs to be with a scalpel and not just a saw.

This is not an ask. Honor the contract.

We saw this the last go-around with China. They went to South America, to Brazil and Argentina. And once you lose those export markets, it's awful hard to get them back.

Snow White easily dwarfed the competition at cinemas. The rest of the box office top ten combined made barely half as much as Snow White did, but this live-action remake of Disney's first animated feature only took in $87 million worldwide. and that means making back its $270 million production cost is going to be difficult.

Disney has had a lot of success with live remakes of its animated classics, and even when they don't cast a spell at the box office, they feed the company's other revenue streams, Disney+, sales of merchandise, theme park rides, even shows on Broadway. Still, for Hollywood, it's a disappointing start, in a year that has yet to have a smash hit. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

It redeveloped and was responsible for all the heavy rain that occurred across parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky.

A Disney princess and a couple of wicked witches have families lining up at cinemas and the film industry breathing a sigh of relief. As recently as last month, business was down roughly a billion dollars from 2023. By the end of this weekend, which will easily eclipse previous Thanksgiving box office records, Hollywood will have clawed back about a third of that deficit.

A Roman gladiator is helping out. But 2024's rebound is about families returning to cinemas. They made Pixar's Inside Out 2 the year's biggest blockbuster, and still to come are Sonic the Hedgehog 3, an animated Lord of the Rings prequel, and a new Lion King saga. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

She's buoyant, determined, and waiting for families to show up. And they are, if not quite in the numbers Disney hoped. Including previews, Snow White made $15 million its opening day, which suggests it's headed for about $45 million this weekend. roughly half what Princess Ariel took home in The Little Mermaid two years ago.

Snow White has gotten pushback in some quarters for its casting of Latina actress Rachel Zegler and for statements Zegler made to the press.

But Zegler's also earned raves for her performance, and Disney's good at spinning wishes into gold. Its most recent live-action musical, Mufasa, opened much lower but still topped $700 million worldwide. Bob Mandello, NPR News.

She's buoyant, determined, and waiting for families to show up. And they are, if not quite in the numbers Disney hoped. Including previews, Snow White made $15 million its opening day, which suggests it's headed for about $45 million this weekend. roughly half what Princess Ariel took home in The Little Mermaid two years ago.

Snow White has gotten pushback in some quarters for its casting of Latina actress Rachel Zegler and for statements Zegler made to the press.

But Zegler's also earned raves for her performance, and Disney's good at spinning wishes into gold. Its most recent live-action musical, Mufasa, opened much lower but still topped $700 million worldwide. Bob Mandello, NPR News.

Supremely dignified in her later years, she was squeaky when she first made an impression on movie audiences as Laurence Olivier's adoring granddaughter in The Entertainer.

They married shortly after the movie came out, and Plowright became closely associated with Olivier's stage work. After his death, she came into her own in such films as Tea with Mussolini and her Oscar-nominated performance in Enchanted April as a stern widow in literary circles.

Declining eyesight forced Plowright to retire from acting in 2014, but she was amusing as herself in the 2018 documentary Nothing Like a Dame, alongside fellow acting legends Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

For a film about decidedly minor Marvel characters, Thunderbolts did just fine. You feel fulfilled? Yeah, so full. So filled. By the end of the weekend, it will have taken in about $76 million in North America. and another $86 million overseas, for a total of $162 million in three days. That's hardly huge for a Marvel movie, but Thunderbolts wasn't hugely expensive to produce.

It's expected to play well for much of the summer, also performing well the third weekend of the blues-inflected vampire film, Sinners.

In three weeks, Sinners has now collected almost $180 million just in North America. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

Sailing past last year's lackluster holiday box office numbers was always going to be easy, but it looks as if Disney's Moana 2 is riding a wave that is lifting all boats. The Disney Princess has already taken in $57 million at North American box offices, on its way to an estimated $175 million for the full holiday weekend. That is easily the highest Thanksgiving total ever.

Wicked Part 1 and Gladiator 2 also remain strong in their second weeks. Together, they'll add another $140 million or so, meaning the total for all films over the holidays will pretty easily eclipse 2018's all-time record of $314 million. Bob Mondello, NPR News.

Amelia Perez is a French and Spanish-language gangster musical about trans identity. It led a field of unorthodox films with 13 nominations, including Best Picture, another musical, Wicked Part One, and the three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist about immigrant trauma followed with 10 nominations each.

Joining them in the Best Picture race are the Vatican thriller Conclave and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown with eight nominations each. and the sex worker rom-com Enora with Six. Also in the running, the sci-fi epic Dune Part II, the body horror film The Substance, the Spanish-language drama I'm Still Here, and The Nickel Boys, set in a racist reform school.

The Oscars telecast will be hosted by Conan O'Brien on March 2. Bob Mandello, NPR News.