Roadside Attractions has taken domestic rights for To The End, the follow-up film from Rachel Lears (Knock Down The House), and set a Dec. 9 theatrical-only release date. The deal was announced by Co-Presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff. The film, which premiered at Sundance, covers three years of both hope and crisis leading to
Distribution
Widespread optimism months ago that domestic box office might readily return to pre-Covid levels has given way to a new sense of pragmatism about the movie business. This year’s tally will far surpass last year’s $4.5 billion haul, but it will certainly fall billions short of 2019’s $11.4 billion in receipts, and all bets are
Sony Pictures Classics has announced October-December release plans for The Return of Tanya Tucker; Salavatore: Shoemaker Of Dreams; The Son; Living; and Turn Every Page. Additionally, it said, One Fine Morning, written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve and starring Léa Seydoux, and Davy Chou’s Return To Seoul, which were both acquired out of Cannes, will
EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures International is forming a new partnership with Emirates-based Majid Al Futtaim Distribution which will see the latter release Universal movies in Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE) and Egypt. In Lebanon and Cyprus, Uni will retain its longstanding distribution relationship with Four Star Films. The new deal,
Two premiere screenings of rock documentary Freakscene: The Story Of Dinosaur JR grossed over $19K this weekend with a single Saturday show at iconic music venue The Opera House in Williamsburg, Brooklyn taking in north of $17K. Independent distributor Utopia worked with Murmrr, which produces live music events, and art shingle Mondo, which created a
What does the international box office and cinema landscape look like in an emerging post-pandemic world? That was the gist of an executive roundtable at CineEurope in Barcelona today. Among the key takeaways: the relationship between exhibition and distribution and a need for more collaboration in terms of reaching consumers. With so much content available
Here’s something no one saw coming at CinemaCon, unless you could decipher the three-hour block Sony reserved for its presentation: The studio surprised those who braved the mid-pandemic Las Vegas confab tonight with a screening of Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The pic hits theaters on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. In the follow-up to the classic 1984
Sony, which was last seen at CinemaCon in 2018, brought the confab back to post(ish)-pandemic life today. Its President of the Motion Picture Group, Josh Greenstein, took center stage and reiterated the Culver City lot’s “commitment to protecting and preserving the theatrical window.” That drew a great roar from the Caesar’s Palace Colosseum crowd. Despite
The Delta Variant, streaming wars and surging piracy loom large as CinemaCon launches Sunday at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the first in-person gathering of theaters owners and Hollywood studios since the pandemic struck 18-months ago. The virus has slashed registered attendees to circa 2,000 from 3,500 pre-pandemic, with a sizeable European contingent entirely shut
EXCLUSIVE: Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, the world’s second-biggest exhibition circuit and owner of Regal Cinemas, says he’s satisfied with this past weekend’s $80M domestic theatrical box office opening for Disney/Marvel’s Black Widow. But he also tells Deadline he remains “convinced” that with an exclusive theatrical window, “we could have brought in maybe $110M, maybe
It’s thrilling to watch Lionsgate make a run at the box office top spot with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a grown-up comedy. Not a kiddie fantasy, like Peter Rabbit 2 or Cruella. Not a Covid-era placeholder, like The War With Grandpa, or a streaming event, like Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But a rough, raucous, R-rated action
EXCLUSIVE: Universal executive Xavier Albert, who has been Managing Director for France since 2016, is taking on a dual-market role with the studio and will also become Managing Director for Italy. Albert will take over the MD Italy post from Richard Borg who is retiring in July after 30 years with the Universal Pictures International
Lionsgate has slated Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar for a February 12 release on premium video on demand, the latest concession to a theatrical marketplace upended by Covid-19. The comedy, which was set up nearly two years ago, had originally eyed a 2020 release. It pairs Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who
It was supposed to be a year when the playing field became even. After losing to Disney for four years in a row, with the Burbank studio setting an industry record in 2019 of $13.2 billion global box office, a new major studio was set to become the domestic king. “I think 2020 is going
What a great time not to be a movie marketer. Theaters half-closed, with COVID-19 again rising. Pipeline dried up. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asking, in a survey that was due last week, how the pandemic is affecting your craft. Or what’s left of it. But movie promoters on the whole are an
In response to MGM’s No Time to Die moving out of the Thanksgiving corridor to Easter weekend 2021, Cineworld, owner of U.S. Regal chain, is closing down 128 of its UK and Ireland cinemas as of next week. The Sunday Times in the UK teased the front page of their edition tonight, which had the news
Watching Wayne Wang’s Coming Home Again, set for a virtual release (online, but through individual theaters) by Outsider Pictures on Oct. 23, delivered a jolt. Like getting nicked by a live wire. The picture is so small–shot in just over three weeks on a micro-budget. So personal: The story is about a young Korean-American man
In or around 1976, I caught a forlorn moment near New York’s Bleecker St. It was early morning. The sun was just up. Two ragged guys were shuffling toward me on the sidewalk, when one offered the other a bottle in a bag. But the drink was declined. “I guess I lost my taste for
Talk about box-office drama. As the July 4 weekend unwinds, IFC’sThe Truth might be slugging it out with Homewrecker from Dark Star and The Outpost from Fathom for the honor of ranking somewhere in the 300s, near IFC’s own Wiener-Dog, among all-time Independence Day performers. (Who can say for sure, as release dates have become
Warner Bros has keyed up a re-release of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy in Hong Kong and Taiwan, ahead of the mid-July launch of the director’s latest epic, Tenet. The three films — Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises — will release over several weeks. The first rollout is in Taiwan
A group of 51 European film and audiovisual organizations and individual companies has released a call for action by EU and member state decision makers to safeguard the future of the sector in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The statement, see it in full below, says the industry requires “urgent financial support now and
France’s National Film Center, the CNC, has taken measures to relax the country’s notoriously strict windows policy during the coronavirus pandemic. A reduction from the traditional four-month delay between theatrical release and DVD or TVOD was earlier granted for all titles that were already in cinemas on March 14, while movies whose release was set
Last week, Illumination/Universal’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru stepped off of its global release which was previously set for late June in some offshore markets and for July 3 domestically. It has now been scheduled for July 2, 2021, taking the slot that belonged to Sing 2, which in turn is now headed to Christmas
Editors’ Note: With full acknowledgment of the big-picture implications of a pandemic that has already claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders, Deadline’s Coping With COVID-19 Crisis series is a forum for those in the entertainment space grappling with myriad consequences of seeing a great industry screech to a halt. The
Suddenly, 2020 is a year of imponderables. Will there be a Cannes Film Festival? Given the coronavirus-induced cancellation of SXSW, MipTV, and the AFI Life Achievement Gala, who knows? Is Marvel’s Black Widow the big spring-summer hit, now that No Time To Die is bumped to November? Maybe, if an April/May release still looks wise
“The impact in 2020 from Corvid-19 (coronavirus) on the motion picture business cannot be overstated,” a finance source recently told us. That’s as the closure of cinemas in China alone is approaching a loss of $2B to the global box office, while the disease has now seen spikes in Korea and Italy. What looked in
Deadline has learned that Jack Gordon, veteran MGM International Distribution President, passed away on Sunday, Feb. 16 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90. Gordon, born in Brooklyn, New York on March 13, 1929, was the son of Oscar winning American composer and lyricist, Mack Gordon, who had won Best Original Song for
Two and a half cheers for the Landmark Theatres in West Los Angeles. The parking escalators have been broken for weeks. Those purple and black staff outfits are a bit somber. And $15 dollars seems high for an hour and 35 minutes of Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice, as delightful as it is.