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See My Options Sign UpHollywood’s latest music biopic, Bob Marley: One Love, continues to jam at the global box office, where it crossed the $100 million mark on Friday, including $61.4 million domestically and $39.7 million overseas after only 10 days in theaters. The Paramount movie easily stayed atop this weekend’s domestic box office chart with an estimated $13.5 […]
Hollywood’s latest music biopic, Bob Marley: One Love, continues to jam at the global box office, where it crossed the $100 million mark on Friday, including $61.4 million domestically and $39.7 million overseas after only 10 days in theaters.
The Paramount movie easily stayed atop this weekend’s domestic box office chart with an estimated $13.5 million from 3,597 locations, pushing its domestic tally to $72.2 million. Marley’s star also continues to shine brightly overseas, where it has amassed $49.4 million for global cume of $120.6 million.
One Love first starting making headlines last week, when it snagged a six-day launch of $51.1 million over the Valentine’s Day-Presidents Day corridor, one of the best openings ever for a music biopic (Straight Outta Compton remains top of the list), and remained well ahead of the dismal $26 million debut of Sony’s doomed Madame Web.
Madame Web continues to spin out of control. The female-led superhero pic grossed a mere $6 million from from 4,013 theaters in its sophomore outing, possibly only good enough for a fifth-place finish and bringing it’s domestic cume to $35.4 million. The news is just as bad overseas, where the film has earned $42 million for a worldwide gross of $87.3 million.
The latest installment in the Japanese anime series, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba — to the Hashira Training, from Crunchyroll and Sony, placed No. 2 with an impressive $11.7 million from 1,949 locations.
Ordinary Angels, a faith-based film from Lionsgate starring Hillary Swank, followed with estimated $6.5 million from 3,020 cinemas after earning a coveted A+ CinemaScore from audiences. If that holds, Madame Web will fall to No. 5.
Focus Features and Working Title’s specialty film Drive-Away Dolls, which Ethan Coen of the Coen brothers fame directed on his own from a script he wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke, is also spinning out. The lesbian road-trip comedy — slapped with a C CinemaScore —opened to an estimated $2.4 million from 2,280 locations despite a star-studded cast that includes Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon.
Generally speaking, a specialty title — such as a Coen brothers’ movie — has a small footprint to begin with before platforming. Focus and the filmmakers took a different route and decided to open Drive-Away Girls everywhere in hopes of helping exhibitors who have seen a dramatic slowdown in product throughout January and February. Alas, moviegoers don’t appear to be going along for the ride, though it could spark interest on premium VOD.
Overall domestic box office revenue has been down sharply in January and February due to a lack of product related to strike delays. The landscape should improve on March 1 when Warner Bros. and Legendary open Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. Warner Bros. has begun screening the year’s first tentpole in earnest, and Dune 2 currently sports a 97 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score from just under 150 reviews.
That’s not to say there haven’t been wins, including One Love and fellow Paramount pic Mean Girls. There just haven’t been any all-audience tentpoles. On the specialty side, Searchlight’s Oscar contender Poor Things has been a notable win for the art house side of the business and should cross the $100 million globally this week to become the second most successful specialty pic of the post-pandemic era, behind Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Oscar contender American Fiction‘s domestic tally is nearing $20 million for Amazon and MGM Studios. On the commercial side Amazon/MGM’s The Beekeeper has buzzed to $63 million-plus domestically and remains in the top 10.
This story was originally published Feb 24 at 8:38 am.
A24’s Past Lives won the top prize for best feature at the 39th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards, with writer-director Celine Song also winning best director for her feature film debut. American Fiction’s Jeffrey Wright won best lead performance for his role in the Amazon MGM Studios comedy, presented to him by his fellow Oscar […]
A24’s Past Lives won the top prize for best feature at the 39th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards, with writer-director Celine Song also winning best director for her feature film debut.
American Fiction’s Jeffrey Wright won best lead performance for his role in the Amazon MGM Studios comedy, presented to him by his fellow Oscar nominee Colman Domingo. “It’s funny, you go to these award shows, and you kind of grow tired of them,” laughed Wright. “And then you get one. It changes the vibe a little bit.”
American Fiction writer-director Cord Jefferson also won best screenplay for his directorial debut. “Our film is so independent that one morning I woke up at our hotel to find out that there had been a triple stabbing the night before in the lobby,” said Jefferson. “They were cleaning up the blood. And I would not have it any other way.”
The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph picked up the first award of the evening for best supporting performance, fresh off the heels of picking up a SAG Award on Saturday night for her role in the Focus Features film. “The Holdovers is a beautiful testament of what can happen when a small group of passionate people are given a chance to come together and tell the story,” said Randolph. “Independent films are the beating heart of this industry, and they are worth fighting for.” Randolph’s co-star Dominic Sessa won best breakthrough performance for his debut role in the film.
The John Cassavetes Award, which honors a film made for less than $1 million, went to Music Box Films’ Fremont, co-written and directed by Babak Jalali. He was the first winner of the night to acknowledge the protesters outside the tent in Santa Monica, whose shouts of “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine” began disrupting the ceremony in its first hour. “There are people speaking outside, and whatever they’re saying, I think it’s far more important than what I’m about to say,” said Jalali, who noted that the protest was a distraction: “I’m so inspired by what they’re saying outside, I can’t think of what I’m about to say.” (“We’re at the beach, and people are practicing their freedom of speech,” said host Aidy Bryant shortly after the shouting became audible in the tent and on the livestream.)
Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt accepted the Robert Altman Award for A24’s Showing Up, presented to the film’s creatives and cast by Lily Gladstone, whose breakthrough role came in Reichardt’s 2016 Western drama Certain Women. She noted that the last time she saw Altman was in 2003 at a lifetime achievement event honoring the director. “America was dropping bombs on Iraq at that time, and he was pissed,” said Reichardt. “And I think he’d have a lot to say — just this weirdness of us being here and celebrating each other and our work. Life goes on outside the tent.”
Kino Lorber’s Four Daughters won the award for best documentary, while Anatomy of a Fall won best international film. May December won best first screenplay, with writers Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik collecting the award. How to Blow Up a Pipeline took best editing, while The Holdovers won best cinematography. A.V. Rockwell won the best first feature award for Focus Features’ A Thousand and One.
In the TV categories, which honor new scripted series that premiered in 2023, Netflix’s Beef won for best new scripted series, while Ali Wong collected another win for her lead role in the limited series. FX’s Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur won best new nonscripted/documentary series.
Nick Offerman won best supporting performance for his role in HBO’s The Last of Us. “Thanks to HBO for having the guts to participate in this storytelling tradition that is truly independent — stories with guts,” said Offerman, referencing the acclaimed episode of the series that depicted a love story between characters played by Offerman and fellow nominee Murray Bartlett. “When homophobic hate comes my way, and [someone] says, ‘Why did you have to make it a gay story?’ We say, because you ask questions like that. It’s not a gay story — it’s a love story, you asshole.” The Last of Us‘ Keivonn Montreal Woodard also won an award for the HBO zombie drama, picking up the prize for breakthrough performance.
Freevee’s Jury Duty won the award for best ensemble cast, with Alan Barinholtz (father to actors Ike and Jon) and James Marsden accepting the award on behalf of their co-stars.
Bryant kicked off the ceremony to celebrate — and lightly roast — the independent film community. “I have to say, I first became aware of many of you independent filmmakers because my high school boyfriend talked about you all the time while we dry-humped,” said Bryant. “I am married now, so I learn less about cinema.
“Today we celebrate the resilience and the ingenuity of your work,” continued Bryant, closing her opening remarks. “It is so hard to get something made — not to mention, this town can be kind of harsh, but that’s Hollywood, baby. But not here. In this tent, we say: That’s indie, baby. If you’re an actress and you are wearing your own shoes in the movie, that’s indie, baby. When the script story spans 10 years and you shoot it in two weeks, that’s indie, baby. And when the solidarity from the WGA, SAG, the Teamsters and IATSE shows us the collective power of our labor? That’s indie, baby.”
A jam-packed weekend of last-gasp Oscar campaigning — the film Academy’s final round of voting opened on Feb. 22 and will close on Feb. 27 — kicked off on Saturday night with the 30th SAG Awards, the first major awards show ever to be streamed on Netflix. But do Saturday night’s results actually provide reliable clues […]
A jam-packed weekend of last-gasp Oscar campaigning — the film Academy’s final round of voting opened on Feb. 22 and will close on Feb. 27 — kicked off on Saturday night with the 30th SAG Awards, the first major awards show ever to be streamed on Netflix. But do Saturday night’s results actually provide reliable clues about what will happen two weeks from Sunday night at the 96th Oscars?
I would argue that they probably do.
SAG Award winners are determined by the roughly 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest union of actors, whereas Oscar winners are determined by the roughly 9,500 voting members of the film Academy, 86 percent of whom are not actors, which would suggest that any overlap is purely coincidental.
But it is quite a statement that SAG-AFTRA members voted best actor in a film — which has long looked to be neck-and-neck between Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer over Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers — to Irishman Murphy over American Giamatti, given that SAG-AFTRA members are overwhelmingly American (whereas 25 percent of Academy members are now based outside of the U.S.). Plus, Giamatti is in every way more like your average SAG-AFTRA voter, which might explain why he has previously won three SAG awards for individual performances (best supporting actor in a film for 2005’s Cinderella Man and best actor in a TV movie/miniseries for 2008’s John Adams and 2012’s Too Big to Fail) and another as part of a winning ensemble (2004’s Sideways).
In other words, if Murphy can beat Giamatti with SAG-AFTRA (on the heels of a best actor BAFTA win), it’s hard to imagine that he can’t/won’t win it with the Academy.
As for the best actress race, it has long looked like a a tale of two “Stones,” Poor Things’ Emma Stone and Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone. Stone recently won the BAFTA Award, for which Gladstone was not even nominated, so Gladstone badly needed a SAG Award win to at least create the appearance that it is still a toss-up — and she got it, making history in the process by becoming the first Native American to ever win a SAG Award for an individual performance.
But here’s where things get tricky. When the acting picks of SAG-AFTRA and the Academy have differed in recent years, it has often been a situation in which the more diverse/populist guild rewarded a person of color, whereas the Academy did not. Recent examples include the SAG Award going to Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but the Oscar going to Anthony Hopkins for The Father, the SAG Award going to Viola Davis for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom but the Oscar going to Frances McDormand for Nomadland, the SAG Award going to Denzel Washington for Fences but the Oscar going to Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea, the SAG Award going to Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation but the Oscar going to Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies and the SAG Award going to Viola Davis for The Help but the Oscar going to Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady.
And yet, in each of the last two years, the SAG Awards and the Oscars picked the exact same four winners, including two people of color in each year. So perhaps the gap is closing?
There’s also a wild-card heading into the Oscars. At the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards, Stone and Gladstone did not have to compete against each other. And at the Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG awards, Stone and Gladstone did not have to compete against someone else with whom they are currently competing on Oscar ballots: the star of best picture Oscar nominee Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra Hüller. I am hearing an unmistakable level of enthusiasm for Hüller from Academy members, which makes me wonder whether she is likelier to pull votes from Stone or Gladstone — or perhaps even beat them both. That would be a massive and odds-defying upset, but not an unprecedented one: three people have won acting Oscars without having won at the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA or SAG awards (Marcia Gay Harden won best supporting actress for 2000’s Pollock, Denzel Washington won best actor for 2001’s Training Day and Adrien Brody won best actor for 2002’s The Pianist).
As for the supporting acting Oscar categories, those seem to be locked down. SAG-AFTRA’s award for best supporting actor went to Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer and for best supporting actress went to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, as has every other major awards ceremony’s, so there is literally no basis for predicting anyone else to win on March 10.
The same is almost certainly true for Oppenheimer in the best picture Oscar race, following its best cast SAG Award win over American Fiction, Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon, which are also nominated for the top Oscar, and The Color Purple, which is not. To be clear, the best cast SAG Award does not have a great track record of presaging the best picture Oscar — except in years in which an upset happens for the latter. Indeed, virtually every major best picture Oscar upset started with a best cast SAG Award win: Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, Crash over Brokeback Mountain, Spotlight over The Revenant and Parasite over 1917. (The Revenant and 1917 weren’t even nominated for the best cast SAG Award.) The fact that Oppenheimer won every top precursor award leading up to the SAG Awards, and then won the best cast SAG Award, indicates that it is comfortably in the pole position for the top Oscar.
Anyway, the rollercoaster ride continues on Sunday with Film Independent’s Spirit Awards during the day and the Producers Guild of America’s PGA Awards at night. Rest up, Oscar-watchers, we’re not at the finish line yet!
Oppenheimer took the top prize at the 2024 Producers Guild of America Awards on Sunday night. The film won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures, a day after taking top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Other big winners were Beef, which also won at the SAG Awards […]
Oppenheimer took the top prize at the 2024 Producers Guild of America Awards on Sunday night.
The film won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures, a day after taking top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Other big winners were Beef, which also won at the SAG Awards and Sunday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, along with Succession and The Bear, both of which also won SAG Awards on Saturday.
Oppenheimer producer Emma Thomas accepted the theatrical motion picture award, noting that in a room full of producers, “This means so much coming from you, this room is full of people whose work we admire,” adding, “You know how hard the job can be, you also know how great the job can be; it’s the best job on set.” She also called director Christopher Nolan (who is also her husband) “the best producer you can possibly hope for.” Nolan briefly took the mic and noted they had previously been nominated at the PGA Awards but never won, and “every time we found ourselves invited in this room, we’ve felt such support,” and thanked the film’s cast for their work.
Sarah Silverman kicked off the ceremony, presenting the night’s first category, producer of episodic television – comedy, to The Bear. Danielle Brooks later presented producer of documentary motion pictures to American Symphony; Drew Tarver presented producer of live entertainment, variety, sketch, stand-up and talk television to Last Week Tonight With John Oliver; and Tony Hale presented producer of game and competition television to RuPaul’s Drag Race.
X Mayo presented producer of animated theatrical motion pictures to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, while Maitreyi Ramakrishnan presented producer of nonfiction television to Welcome to Wrexham.
Brie Larson presented producer of televised or streamed motion pictures to Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea; Roy Wood Jr. presented producer of limited or anthology series television to Beef; and Michael Cimino toasted the four previously announced winners. To close out the night, Alex Borstein presented producer of episodic television – drama to Succession, and Colman Domingo handed out the night’s biggest honor to Oppenheimer.
Spouses Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone also took the stage to jokingly present “best not-produced” projects, running through a spoof list of canned films, and Kenneth Branagh led an in memoriam segment.
Each of the outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures nominees had a special presentation, as Natasha Lyonne introduced The Zone of Interest; Jeremy Kleiner introduced Anatomy of a Fall; Margot Robbie and America Ferrera introduced Barbie; Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa introduced The Holdovers; Lily Gladstone introduced Killers of the Flower Moon; Carey Mulligan and Silverman introduced Maestro; Erika Alexander, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross and Jeffrey Wright introduced American Fiction; John Magaro introduced Past Lives; Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt introduced Oppenheimer; and Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe introduced Poor Things.
Also during the ceremony, Sarah Michelle Gellar presented the Norman Lear Achievement Award to Gail Berman, as the producer was behind her iconic show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In her acceptance speech, Berman recalled working on the series, saying, “Not a single person on this earth was interested in buying that television show, but I just couldn’t ignore my gut that there was something unique there.” She added that rejection has not been uncommon despite her success in the business, and after watching a reel of the projects she’s been involved in, she was “struck by just how many hurdles had to be jumped. I mean Elvis, 10 years?”
Ryan Coogler presented Charles D. King with the Milestone Award, making King the first Black person to receive the honor. “I stand on the shoulders of all the incredible producers, executives, my parents, our ancestors who kicked down the doors, made sacrifices and blazed the trail for me to be able to do what I’m blessed to do,” he said.
Guillermo del Toro was on hand to present Martin Scorsese with the David O. Selznick Achievement Award, as del Toro recalled a meeting with the director in 1995 that changed his life and noted in an industry fascinated by young talents, how important it is to honor masters like Scorsese. The Killers of the Flower Moon filmmaker paid tribute to his collaborators, including the Osage Nation, in his speech, and recalled his early days in the industry and feeling “full circle” after he was honored at a Producers Guild event in 1965 when he was 22.
Winners of some categories were announced last week.
In addition, the guild announced on Sunday night an initiative aimed at ensuring health insurance benefits for every qualified producer working full-time in the film and TV industry.
The 35th annual Producers Guild Awards ceremony was held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom, Ovation Hollywood at Hollywood and Highland.
A full list of winners follows.
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer (WINNER)
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (WINNER)
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
20 Days in Mariupol
American Symphony (WINNER)
Beyond Utopia
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
The Mother of All Lies
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
The Crown
The Diplomat
The Last of Us
The Morning Show
Succession (WINNER)
Barry
The Bear (WINNER)
Jury Duty
Only Murders in the Building
Ted Lasso
All the Light We Cannot See
Beef (WINNER)
Daisy Jones and the Six
Fargo
Lessons in Chemistry
Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea (WINNER)
Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie
Quiz Lady
Reality
Red, White & Royal Blue
60 Minutes
The 1619 Project
Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
Being Mary Tyler Moore
Welcome to Wrexham (WINNER)
Carol Burnett: 90 Years Of Laughter + Love
Chris Rock: Selective Outrage
Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (WINNER)
Saturday Night Live
The Amazing Race
RuPaul’s Drag Race (WINNER)
Squid Game: The Challenge
Top Chef
The Voice
100 Foot Wave (S2)
Beckham (S1) (WINNER)
Formula 1: Drive to Survive (S5)
Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the New York Jets (S18)
Shaun White: The Last Run (S1)
Goosebumps (S1)
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai (S1)
Sesame Street (S53) (WINNER)
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (S2)
The Velveteen Rabbit
Carpool Karaoke (S5C)
I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson (S3)
The Last of Us: Inside the Episode (S1)
Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question (S3)
Succession: Controlling the Narrative (S4) (WINNER)
Body of Mine (WINNER)
The Eye and I
JFK Memento
Letters From Drancy
MLK: Now Is the Time
Ocean of Light: Dolphins VR
Our Ocean Our Future
Out of Scale, A Kurzgesagt Adventure
Reimagined
Space Explorers: Blue Marble Trilogy
Wallace & Gromit in the Grand Getaway
The World’s Largest Tailgate