Feature filmmaker Peter Sollett, who’s gained acclaim for his Raising Victor Vargas, is coming aboard bicoastal Moxie Pictures for exclusive representation as a spot director….Good Films, New York, has signed director Paul Riccio. He had been with Czar Films, New York….Production house veteran Bob Ramos has been named VP/executive producer of Rhinoceros Editorial, New York. Ramos most recently served as exec producer at production house SFI, Long Island City, N.Y. He is best known for his long tenure at the since closed OneSuch Films, where he was president/co-founder….Director/designer Michel Suissa and his New York company Parallax One have linked with Washington Square Films, New York. As part of the strategic alliance, Washington Square will exclusively rep Suissa as a director, and also provide support for design and image-driven projects taken on by Parallax One….Joshua Touber recently resigned from his position as Santa Monica-based COO of Ascent Media Creative Services. He intends to focus his attention on expanding Virtuosity, a Los Angeles-based company that he co-founded with Ascent Media Creative Services chairman Larry Chernoff in the mid-1990s. Virtuosity provides virtual assistants like Wildfire, a speech-activated tool that performs the basic functions of a personal assistant or secretary. Touber also reported that he is in the early stages of launching a company that will focus on consulting and on R&D projects….Los Angeles-based Colibri Films has signed director Andy Fogwill, who’s best known for his work in the Hispanic market….Director Daniel Gruener, who had been working through Mia Films’ Mexico City office, has signed with Mia Films, Miami Beach, for U.S. spot representation….Andy McKenna has joined digital visual effects studio Radium, Santa Monica and San Francisco, as senior compositor. He comes over from GMD, Sydney, where he was a visual effects designer/compositor. While there, he worked on such films as Rabbit Proof Fence, The Quiet American and The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring….Colorist Scott Klein has joined R!OT Santa Monica….The One Club has named Mini USA and Nike as advertisers of the year. Special One Show Pencils will be presented to Mini USA at The One Show and to Nike at The One Show Interactive Awards….
“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