Senin, 23 Desember 2019

'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker' wins weekend box office but fails to match its recent predecessors - Fox News

"Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" may have won the weekend's box office, but the Skywalker finale couldn't match its recent predecessors on opening weekend. Still, it amassed a $175.5 million debut that ranked as the third-largest weekend of the year.

The Force was a little less strong with J.J. Abrams' latest film, which came in with worse reviews than any “Star Wars” movie except for 1999's “The Phantom Menace,” which famously heralded the debut of Jar Jar Binks. “The Rise of Skywalker” has a 57% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, too, were relatively lukewarm to the movie, giving it a B+ CinemaScore.

While Disney had cautiously estimated about a $165 million opening, analysts had predicted “The Rise of Skywalker” would rake in $200 million.

CLINT EASTWOOD'S 'RICHARD JEWELL' FLOPS AT THE BOX OFFICE IN ITS OPENING WEEKEND DESPITE CRITICAL ACCLAIM

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, left, and Daisy Ridley as Rey in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."

This image released by Lucasfilm shows Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, left, and Daisy Ridley as Rey in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." (Lucasfilm via AP)

“The Rise of Skywalker” pulled in $374 million worldwide, according to studio estimates Sunday. The film was especially lackluster in China, where all “Star Wars” films have struggled. It grossed $12.1 million in the world's second largest movie marketplace.

Though it proved divisive with fans, 2017's “Last of the Jedi," directed by Rian Johnson, opened with $220 million and ultimately grossed $1.3 billion worldwide. Abrams' own “The Force Awakens” set a then-record in 2015 with a $248 million debut and sold more than $2 billion in global tickets.

With the coming holiday period, “Rise of Skywalker” is poised to dominate the year's most lucrative week of moviegoing. Cathleen Taff, distribution chief for Disney, called it a great start.

“With critics, we've seen that our movies have received lower scores than not but that they continue to do business because they're great quality movies for the moviegoer," said Taff. "Audiences are generally responding really positively to the film.

'STAR WARS' CELEBRITY CAMEOS THROUGH THE YEARS

This image released by Disney/Lucasfilm shows Daisy Ridley as Rey in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."

This image released by Disney/Lucasfilm shows Daisy Ridley as Rey in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." (Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“We know that people are very passionate about ‘Star Wars’ and have very strong opinions about it. And we're fine with that," added Taff. "We think it's inspiring to see so many people who want to prompt a discussion around a film.”

Such expectations did not await Tom Hooper's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's “Cats.” The much ridiculed big-screen musical, featuring infamous “digital fur technology,” scratched out just $6.5 million in ticket sales, sending Mr. Mistoffelees (and Universal Pictures) home licking their wounds.

The $100 million production, featuring an ensemble including Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, James Corden, Idris Elba, Ian McKellen and Taylor Swift, came in behind projections and opened in a distant fourth place. The movie drew an 18% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and a C-plus CinemaScore from audiences.

'STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER' WON'T FEATURE BABY YODA, ACCORDING TO J.J. ABRAMS

“Even modest opening in this extraordinary lucrative corridor can prove very kind to films," said Jim Orr, chief of distribution for Universal. He anticipates the film's strongest demographic — older moviegoers — will be most available over the holidays. "Our scores from those who are 55 and up are very good and very encouraging.”

Holdovers “Jumanji: The Next Level" ($26.1 million in its second weekend) and “Frozen 2” ($12.3 million in its fifth weekend) both surpassed “Cats.”

This image released by Disney/Lucasfilm shows, from left, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."

This image released by Disney/Lucasfilm shows, from left, Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn in a scene from "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker." (Disney/Lucasfilm Ltd. via AP)

“Rise of Skywalker” culminated a tumultuous period in “Star Wars," finishing off both a trilogy and nine-film cycle begun 42 years ago by George Lucas. In 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion. While its stewardship of “Star Wars” has drawn enormous box-office proceeds, “The Rise of Skywalker" had its work cut out in trailing both the much-debated “Last of the Jedi” and the 2018 dud “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”

DAISY RIDLEY REVEALS WHAT SHE SWIPED FROM THE 'STAR WARS' SET AFTER FILMING

In November, Disney chief executive Bob Iger told investors that “Star Wars” will go “into a hiatus” after “Rise of Skywalker.” The next “Star Wars” movie, which is to be set outside the Skywalker saga, isn't scheduled for release until 2022. “Game of Thrones” makers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss recently pulled out of planned “Star Wars” trilogy.

Lately, “Star Wars” has also been a hit on the small screen, too. “The Mandalorian” helped launch the Disney Plus streaming service. To make way for “Rise of Skywalker,” the latest episode of “The Mandalorian” debuted on Wednesday, instead of Friday.

But Disney can still make considerable demands on theaters for “Star Wars" films. Disney charges theaters 65% of ticket sales, or about 10 percentage points more than standard, for “Star Wars” releases, and requires a run of four weeks.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, said “Rise of Skywalker” could only be painted by others as a disappointment because of the franchise’s and the studio’s extraordinary track record. The film will likely become Disney’s seventh $1 billion release of the year (a record) and give the studio seven of the top 10 films of the year.

“It's time to devote a lot of attention to the streaming environment for ‘Star Wars’ and then come back with a vengeance,” said Dergarabedian." There's a lot of lessons to be learned and certainly from this latest installment."

'STAR WARS' A LOOK BACK AT THE FRANCHISE BEFORE 'THE RISE OF SKYWALKER'

“Rise of Skywalker” helped improve the shortfall at the box office compared to last year, but ticket sales are still running 4.6% behind 2018, according to Comscore.

Below find estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.

1. "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," $175.5 million ($198 million international).

2. “Jumanji: The Next Level,” $26.1 million ($32.6 million international).

3. “Frozen 2,” $12.3 million ($31.6 million international).

4. “Cats,” $6.5 million ($4.4 million international).

5. “Knives Out,” $6.1 million.

6. “Bombshell,” $5.1 million.

7. “Richard Jewell,” $2.6 million.

8. “Queen & Slim,” $1.9 million.

9. “Black Christmas,” $1.8 million.

10. “Ford v Ferrari,” $1.8 million.

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2019-12-23 12:56:51Z
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Eddie Murphy returns to Saturday Night Live after 35 years - CNN

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2019-12-23 12:53:36Z
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Pete Wentz Pleased with 'Rise of Skywalker,' Says We're 'Star Wars' Spoiled - TMZ

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2019-12-23 08:50:00Z
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Cats is being patched with ‘improved visual effects’ - The Verge

Theaters are receiving a new version of Cats with “some improved visual effects,” just days after it premiered to dismal reviews. The update to the CGI-heavy movie was available to download on Sunday night, with hard drives otherwise ready to ship by Tuesday, according to a memo reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter. The change was requested by the film’s director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables, The King’s Speech), according to THR.

Hooper admitted to finishing the film just a day before its Friday premiere after working on it for “36 hours in a row.” The last-minute tweaks left room for mistakes, apparently, like Judy Dench’s human hand slipping through unnoticed.

The exact improvements haven’t been detailed. Hooper’s been updating the visuals ever since the first trailer startled audiences with “digital fur technology” that transformed the likes of Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, and Jennifer Hudson into bipedal cats.

Changes to films already in theaters are extremely rare, but they do happen. Vanity Fair lists a few examples, including The Shining which Stanley Kubrick reportedly re-cut to trim the ending shortly after it premiered. However, that was pre-digital, making it a much more costly affair to swap out the old reels on a national or international scale. Let’s hope the advent of digital distribution doesn’t usher in an era of nearly-complete film releases akin to nearly-complete software releases like iOS 13.

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2019-12-23 08:22:46Z
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Bill Cosby's Publicist Calls Eddie Murphy a “Hollywood Slave” for Making Fun of Him on Saturday Night Live - Slate Magazine

Bill Cosby and Andrew Wyatt, dressed in suits, in a courthouse hallway. Both men look unhappy.

Bill Cosby and spokesperson Andrew Wyatt at Cosby’s sentencing in Sept. of 2018.

Pool/Getty Images

Eddie Murphy made a triumphant return to Saturday Night Live last night, but at least one person wasn’t laughing. That sounds like bad news, but the person in question makes a living as a spokesperson for disgraced comedian Bill Cosby, who is currently serving a three to 10 year prison sentence after being convicted of three counts of aggravated indecent assault last spring, so maybe it’s okay. At issue was this joke Murphy told about Cosby during his monologue:

My kids are actually pretty much my whole life now. And you know what—if you told me thirty years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home, you know, house dad, and Bill Cosby would be in jail? Even I would have taken that bet. Who is America’s dad now?

That’s extremely mild, as jokes about Bill Cosby go, but apparently it wasn’t mild enough for Andrew Wyatt, who posted a statement on Cosby’s official Instagram page accusing Murphy of being a “Hollywood Slave.” Wyatt also observed that “Stepin Fetchit plus cooning equals the destruction of Black Men in Hollywood,” although it’s not clear exactly which part of Murphy’s observation about the vagaries of fortune and Cosby’s downfall counts as “Stepin Fetchit plus cooning.” Here’s the post:

Wyatt’s comments are far from the first time Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby have been mad at each other. In his 1987 standup special Raw, Murphy recounted a story about Cosby calling him to chastise him for cursing in his act:

In 2007, Cosby denied Murphy’s account of their conversation, saying that he’d actually called Murphy to discourage him from bragging about how much money he was making:

Eddie is a liar. And Malcolm-Jamal Warner was in that room and heard me talk to Eddie on the telephone. And Malcolm knows that is not what I said to him. … this is a very nasty, nasty liar. Period. 

The first public accusations against Cosby were in January of 2005, although they quickly faded from public consciousness until Tom Scocca assembled them all in one place at Gawker in February of 2014. Hannibal Burress’ Cosby routine was that October, and New York Magazine’s celebrated cover story about Cosby’s accusers wasn’t until the summer of 2015. So when Murphy was asked to play Cosby on the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary special in February of 2015, the Cosby story was still unfolding. Murphy declined to revive his impersonation—Kenan Thompson played Cosby that night—a decision he explained to the Washington Post that October, saying that “the sketch that Norm [Macdonald] wrote was hysterical,” but:

It’s horrible. There’s nothing funny about it. If you get up there and crack jokes about him, you’re just hurting people. You’re hurting him. You’re hurting his accusers. I was like, “Hey, I’m coming back to SNL for the anniversary, I’m not turning my moment on the show into this other thing.”

Shortly after the special aired, Cosby publicly thanked Murphy for not playing him, telling NBC News, “I am very appreciative of Eddie and I applaud his actions.” Presumably Cosby wasn’t applauding when Murphy received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor about a week after his interview with the Washington Post. In his first public stand-up set in 28 years, Murphy revived his Cosby impression, asking if the Kennedy Center had asked Cosby, a prior recipient, to return his award. (In 2018, Cosby’s award was rescinded.) Here’s Murphy’s acceptance speech:

Whatever career advice Cosby actually gave Murphy back in the 1980s, he didn’t offer any feedback on Murphy’s Mark Twain Award speech at the time. Now we finally know how he feels about it. Thanks for keeping us up-to-date, Bill Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt!

Here are Andrew Wyatt’s comments about Eddie Murphy’s Saturday Night Live appearance.

Bill Cosby’s publicist, Andrew Wyatt, responds to Eddie Murphy’s SNL Monologue: “Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in I Spy and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment industry, so that blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell [sic], Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come. It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decision; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave. Stepin Fetchit plus cooning equals the destruction of Black Men in Hollywood. Remember, Mr. Murphy, that Bill Cosby became legendary because he used comedy to humanize all races, religions, and genders; but your attacking Mr. Cosby helps you embark on just becoming click bait. Hopefully, you will be amenable to having a meeting of the minds conversation, in order to discuss how we can use our collective platforms to enhance Black people rather than bringing all of us down together.” #NotFunnySNL #SNL #FarFromFinished #FreeBillCosby #Bill Cosby

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2019-12-23 05:44:00Z
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Minggu, 22 Desember 2019

Bill Cosby Slams Eddie Murphy's 'SNL' Joke, Calls Him 'Hollywood Slave' - TMZ

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2019-12-23 02:16:00Z
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Rise of Skywalker opening weekend box office falls short of Force Awakens and Last Jedi - Polygon

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s opening weekend will land south of both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, according to domestic box office estimates Disney sent out this morning.

The Rise of Skywalker’s first weekend pulled in $175.5 million in North America, $90 million of that from the Thursday night early-bird showings and then Friday’s full premiere. Though it’s an estimated total, $175 million is still short of the top 10 among domestic opening weekends all time, behind 2016’s Captain America: Civil War.

It’s also not in the same tax bracket as Skywalker’s trilogy predecessors — The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both took more than $200 million in their debut weekends, good for third and fourth in that (domestic) category, all time. At this point, the opening weekend top 10 is largely an intramural competition, with Disney films accounting for 13 of the top 14, and six of those in the last two years.

But $175.5 million still makes The Rise of Skywalker the third-highest grossing Star Wars movie after its first weekend in the United States, comfortably in front of Revenge of the Sith, which earned $108.4 million from its 2005 debut.

Internationally, The Rise of Skywalker added $198 million to its gross (for $373.5 million worldwide), helped by $26.8 million and $12.1 million from same-day premieres in the United Kingdom and China, respectively. By comparison, The Force Awakens scored almost $500 million ($494 million to be precise) in its first weekend worldwide, while The Last Jedi took in $437.5 million. Notably, China waited about a month after both movies’ launch date before they premiered in that country.

Disney started out the weekend by tamping down industry-watchers’ expectations, offering a $160 million estimate for The Rise of Skywalker’s domestic box office even as other third parties projected $200 million or more.

The comparatively depressed box office haul could reflect any number of audience trends, ranging from fatigue with the 42-year-old franchise; last year’s underwhelming Solo: A Star Wars Story ($148 million opening weekend worldwide, $84.4 million U.S.) ; a critically tepid, if not thumbs-down, response to director J.J. Abrams’ vision for the franchise; or the querulous chatter of a divided fan base on social media.

Rotten Tomatoes currently gives The Rise of Skywalker a 54% rating among critics (meaning percent of positive reviews), which is low enough to get the green splat icon. Moviegoers, however, give it an 86% (meaning ticket buyers who gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, or more). Metacritic’s aggregation of 59 scored reviews also lands The Rise of Skywalker at a 54; Metacritic readers rate it a 50, evenly dividing more than 1,000 user reviews between positive and negative.

“There’s certainly a palpable sense throughout The Rise of Skywalker that the creators are trying to revisit and pay off every satisfying battle and memorable moment from Skywalker Saga history all at once,” says our spoiler-free review. However, “the film feels clumsy, hurried, and above all, like an admission of creative defeat.”

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2019-12-22 16:33:22Z
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