Jake Plunkett, the director behind some of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s most iconic sketches, has landed his first commercialmaking home, joining the roster of bicoastal Good Company. The New Jersey native has spent the past six years at The Late Show, mostly losing Emmys to John Oliver, except for the one fluke year where he actually won.
Plunkett’s backstory makes no sense and makes perfect sense. He was working as a dancing waiter at a Jimmy Buffet-themed restaurant in Wayne, NJ when he had an epiphany that his true calling was not shimmying his way towards customers with the burger-of-the-day, but rather on a TV set. Plunkett cold-called MTV and asked if they were hiring. Fatefully, they offered him a position as an executive assistant. There he got the opportunity to hone his craft and learn the ropes, eventually working his way up to development executive where he stayed for five years.
After MTV, came a very short gig at a sports comedy show with Regis Philbin. It was among the lowest rated shows of the year. After allowing himself a 10-minute pity party, Plunkett decided to manifest himself a job at 30 Rock, where he worked around-the-clock at Saturday Night Live for two years. Both his burning ambition to be a director and his wife’s aggressive divorce threats redirected him to direct for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore and for Robert Smigel’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Hulu special.
After his long-term relationship with a rubber rottweiler puppet was over, Plunkett landed at The Late Show where he’s directed and produced all of their major pre-taped sketches for the past six years. “Watching Colbert examine Paul Rudd’s hind legs to determine if he was best in show was the moment I knew Jake could tell a story in thirty seconds,” said Good Co EP Raquel Balsam referring to his “Sexiest Man Alive” sketch. “I immediately connected with Jake and we started to strategize about him jumping into our side of storytelling.”
Shortly thereafter, Plunkett found himself on set with a bunch of raccoons attempting to get them to recycle for Mentos new paperboard gum bottles via agency Highdive. “I’m thrilled to be starting my journey in this advertising space with Good Company,” commented Plunkett. “The massive range of work that Good Co produces at such a high level, as well as the range of services their in-house studio offers really appeals to me as a budding filmmaker. I look forward to the day I get to work with real life human actors, although for now the raccoons are taking my direction quite nicely. Well, except for Daisy.”
“The Wild Robot” Tops Weekend Box Office, “Megalopolis” Fizzles
Francis Ford Coppola's decades-in-the-making, self-financed epic "Megalopolis" flopped with moviegoers, while the acclaimed DreamWorks Animation family film "The Wild Robot" soared to No. 1 at the weekend box office.
"The Wild Robot," Chris Sanders' adaptation of Peter Brown's bestseller, outperformed expectations to launch with $35 million in ticket sales in U.S. and Canada theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. "Wild Robot" was poised to do well after critics raved about the story of a shipwrecked robot who raises an orphan gosling. Audiences agreed, giving the film an A CinemaScore. "Wild Robot" is likely set up a long and lucrative run for the Universal Pictures release.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore, predicts "The Wild Robot" "may take a page from the 'Elemental' playbook by opening to respectable box office and then looking toward long-term playability." Pixar's "Elemental," which like "The Wild Robot" wasn't a sequel, debuted with a modest $30 million but went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide.
Family movies, led by the year's biggest hit in "Inside Out 2," have particularly powered the box office this year. David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, said the genre should reach $6 billion worldwide in 2024 — which, he noted, "is back to pre-pandemic levels."
"Megalopolis," Coppola's vision of a Roman epic set in modern-day New York, was never expected to perform close to that level. But the film's $4 million debut was still sobering for a movie that Coppola bankrolled himself for $120 million. Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, critics have been mixed on Coppola's first film in 13 years. Audiences gave in a D+... Read More