Movie News

Isao Takahata, a highly influential Japanese animator and filmmaker, and a co-founder of Studio Ghibli alongside longtime collaborator Hayao Miyazaki, died Thursday after a brief hospitalization. He was 82.

Takahata died following a battle with lung cancer, according to a statement Studio Ghibli provided to TheWrap.

Takahata directed the animated wartime drama “Grave of the Fireflies,” “Pom Poko,” “My Neighbors the Yamadas” and was nominated for an Oscar for his film “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.”

March finished down -24% compared to last year's record-breaking performance and yet the first quarter of the year finished down just -2% compared to last year, thanks in large part to Black Panther making up nearly 23% of the quarter's overall gross.

It's far too early in April to make any declarations as to whether this month will turn things around, but things do look promising with the likes of Avengers: Infinity War on the horizon as well as this weekend's top two offerings.

Both A Quiet Place and Blockers are showing plenty of promise, receiving strong reviews and exhibiting signs of lengthy runs, and be on the lookout for Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs as it expands into nearly 550 theaters before going nationwide next week.

Looking to finish atop the weekend box office is Paramount's well-reviewed horror A Quiet Place, which currently holds a 97% rating on RottenTomatoes. Additionally,

Exclusive: Solo: A Star Wars Story will make its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, Deadline has learned. The festival is still finalizing its competition film roster, but they won’t find a bigger film than this one. Sources said that the Lucasfilm origin story will premiere in a special screening May 15, before the picture makes its global premiere May 25. The Ron Howard-directed origin story stars Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo, the role made famous by Harrison Ford. Donald Glover plays Lando Calrissian, and Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany and Thandie Newton also star.

The Cannes roster has been the subject of wide speculation, and the festival announced this morning that the Javier Bardem-Penelope Cruz drama Everybody Knows will be the opening night film, directed by Asghar Farhadi. That and numerous other films have been rumored for weeks, but The Force being

Lin Manuel-Miranda and “In The Heights” co-creator Quiara Alegría Hudes have regained control of movie rights to the Tony Award-winning musical, in the aftermath of The Weinstein Company’s downfall, an insider with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Deadline originally reported that the underlying rights to “In The Heights” reverted back to Miranda and Hudes before TWC filed for bankruptcy since the film had not yet gone into production.

After the accusations of Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assault and harassment, Miranda and Hudes demanded the rights back.

Exclusive: The Hangover actor Ken Jeong and newcomer Mathilde Ollivier are set to play opposite Mel Gibson, Frank Grillo, and Naomi Watts in Boss Level, the Emmett/Furla Oasis Films’ action thriller written and directed by Joe Carnahan.

The pic centers on retired Special Forces veteran, Roy (Grillo), who is trapped in a never-ending loop resulting in his death and must figure out who is responsible and stop them. Jeong will play Chef Jake who runs the restaurant where Roy finds himself every morning as he is forced to re-live a particular day. Ollivier has been cast as the Parisian stunner, Gabrielle, a warm, friendly, sophisticated bartender at the Chronos Bar where Roy is a regular.

Steven Spielberg thinks it’s time for moviegoers to meet Indiana “Joan,” as the director revealed to The Sun earlier this week that he is considering having Harrison Ford’s iconic Indiana Jones character be played by a woman.

“We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan. And there would be nothing wrong with that,” the director said when asked whether he would make the infamous explorer female.

Spielberg and Harrison Ford are set to reunite to film the fifth installment in the Indiana Jones franchise next April, but the director confirms that the film will mark Ford’s...

Kristen Bell has warmed up our hearts a little bit with an update on “Frozen 2.”

During an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Thursday, the actress said she recorded her lines and knows the story, which she said is “very good.”

“I have recorded the movie,” Bell said. “There will be edits before it’s finished but I know the songs, I know the story, it’s very good — I can’t say much more than that or I’ll get in trouble!”

Bell will reprise her role as Anna in the sequel to the hit animated film.

“Avengers: Infinity War” is ready to turbo-charge the box office.

The every-hero-but-the-kitchen-sink Marvel adventure is on pace to open to a massive $175 million to $200 million when it premieres on April 27. If it hits those numbers, it will be in some rarefied company. Only seven other films in history have topped $175 million in their debuts and only five have hit the $200 million mark.

“Avengers: Infinity War” promises to deliver a cornucopia of spandexed idols. Among those rubbing elbows on the Quinjet will be Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’ Captain America, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther, Chris Pratt’s Star Lord, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk. Joe and Anthony Russo directed and wrote the film, which pits Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Thanos, a baddie with a face like granite and some pretty ambitious plans to achieve inter-galactic dominance.

“Avengers: Infinity War

Longtime friends and business partners Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal have launched Mexican production house La Corriente del Golfo.

The Mexico City-based outfit will produce film, TV and theater projects. Up first for La Corriente del Golfo (The Gulf Stream) is the world premiere of Aqui en la Tierra, a crime drama co-created by Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle) and produced with Fox Networks Group Latin America. Aqui en la Tierra (Here on Earth) is competing this week at the first edition of Canneseries, a new TV festival taking place alongside Cannes' MIPTV market.

La Corriente del Golfo's...

From director Kay Cannon, the outrageously funny comedy Blockers shows the hilarity that can ensue when three parents (played by Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz) discover their daughters (played by Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon) have a pact to lose their virginity on prom night. Determined to do whatever it takes to keep that from happening, the well-meaning trio will stop at nothing, even if that includes car chases, butt-chugging contests and party crashing, to ensure that these three smart, determined and empowered young women don’t make a decision that they’ll regret. …

(Welcome to Road to Infinity War, a new series where we revisit the first 18 movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ask “How did we get here?” In this edition: Captain America: The First Avenger offers Marvel Studios a proper moral compass.) Steve Rogers is the heart and soul of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. […]

The post ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ Finds Marvel’s Emotional Core and Its Greatest Hero appeared first on /Film.

The first quarter of 2018 is behind us, and for the first time, total box office in China beat domestic totals. Grosses for China in Q1 totaled $3.17 billion, compared to $2.85 billion in North America. Those figures reflect a 39 percent increase in China over the same period in 2017. Here, domestic totals fell two percent. On the one hand, none of this is surprising. We’ve long believed that China overtaking North America as the top market was inevitable; at 1.3 billion, it has four times the population.

And while Chinese theaters return a much lower percentage of the gross, American studios have looked to the Far East as a major guarantor of future growth and profits. So maybe this is good news? Not really. Although this quarter probably won’t reflect the full year, China’s success doesn’t bode well because it had almost nothing to do with the studios.

The growth

Girl Talk is a weekly look at women in film — past, present, and future.

The elevator pitch for “Blockers” works pretty well: it’s “Porky’s” for the #MeToo era, “American Pie” with a feminine twist, “Superbad” for parents. But even those easy designations don’t quite capture the dizzy joy of Kay Cannon’s directorial debut. Initially called “The Pact,” the sex-positive sex comedy follows a trio of life-long best friends as they embark on the classic cinematic quest to lose their virginity on prom night. The time, however, the BFFs at the film’s center are all girls (this is a genre that mostly focuses on teen boys, after all), and their plan to take the next step is hampered by their overbearing parents.

The film may be Cannon’s directing credit, but it’s a natural fit for a comedian who first got her start in Chicago’s hopping improv scene,

Horror-thriller “A Quiet Place” has opened with an impressive $4.3 million at 2,740 North American locations in Thursday night preview showings, while “Blockers” took in $1.5 million at 2,650 sites in previews.

Paramount Pictures’ “A Quiet Place,” starring John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, has been forecasted to debut with as much as $30 million from 3,508 locations. The film, which opened at South by Southwest to rave reviews, currently boasts a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

“The Office” star Krasinski directed the story of an isolated family of four who must live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.

Universal’s “Blockers” is expected to pull in between $16 million and $20 million at 3,379 theaters. Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, and John Cena play parents trying to stop their teen daughters’ pact to lose their virginity on prom night.

“Blockers” marks the directorial debut of Kay Cannon, who wrote the “Pitch Perfect” trilogy. It was produced by Evan Goldberg,

Who knew the Purge could have been just a big, fun party? Don’t worry, it doesn’t stay happy and non-violent for long, as this first trailer for The First Purge gives a deathly blow by blow of how America’s deadliest holiday came to be. Amidst a general backdrop of protest and division not unlike our current age, the Purge – a day when laws are unenforced and pent-up violence unleashed – is inaugurated. “Join The First Purge!” comes the voice of the New Founding Fathers…

Spoiler warning for those not caught up through "Brothers in Arms." Man, members of Team Arrow are really dropping like flies, aren't they? Last week, Thea departed from Star City with Roy, seemingly for good, and Michael Koczwara wrote a piece for us about how -- sad though her departure was -- Arrow really has become overcrowded. The reality is that the show needs to lose some characters, but in the poll included at the end of that article, Diggle was the last person (other than literally Oliver Queen himself) anyone wanted to see heading out. But the Arrow gods did …

There are so many different ways “Blockers” could’ve gone sour. The directorial debut of screenwriter Kay Cannon (the “Pitch Perfect” movies), the bare premise of this raunchy comedy follows a gaggle of concerned parents trying to “cock block” — as the title doth (half) suggest — their teenage daughters from losing their virginities on prom night. Portrayed in the wrong light, it’s a potentially problematic, troubling idea for a comedy, one that could be easily be approached uncomfortably, clumsily and or just plain insensitively.

Summer is fast approaching, which means the various major theme parks are getting ready to unveil their new attractions for 2018. While Universal Orlando Resort has a few surprises in store in the coming years—including a Wizarding World of Harry Potter expansion and Nintendo World—this year fans will get to dive deep into the world of Fast & Furious. Indeed, Fast & Furious – Supercharged is set to open at Universal Studios Florida this spring, and the park has released some new images of the attraction to give fans a peek inside. This ride actually already exists at Universal …

“The Purge” franchise has shown some remarkable legs at the box office since launching in summer 2013. Each entry has outgrossed the previous one, with 2016’s “The Purge: Election Year” becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing title with $79 million. These stats bode well for the next installment, “The First Purge,” which tells the origin story of the entire series.

“The First Purge” is set on the titular event’s inaugural outing. Marisa Tomei stars as the head of the government-backed New Founding Fathers of America, who decide to make all killing legal for 24 hours. The government reckons that The Purge will make people take out all their aggression in one evening, leaving the rest of the year more crime free.

“Burning Sands” director Gerard McMurray makes his franchise debut with the film, making it the first “Purge” film not directed by James DeMonaco. The cast includes Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis,

The First Purge trailer is here, offering up an intense glimpse of how America’s one long night of lawlessness began. This fourth entry in the Purge franchise serves as a prequel, and has the added bonus of featuring Marisa Tomei! Watch The First Purge trailer below. I never would’ve imagined that Marisa Tomei invented The Purge, but here […]

The post ‘The First Purge’ Trailer: Learn How the Night of Anarchy Began appeared first on /Film.