A substitution and an addition mark the field of directors reported on last week (SHOOT, 11/7, p. 1) as participating in this year’s series of "Dreams" short films, presented by Sony and Young & Rubicam, New York. Tim Godsall of Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles, replaces Biscuit founding partner, director Noam Murro, who had to bow out after garnering his first feature film, The Ring 2. Meanwhile, director Jonathan Darby, who recently joined bicoastal Original Film, has been added to the "Dreams" lineup, which now consists of 10 directors, each set to create and helm a short captured on a Sony 24p HD camera….Director Frank Todaro has agreed to come aboard bicoastal Moxie Pictures for exclusive worldwide representation. He will be wrapping his project commitments with his longtime roost, bicoastal/international @radical.media, through the end of the year. Todaro will be reunited at Moxie with its partner/executive producer Robert Fernandez, who came over from @radical earlier this year….Director Chris Robinson has joined bicoastal HSI Productions for commercials and music videos. He was previously with bicoastal/international Partizan….Director Michele Civetta, formerly of bicoastal HKM Productions, has joined Los Angeles-headquartered RAW/ Progressive Films.…Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago, has signed director Andrew Mudge, who earlier this year was the winner of the second annual Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival on the strength of his branded short, P.T. Johansen Field Guide….Piyush Pandey, group president and national creative director of Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, India, has been appointed jury president of the 2004 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival’s Film and Press & Outdoor juries. Additionally, Robert M. Greenberg, chairman and chief creative officer of R/GA, New York, has been named Cannes Cyber Lions jury president….Francesca Cohn has been named director of strategic development for Santa Monica-headquartered Ascent Media Creative Services Group. She formerly served as VP, interactive/direct/broadcast at Team One Advertising, El Segundo, Calif., and prior to that was a senior producer at Chiat/Day (now TBWA/ Chiat/Day), Los Angeles.…Bicoastal The Joneses has signed director Gil Cope and the helming team The Goetz Brothers…. All Day Buffet, the year-old New York-based production boutique launched by executive producer Ronan Nagle, director Ben Starkman and editor JJ Lask, has signed comedy director Abe Spear….Audio mixer Loren Silber is leaving POP Sound. He is partnering in a new audio shop, Lime, Santa Monica, with mixer Mark Meyuhaus and business manager/producer Bruce Horwitz….Suzanne Wladar has joined Slingshot Edit and Post, New York, as executive producer. She was formerly executive producer at wild(child) editorial, New York….Partner/executive producer Frank Nitty, partner/producer Jimmy Douglass and creative director Cheroki Pigram have opened The Camp, an urban music production company for advertising and industrials in New York….Jenny Gadd, formerly a senior producer at Fallon’s New York office, has joined bicoastal/international Believe Media as exec producer of its New York office….
“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