Director Ago Panini has come aboard bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures. His former U.S. roost was bicoastal Moxie Pictures….The design/directing duo known as Logan (Alexei Tylevich and Ben Conrad) has signed with bicoastal Anonymous Content….Director Mat Humphrey, who continues on staff at Filmgraphics, Sydney, has secured U.S. representation, coming aboard the roster of bicoastal Reactor Films….Director Lior Har-Lev has joined Santa Monica-based Area 51 Films…. Director Eddy Chu has come aboard Highway 61, New York. He had been with Venice, Calif.-based Backyard Productions…. Director/cameraman Serge Roman and ex-super model/actor turned director Magdalena have teamed to form a helming duo known as Serge y Magdalena. The twosome is repped in the U.S. by Metro Pictures, Marina del Rey, Calif…. Damian Stevens, formerly an executive producer at Moxie Pictures, has joined Hollywood-based JGF in the same capacity. Prior to Moxie, he was on the agency side as a senior producer at Fallon’s Southern California office. Also coming aboard JGF is Lilly LaBonge as staff executive producer/line producer… Editor Tom Scherma, formerly of Mad River Post, New York, has joined bicoastal Cosmo Street….Mary-Joy Lu has been promoted to head of production at Guava, New York. Lu—who came aboard Guava with her husband, visual effects artist Alex Catchpoole last summer—had been serving as visual effects producer at the visual effects/design boutique….Easyway Editorial, Dallas, has added editors Fernando Villena, George Kelly, Brad Briggs and Grant Pye….Nice Shoes, New York, has added Inferno artist Aron Baxter to its roster of artisans. He comes over from Condor Post Production, London, where he spent over five years as an Inferno artist….Los Angeles-based branding entertainment company 3 Ring Circus has brought veteran designer Maziar Majd on staff as creative director. Majd, a former senior designer/art director at Belief, Los Angeles, will work closely with creative director Ron Crabb. 3 Ring Circus has also entered into relationships with freelance designers/directors Nick Scott, Arne Type and Inka Kardys, who are all based in Europe. 3 Ring Circus is repping them exclusively worldwide, except for certain European markets where they already have representation….
“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