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“Wakanda Forever” made a very robust $67 million this weekend. That’s more than most of the movies on the 50 make in their whole runs.
But is it as popular as “Black Panther,” the original? In a word, no. “Wakanda Forever” fell 63% in its second weekend. “BP” dropped only 45% back in 2019.
The declines came every day this week, and they will follow this week, even with Thanksgiving. The trend would suggest that most people who wanted to see “Wakanda” have seen it. Now it’s time for stragglers and second timers.
But the energy that propelled “Black Panther” to $700 million in the US doesn’t seem to be there. By now, “Black Panther” already had $400 million in the tank. “Wakanda” is running at $287 million. Certainly nothing to sneeze it, but a cold a may be coming. Maybe a lot of fans are waiting for the inevitable run on DisneyPlus? We’ll see…
Earlier this evening Elon Musk reinstated Donald Trump to Twitter. He’s seeking to normalize one of the most dangerous people in history. Trump incited riots on January 6th, regularly feeds misinformation and lies to his base, was impeached twice by Congress, and is now under investigation by the Department of Justice.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Musk’s announcement comes as thousands of Twitter employees have been fired, the company is in chaos, and Twitter accounts — especially from people in media and celebrities– are closing fast. CBS has suspended all its Twitter accounts. Watch for NBC, ABC, and PBS to follow suit, possibly also CNN (we’ll see about the latter).
What effect will this have on Musk’s main company, Tesla? The stock price is already at its bottom, but Monday could bring an even more severe reaction to this news.
As we stand, this site is still on Twitter. But Musk, I feel, has done absolutely the worst thing possible. If Trump gets active and resumes his old ways, that could bring Twitter down for good.
Cher turned up tonight to give songwriter Diane Warren her Governors Award aka Lifetime Achievement Oscar. Warren wrote one of Cher’s biggest hits, “If I Could Turn Back Time.”
Warren has been nominated 13 times for Oscars and never won one. She’s the first ever songwriter to get an honorary Oscar. The ceremony is going on now in L.A.
keep refreshing…
“One of my fondest memories is when she followed me into an Al-Anon meeting to play me a song,” says Cher.
The Oscars’ Lifetime Achievement Awards, aka the Governor’s Awards, are going on right now in Los Angeles at the Fairmont Century City Hotel.
Mindy Kaling is the emcee and there are dozens of A listers and stars on the scene. Everyone who’s campaigning for an Oscar this season is there, from Cate Blanchett to Michelle Williams, Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne, Brendan Fraser, Banshees Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and so on.
Greta Gerwig is there, star of her husband Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise,” and from the looks of things pregnant with their second child.
Michael J. Fox is receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from Woody Harrelson. His “Back to the Future” co-star Christopher Lloyd is one of his guests. Fox and wife Tracy Pollan ran into another of tonight’s honorees, Diane Warren, the first songwriter ever to win such an award. Warren is receiving her honor from a surprise guest who I can tell you about as soon as it’s all happened.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 19: Greta Gerwig attends the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 13th Governors Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on November 19, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/WireImage)
Another honoree is Peter Weir, the director, who will get his award from Jeff Bridges. Not in the audience is the actor whose career was made by Weir, Mel Gibson. He’s nowhere to be seen and it’s no surprise.
Also on the scene are Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh, not together, of course. Yesterday it was announced that Wilde and Harry Styles have broken up after all them warred over “Don’t Worry Darling.” a movie that died an ignominious death. Pugh was the star of it, and was in a huge feud with Wilder over Styles. I can’t imagine they sat at the same table.
Very strange story in the New York Post now: that morale at MSNBC is terrible and that CNN is somehow stealing their thunder.
This is actually the opposite of what is true. But seems like the Post is writing this on behalf of Fox News for Rupert Murdoch et al. Literally everything in the article is the reverse of reality.
Maybe Fox News is worried that MSNBC is growing its audience quickly. It’s doing far better than CNN. In fact, MSNBC has literally double the numbers of CNN at every hour.
I don’t know about “morale.” But I’m sure the MSNBC people are happy to have healthy ratings.
Mosr CNN shows average between 600,000 and 700,000 people watching them. Head to head MSNBC comes in between 1.1. million and 1.3 million.
At 9pm, CNN’s host-less hour is trounced by MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, who replaced Rachel Maddow and is starting to find a following.
Of course, Fox News remains the titan all day and night, spewing out misinformation and crank opinions, hoping the elderly or uneducated audience buys whatever they’re selling. But the Murdoch empire must be a little nervous if they’ve turned their aggressively awful PR team on MSNBC. That audience is not going to believe a word from News Corp. They’re too smart.
The biggest problem I could see last night with Valerie Simpson’s insanely jubilant show at Sony Hall was that every song sounds like it’s the grand finale– that’s because every number is a huge hit.
Simpson mostly performs at her own small gem of a venue, the Sugar Bar, on the Upper West Side. But last night was the second time she’s recently performed her new, thrilling show that recalls the massive number of hits she wrote with late husband, Nik Ashford, for Motown in the 60s and then as a successful R&B duo Ashford and Simpson.
This show wasn’t “off Broadway” it was really under it, at the terrific Sony Hall in the basement of the Paramount Hotel in Times Square on West 46th St. With the exits of theaters like BB King’s and the Highline Ballroom, Sony Hall has really become a tremendous location for star performers. And this room — which is large– was packed solid, shoulder to shoulder with fans who love Ashford and Simpson’s music and know a big secret– Valerie Simpson at 76 sings like a rock star.
Simpson is about five feet tall, but on stage she’s a foot taller at least when she’s shimmying in a black and gold couture dress. Always cute, with a cherub face, she can belt out any number and hold her own with the best. (A few years ago, she even played Mama Thornton in Broadway’s “Chicago.”) She’s a dynamo, and if it weren’t for her occasional solo outings she might be forgotten as a singing, not just writing, star. (SImpson did have a solo album on Motown 40 years ago that’s worth checking out.)
Last night, Simpson ably proved herself with a set of hits that’s unrivaled. I particularly liked her rendition of “The Boss,” which she and Nik wrote for Diana Ross and never recorded on their own. (She should record this show immediately.) The show is book-ended with two different takes on the Motown national anthem, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” — one in the Ross edition, the other Jocelyn Brown’s disco take on the original Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell record. There was also “Your Precious Love,” “You’re All I Need to Get By,” Simpson, alternately playing piano (she’s the original Alicia Keys) and boogeying across the stage, conveys infectious romance and joy.
Then there are the crazy, even bigger hits: Ross’s “Reach Out and Touch,” Chaka Khan’s (and Whitney Houston’s) “I’m Every Woman,” and the A&S classic, “Street Corner” (the latter from an album I think wore the grooves down on a long time ago). Any one of these would be a showstopping end number, but Simpson wraps it up with A&S’s beloved, funkaliciously delightful “Solid (as a Rock).”
Of course, keeping it a taut 90 minute show, Simpson leaves out a lot of songs we’d like to hear, from “Send It” to “Is it Still Good to Ya.” But there is nothing like hearing her start “I’m Every Woman” at the piano and then having the crowd explode into dancing when the beat changes. It didn’t matter that there was no possible social distancing either (you couldn’t have this show with masks). She also has a crack band on stage with the great Felicia Collins on lead guitar.
By the way, how influential do Ashford and Simpson remain? Valerie joked on stage that “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” had to made it to a Taylor Swift remix. “What’s that song called, girls?” she asked her two adult daughters from the stage. They shouted back, “Anti-Hero!” Indeed, “Mountain” is the basis of a popular remix of Swift’ enormous current hit. Simpson responded with the usual twinkle in her eye, “I got the check!”
It would be grand if an expanded version of this show had a limited Broadway run, or off Broadway, or right there in Sony Hall. It’s the most entertaining musical of the fall season. There’s even a little scripted part with one of the backup singers playing Berry Gordy, who flew the couple out to Detroit in the mid 60s after hearing their Ray Charles hit, “Let’s Go Get Stoned.” Ashford, Simpson recalled, almost walked out of the meeting, but Gordy ran after him, and the rest is music to our ears.
Adele finally opened her Vegas shows at Caesar’s Palace a year late. She got rave reviews, of course, and people paid thousands of dollars to see her. Her Weekends With Adele goes on through next year. She reportedly told the crowd she was very excited about Sunday night’s series finale of “The Walking Dead,” so I guess no one’s told her there are a bunch of spin off shows coming set in New York, Paris, and god knows where else– Duluth, maybe.
The set opens with “Hello” and includes “Skyfall” and “Rolling in the Deep” and someone like you. What it doesn’t include, strangely, are her two big songs from her first album: Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” and her own “Chasing Pavements.” If I’d spent $20,000 on a pair of tickets, I’d like to hear those songs. I’d ask for a rebate!
Anyway, Adele will now rake in gazillions. Her next album will probably come in 2028. So don’t hold your breath!
SUNDAY UPDATE: Total comes to $2.25 million. That’s it. So Peacock wouldn’t be a bad idea.
UPDATE “She Said” made $670.000 on Friday for an “opening” of $830,000. Not great, certainly. But the movie and its subject and purpose are serious and not be dismissed. I got yelled at a female friend yesterday for the story below. She said I made it sound like this was a trifle. Certainly not. After New Year’s, I think Universal would be smart to put “She Said” on Peacock or even Hulu so it can find a wider audience.
FRIDAY ORIGINAL STORY
The Beatles once sang, “She said, I know what it’s like to be dead.”
Now the makers of the movie, “She Said,” know what it’s like to be dead at the box office. The movie, about the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s sex scandals, is DOA. It made $160,000 last night in previews.
Our Leah Sydney gave it a very positive review, and all told reviews are very good. Carey Mulligan is said to be terrific, as is Patricia Clarkson.
But “She Said” is like “Bombshell,” the movie about Roger Ailes’s sex crimes. Outside of a small group of media people there is no audience for this kind of thing on the big screen. Universal would be smart to just “Bombshell” had big star like Nicole Kidman and even that didn’t help.
This is also not “Spotlight” or “All the President’s Men,” other award winning hits about reporters tracking a story. The stories those movies followed were about important issues that affected a lot of people– the Catholic church. the whole country, etc. The victims in “She Said” are niche, at best. There isn’t a wide concern about what Weinstein did, except among the women and his financiers.
“She Said” will get a couple of acting accolades, but that’s it.
“The Conners” has roared back in the ratings, unexpectedly. After making the dreadful mistake of moving the “Roseanne” spin off to 9pm on Wednesdays from 8pm on Tuesdays, ABC wisely moved the show back to 8pm.
And voila! The ratings are up, up, up. This Wednesday, “The Conners” had its season rating high at 3.960 million viewers. That was up 12% in the key demo and over 7% in total viewers. The focus this week was on Bev, Roseanne and Jackie’s mother played by 94 year legend Estelle Parsons.
Now there’s a promise from showrunner Bruce Helford that a male character from the old “Roseanne” show is about to make a return. He won’t say who it is, but the odds are on George Clooney, who was in Season 1 and 4 of “Roseanne” as Booker Brooks, the supervisor/foreman of Roseanne and Jackie when they worked at Wellman Plastics, He appeared in eleven episodes of the series.
Whatever happened to George Clooney and Booker? We may find out soon enough. My guess is ABC will hold that appearance for February, a sweeps month for ratings. Maybe Booker owns Wellman now, or has become a tech tycoon. Clooney is on a roll right now with the hit movie, “Ticket to Paradise.” He loses nothing by returning to “Roseanne” and only gains more fans. Let’s hope it works out!
PS There are some who think Tom Arnold may be the mystery guest from the past. When he was married to Roseanne Barr in real life, he played Arnie. But bringing him back would seem like an unnecessary slap at Barr.
For Adele, she’s rolling in the dough as her Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas residency begins tonight.
On the Ticketmaster site, the best seats are going for $23,500. More reasonably priced seats are around $10,000.
Listen, for that much money, come over to my place, I’ll give you Dom Perignon, seats by the window, and Adele karaoke.
Seriously, if you’ve got twenty three thousand dollars to spend on Adele, save it and give to charity.
Adele, of course, abruptly cancelled 26 Vegas shows last winter when she panicked and pulled out. But now she’s been properly medicated, and the money is flowing.
