We”re counting the box office again today in Hollywood. Another weekend, another sequel franchise dream burned to ashes. But the showbiz must go on!
Here”s your daily bullet points. Everything you need to know to survive entertainment for the next 24 hours.
• Who weeps for a Foul Mouthed Bear?
“Jurassic World” got a break from box office reporters this week, as another whipping bear stepped up on the stage. In the world of critical, Hollywood trade press-middlebrow-desperately striving for highbrow posturing, “Ted 2” stands at the polar opposite extreme of The Best Pixar Movie since the Civil War, “Inside Out.” One can hear the cackles break off the pages as they point out 2 was running 40 percent behind the Ur-Ted”s opening weekend.
The most damning brilliantly (unintentionally?) deadpan obituary was in Deadline”s write up, which noted, “Back in June 2012, moviegoers cited the following reasons for buying tickets to Ted: It was a bawdy comedy not to mention they showed a strong interest inactor Mark Wahlberg, actress Mila Kunis and director Seth MacFarlane. This time, audiences” primary reason for attending Ted 2 was because they wanted to watch a raunchy comedy.”
How dare they. How. dare. they.
• The Comedy Catch 22
Variety is first out of the gate proclaiming the death of the R-rated comedy. (Hear that Apatow/Trainwreck! Don”t even bother!) As evidence they site the failure of “Ted” as well as the poor performance of “Entourage.” (Apparently Variety has access to a secret studio memo indicating that “Entourage” was a comedy.)
The problem with comedy, the piece points out, is “The difficulty is that unlike other genres, novelty is a key selling point for comedies. That makes them unusually execution dependent.
'When a comedy is a sensation, it”s normally a picture that no one saw coming,' said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with Rentrak. 'R-rated, raunchy comedies are one of the few areas where originality is king.””
It”s the eternal paradox that has tormented studio executives since the dawn of entertainment: this business would be a snap if you could just feed audiences the same thing over and over. It”s like the bastards want a totally different movie every time they go to a theater. Think, from the executives perspective, of the unfairness of it all.
You wouldn”t expect General Mills executives to reinvent cereal every time you open a Captain Crunch box, would you?
• Guess who”s back! Movies!
Cancel that last 8 years of stories about the disappearing movie audience. All it took was an Avengers sequel and some dinosaurs and we get to keep movies! For at least one more year.
• Amy Schumer declares she is not a racist.
But Seth MacFarlane still might be.
Who is keeping the roster? Should we just boycott everybody until Twitter tells us someone is okay?
• The Comic-Con Swag Bag of 2015 est arrive!
It”s the announcement that sets the stage for all to come. For the 11 months before the annual San Diego gathering, America”s nerds sit, poised on the precipice, desperate to know whether their Mr. Freeze costume and favorite cargo shorts are going to be clashing with the giant mylar bags they to have looped over their shoulders to haul away the mountains of free Darth Maul beer cozies they are going to vacuum up from the convention floor. Today, the suspense is over. Let the color coordinating begin.
Warner Brothers in partnership with the convention announced the official tie-in bags they will be producing, in an unprecedented 13 different designs. The announcement reads, “For the sixth year in a row, there will be multiple options (13 to be exact) to stash and store your Comic-Con International swag in one convenient, wearable accessory.”
The release goes on to note that “more than 130,000” bags will be handed out during the confab.
If you want to do the math there, each one of these giant bags holds 178 t-shirts, posters and action figures. 178 x 130,000 means a mountain of swag literally bigger than the gross national product of any three continents of the globe combined.
• Urgent action: Your help needed today!
On this Reddit discussion of what is the best movie cameo of all time there are five comments in support of Matt Damon in “Eurotrip” and only one for Ethel Merman in “Airplane.” Please give of yourself and don”t let your children grow up in a world where Matt Damon in “Eurotrip” is considered the best of anything.
• Maverick is as Maverick Does
Top Gun lives! To ride another wave of reboot rumors again. The Simpson-Bruckheimer Jet fighting ice ballet spectacular now stands as the only film from the 1980″s that has not been rebooted. So the masses are storming the gates demanding. The Top Gun reboot machine took a a quarter step forward this weekend when in an interview, the producer let slip, that they may be close to a script!
A script! You know what that means kids! Where”s there”s a script, there”s sure to be a rewrite! And where”s there”s a rewrite, there”s sure to be meetings with agents. And where there”s meetings with agents, there”s sure to be a Deadline story! So fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a wild ride. Collider quoted producer David Ellison:
“Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now. He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today. There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick.”
So there you have it. Top Gun, consider yourself officially, almost rebooted.
https://collider.com/top-gun-2-story-details-drone-warfare/
AROUND HITFIX:
• It”s Emmy time again. Yes, for real. So time to start brushing up for your snubs and surprises. Your greatest Emmys snubs of all time! Who holds the record?
https://www.hitfix.com/news/the-20-most-awful-emmy-snubs
• Alan Sepinwall”s Emmy dream ballot.
• Marvel”s upcoming Doctor Strange film given the choice between defending the Chinese and their 23,592 movie screens over their treatment of Tibet, and not doing that, went with not.
https://www.hitfix.com/harpy/doctor-strange-confirmed-to-be-side-stepping-that-thorny-tibet-problem
• American Film's Great Trilogy of Rainbow Songs; There have been three great songs in American film, all about rainbows. I took a look at our Rainbow journey and the lonely dreamers who guided us through it, and ask: where have you gone lonely dreamers?
• Good Wahlberg/Bad Wahlberg. Drew takes a look at the tale of two careers – in one actor!
https://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/mark-wahlberg-versus-mark-wahlberg-a-tale-of-two-actors
• Drew also looks at why some shows are bingable and some just aren”t.
THE LAST WORD, as ever goes to Louis Virtel, who in his Daily Snap salutes the news of the day with a review of all the things in the world that look like Donald Trump:
AND FINALLY:
• This record breaking Cool Pix zoom of the moon officially freaks me out. That thing really looks like its about to hit us. Are the authorities aware? Has anyone pitched this yet?