Director/cameraman Craig Henderson has come aboard Area 51 Films, Santa Monica. His last spot affiliation was Stiefel+Company, but when that shop was acquired by bicoastal/international @radical.media last September, he elected to explore his options…..Director Brandon Dickerson has joined X-Ray Productions, bicoastal and Chicago. He was previously represented by kaboom!, San Francisco….Director David Popescu has signed with bicoastal production company Zooma Zooma. A comedy specialist, Popescu receives his first stateside representation via Zooma Zooma. Popescu is repped in Canada by Sparks Productions, Toronto….Stefan Sonnenfeld is staying on as president/managing director of Company 3, which has operations in Santa Monica and New York. Parent company Ascent Media Group announced that Sonnenfeld, a Santa Monica-based colorist, has signed a long-term renewal of his contract with the shop.….Andy Solomon has come on board as head of production at New York-based music/sound design house Tonal….3-D artist Tony Tabtong has left Curious Pictures, New York, and joined hybrid postproduction/design/graphics firm, Charlex, New York, as its new senior character animator…Alexis Wiscomb has joined Post Factory, New York, as senior producer. Wiscomb comes over from Final Cut, New York, where she was a producer….Industry vets Andrea Aron and Sandy Beladino have launched Santa Monica-based commercial online/compositing studio Vendetta Post. The new venture’s roster includes artists/editors James Bygrave and Pete Mayor. The formation of the shop marks a reunion for Aron, Beladino, Bygrave and Mayor who formerly worked at The Finish Line, Santa Monica. Beladino was exec producer at The Finish Line, while Aron served as a producer/post supervisor…GTN Travelling Pictures, the visual effects division of production/postproduction facility GTN Inc., Oak Park, Mich., has hired visual effects artist Michael Orlando. Most recently, Orlando was a CGI artist at Industrial Light+ Magic, San Rafael, Calif….Los Angeles-based label Vagrant Records has launched Vagrant Entertainment, a creative, production and development subsidiary serving the advertising and entertainment sectors. Ad/promo industry veteran Andrew Kobliska has been named to head the new venture….
“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