Director Paul Street has linked with bicoastal/international Believe Media for U.S. commercial representation. Street, who has not had a stateside spot roost for the past year-plus, maintains his own company, Streetlight Films, London, and Brisbane, Australia. The director’s prior affiliations include stints at Crossroads Films, bicoastal and Chicago, and Los Angeles-headquartered A Band Apart Commercials. At press time, Street was in New Zealand helming a BMW campaign for Fallon, Minneapolis….Director Tom DeNolf has inked a deal with Shadow Pictures, New York, for spot representation….Smythe & Company, New York, has signed noted Brazilian composer/saxophone and flute player Zé Luis for spotwork….Industry veteran Joshua Touber, who most recently served as COO of Ascent Media Creative Services, is launching Touber Media Consulting, Los Angeles. He also continues as a principal in Los Angeles-based Virtuosity….Director Mike Overbeck has signed with San Francisco-based animation studio Wild Brain….Hal Goodtree has joined New York-headquartered production shop This Is TV as executive producer. Directors Lalli Jonsson, Wayne Maule, Denni Karlsson and Darren Ashton have also come onboard, joining This Is TV owner/director Conrad Fink for spotwork….Harvey Marco has been named creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi LA, Torrance, Calif., where he will work closely with chief creative officer Steve Rabosky. Marco formerly served as a creative director at Fallon, Minneapolis….Atlanta-based Matthew Bunting has been promoted to VP/executive producer of Turner Network Television (TNT) on-air creative. Previously, he was director of entertainment promotion at the TNT marketing division where, most recently, he directed and produced Hard Starter, one of two TNT original "mini dramas"—short branded films that screened in theaters this summer. Bunting was a consultant on the second TNT branded film, The Drop, which was written and directed by Glen Owen of Santa Monica-based Storyville Pictures (SHOOT, 6/20, p. 7)….
“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