It was another nail-biting weekend where no one was sure whether a IATSE strike might be averted before today’s deadline, but IATSE President Matthew Loeb and AMPTP President Carol Lombardini seemed to work things out for a tentative three-year Basic Agreement, which now has to go to a membership vote to be ratified. Don’t forget to check out Mark London Williams‘ Strike Alert column on Tuesday to read his opinions on how the strike was resolved. In other words, this matter isn’t over just yet.
On Friday, the beleaguered Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) set the key dates for its 2021 Golden Globes awards, which many in the industry didn’t think were happening after NBC balked at airing the ceremony after hundreds of publicists and studios spoke out against the HFPA for corruption and lack of diversity.
Submissions for the 2021 Golden Globes open today and the nominations will be announced on Monday, December 13 with the presentation ceremony for the Golden Globes taking place on January 9, 2022. No network partner or details were released about how and where the ceremony will take place or where they’ll air.
One party that wasn’t happy about the Golden Globes taking those dates was Critics Choice Association CEO Joey Berlin, because the Critics Choice Awards had already grabbed January 9 for the date to present its own awards. (Full transparency: I’m a member of the CCA.) Berlin released a statement shortly after the HFPA’s announcement, calling the HFPA’s choice of dates to be a “desperate move by the HFPA to try and undercut the Critics Choice Awards and the tremendous support we are receiving from all the major studios, networks and streamers is.” But he also said that it was “really good for us!” Berlin reminded of the CCA’s 500 legitimate critics and journalists in the group without the issues faced by the HFPA, and added, “We do feel bad for those HFPA members who are legitimate members of the foreign press and are suffering from the fact that so many companies have chosen to stop working with them.”
Right now, both ceremonies seem to be going ahead on the same date and presumably same time, so it might be up to the world at large which awards they’ll watch.
Director Andy Muschietti (It) took to his Instagram to make two posts proclaiming that filming has finished on Warner Bros‘ 2022 superhero movie, The Flash, and thanking his cast and crew. We’ll have some more about this movie and other DC movies below.
Not to be outdone, Dwayne Johnson, star of Warners’ Black Adam movie, also set for release in 2022, posted some behind-the-scenes video from his movie.
Ladies & gents…
Enjoy your WORLD EXCLUSIVE first look⚡️He is ruthless.
He is unstoppable.
He is the reason the hierarchy of power in the DC UNIVERSE is about to change.He is #BLACKADAM
The Man in Black has come around…#DCFanDome@SevenBucksProd@flynnpictureco pic.twitter.com/nv4oRmaLlq
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) October 16, 2021
If all that DC adoration might seem odd, you should know that on Saturday, WarnerMedia threw a fan event called “DC Fandome,” which helped to preview some of the company’s many Warner Bros. and HBO Max properties based on the characters from DC Comics. On the news side of things, the event announced that the HBO Max superhero series, Doom Patrol, would be getting a 4th season, while Titans will also be getting a 4th season on the streamer. It also announced that the EPIX series, Pennyworth (as in Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s trusty butler), would be getting a third season but it would also be moving to HBO Max.
James Gunn‘s The Suicide Squad spin-off series, Peacemaker, starring Jon Cena in the title role, also got the preview treatment at Fandome, showing the very first footage (which you can see below) and announcing that it will hit HBO Max on Jan. 13, 2022. Besides Cena, the series also stars Danielle Brooks as Adebayo, Freddie Stroma as Vigilante, Jennifer Holland as Harcourt, Steve Agee as Economos, Chukwudi Iwuji as Murn, and Robert Patrick as Auggie Smith. You can see the first teaser trailer for the show below:
In other comic-based news, FX announced that its FX on Hulu series, Y the Last Man, which actually is also based on a DC Comics property, this one being the comics by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, will only be getting a single season and was cancelled. Co-creator Vaigh Vaughan took to Insta to thank the cast and crew of the series.
A far more questionable action hero is actor Mel Gibson, and on Friday, we missed the news that the Aussie actor will be starring in the thriller, Hot Seat, which will begin production in New Mexico starting November 1. Lionsgate imprint, Grindstone Entertainment, will be handling North American distribution, while Highland Film Group will handle foreign sales. James Cullen Bressack is directing, as he finishes post on his Bruce Willis movie, Fortress. Randall Emmett and George Furla are producing Hot Seat with Bressack based on a story by Leon Langford & Collin Watts. Gary Raskin and Alastair Burlingham are exec. producers and co-financing. The tagline for Hot Seat is “an ex-hacker is forced to break into high-level banking institutions by an anonymous man who planted a bomb under his chair at his office. Gibson plays the man who must try to penetrate the booby-trapped building to get the young man off the hot seat.”
This weekend’s box office was all about David Gordon Green‘s horror sequel Halloween Kills, which slammed into 3,705 nationwide on Friday after previews on Thursday night that brought in close to $4.9 million. Universal Pictures also decided to release the movie day-and-date on its Peacock streamer network, which has not gone well for other studios, most notably Warner Bros. Still, the movie was able to take in an estimated $50.4 million or $13,589 per theater. That’s down considerably from the $76.2 million-plus opening of Green’s first movie in 2018, although presumably, Universal and Blumhouse will continue with the planned Halloween Ends, the third chapter in the trilogy.
Daniel Craig‘s final 007 movie, No Time to Die, dropped to second place with $24.3 million, down 56% from its opening weekend, which was a bigger drop than most of Craig’s other James Bond movies. It has grossed $99.5 million to date, which means it will be joining the $100 million club today. The action movie shared in distribution by MGM Pictures with Universal is nearing $450 million globally with $54 million added this weekend from 72 international markets.
Sony Pictures‘ Venom: Let There Be Carnage dropped to third place with $16.5 million (down 48%) to bring its own total to $168.1 million in three weeks. Venom also expanded its overseas profile to 44 markets where it took in $62.3 million to make its global total $284 million so far. The Tom Hardy starrer is outpacing many other blockbusters overseas, some by a large margin.
The other new movie was Sir Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel, starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, and Ben Affleck, but despite that illustrious pedigree, it bombed with only $4.8 million in 3,065 theaters or about $1,572 per site. That was only enough to take fifth place behind UA Releasing‘s The Addams Family II
As mentioned above, DC Fandome took place on Saturday, and it gave fans of DC Comics’ movies and shows a chance to get a first look at what’s to come. Excitement was created especially by the chance to see a first trailer for Matt Reeves‘ The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight. It was prefaced by Reeves saying it would be more grounded and less fantasy-based than some of DC’s other movies like Shazam!, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. The Batman is scheduled to be released on March 5, 2022, and like many of Warners’ 2022 releases, it’s said to be “only in theaters.”
Fandom also gave us our very first looks at Dwayne Johnson as Black Adam and Ezra Miller as The Flash, although Warners didn’t upload official teaser trailers for either, so we can only share a few trailers from other sites (until they’re taken down).
Maybe comic books aren’t as lofty a source material as, say, Shakespeare, and with that in mind, Apple released a short teaser trailer for Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, which according to our critics J. Don Birnam, could be an awards player.
