The Story Companies, headquartered in Chicago, has signed a pair of directors for exclusive national representation in commercials: Jamie Most and Brian Johnson. Most is best known for his tenure as creative director of NBA Entertainment, where he directed more than two dozen commercials for the pro basketball league and its charitable endeavors. Johnson comes over from The Joneses, New York….Animation director Eli Balser has signed a national spot representation agreement with New York-based design/computer animation/visual effects house Click 3X….San Diego agency matthews/mark has changed its name to Matthews|Evans|Albertazzi, with the arrival of partner/creative director Craig Evans, who was formerly with Big Bang Idea Engineering, San Diego and Seattle. Other agency principals are CEO Jim Matthews and creative director Mark Albertazzi….Meanwhile creative director Michael Mark, who left matthews/mark in January, has formed ad agency NYCA, Encinitas, Calif….HUM Music+Sound Design has launched Grasshopper, a division that offers music and sound design solutions for less than $10,000. Producer Chanel Scott heads up the new division, which has a roster of four composers/sound designers: Rob Lopez, Dan Hart, Cliff Magreta and Kyle Mullarky….stimmüng, Santa Monica, has made inroads into the New York market with the signing of the mono-monikered composer Bix….Former Splash Design, New York, creative director/visual effects supervisor, Andy Milkis and producer Kelley McDermott have joined forces to form TLI Design & Visual Effects. TLI has reached an agreement with edit/graphic design facility, Creative Bubble, New York, and will operate out of the Creative Bubble offices.…Set to succeed Milkis as creative director at visual effects/design house Splash is Roi Werner, who will start in his new position on Aug. 1….
“Mickey 17” Tops Weekend Box Office, But Profitability Is A Long Way Off
"Parasite" filmmaker Bong Joon Ho's original science fiction film "Mickey 17" opened in first place on the North American box office charts. According to studio estimates Sunday, the Robert Pattinson-led film earned $19.1 million in its first weekend in theaters, which was enough to dethrone "Captain America: Brave New World" after a three-week reign.
Overseas, "Mickey 17" has already made $34.2 million, bringing its worldwide total to $53.3 million. But profitability for the film is a long way off: It cost a reported $118 million to produce, which does not account for millions spent on marketing and promotion.
A week following the Oscars, where "Anora" filmmaker Sean Baker made an impassioned speech about the importance of the theatrical experience – for filmmakers to keep making movies for the big screens, for distributors to focus on theatrical releases and for audiences to keep going – "Mickey 17" is perhaps the perfect representation of this moment in the business, or at least an interesting case study. It's an original film from an Oscar-winning director led by a big star that was afforded a blockbuster budget and given a robust theatrical release by Warner Bros., one of the few major studios remaining. But despite all of that, and reviews that were mostly positive (79% on RottenTomatoes), audiences did not treat it as an event movie, and it may ultimately struggle to break even.
Originally set for release in March 2024, Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning "Parasite" faced several delays, which he has attributed to extenuating circumstances around the Hollywood strikes. Based on the novel "Mickey7" by Edward Ashton, Pattinson plays an expendable employee who dies on missions and is re-printed time and time again. Steven... Read More