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Box Office: “Don’t Worry Darling” Numbers Collapse After Weekend, Legs Buckle

Roger Friedman
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Box Office: “Don’t Worry Darling” Numbers Collapse After Weekend, Legs Buckle

Unfortunately, the Harry Styles fans are all in school and doing homework. They are not using the midweek days to go see “Don’t Worry Darling.”

Yesterday’s box office was $2 million, down 20% from Monday. Monday’s numbers were worse, down 59% from Sunday to $1.66 million.

Total now is $23 million. And that isn’t bad since the movie said to have cost between $35 million and $40 million. So profit is in the cards. But not longevity.

Considering all the time spent on gossiping about “Don’t Worry Darling” before it was released, there will be a lot less as its balloon deflates.

Yes, Wolverine is Dead, But the Man Who Killed Him Doesn’t Mind Seeing Him Alive Again

Roger Friedman
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Yes, Wolverine is Dead, But the Man Who Killed Him Doesn’t Mind Seeing Him Alive Again

Yes, to answer my question from yesterday, Isn’t Wolverine dead? He is! He died in “Logan.”

But director James Mangold, who killed him, doesn’t mind that Wolverine is back and starring in “Deadpool 3” with Hugh Jackman reviving the role. He writes on Twitter:
“Oh my gosh! Everybody chill. Just kidding! I’m all good! LOGAN will always be there. Multiverse or prequel, time warp or worm hole, canon or non-canon or even without a rationale, I cannot wait to see what maddness my dear friends @VancityReynolds
and @RealHughJackman
cook up!”

The whole mashup is really brilliant. Reynolds and Jackman have this long standing funn fake feud that goes on and on. It will continue now for a year leading up to the release, on social media. By the time we get to next September, the buzz will drive the box office into the stratosphere. Great, great idea.

Broadway: It Worked, Lea Michele Saves “Funny Girl,” Box Office Up By $1 Million a Week

Roger Friedman
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Broadway: It Worked, Lea Michele Saves “Funny Girl,” Box Office Up By $1 Million a Week

Maybe the next role for Lea Michele should be Wonder Woman.

Since the “Glee” star took over as Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl” on Broadway, the box office has shot up by a million dollars a week. People, it turns out, like people who sell tickets!

In the first week of Lea Michele’s run, the numbers were $1,636,212. That was up from a long summer of between $600,000 and $700,000 a week with mostly stand by players as Beanie Feldstein jumped ship. Prior to Beanie’s exit, the show was at its highest with $1.2 million back on May 29th. But then it went into enough of a decline that most shows with this kind of budget would have closed.

Enter Lea Michele. Frist week, great. Second week, she got COVID and the excellent stand by, Julie Benko, was back to save the day.

Last week Lea Michele was back, and box office popped up again to $1.640 million. The parade is in full swing and no one is raining on it. (Having Tovah Feldshuh steal the show as Fanny’s mother didn’t hurt, either.)

This news will revive the call to let new actors taking over parts in shows be re-considered for Tony Awards. If Lea Michele and Tovah Feldshuh had been in the original launch last April they’d not only have been nominated, but they might have won!

Bruce Springsteen Keeps Dropping Hints: New Album, New Single? “It’s Good” Says Insider

Roger Friedman
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Bruce Springsteen Keeps Dropping Hints: New Album, New Single? “It’s Good” Says Insider

UPDATE: I did get a little reaction from a Springsteen insider about this post, post-posting. I got no concrete info but this observation: “It’s good.”

I’ll bet it is, whatever it is.

EARLIER Bruce Springsteen’s social media is tuned up and dropping hints.

New album? Probably in January, but maybe sooner. New single? Soon, it seems.

Bruce’s Twitter feed first posted a picture of a double yellow line down a highway. Now today there’s a steering wheel. He’s either dropping a new single with a car-road theme, or a suped-up version of “Born to Run.”

Either way, it’s something took forward to. Bruce and the mighty E Street Band begin a massive world tour in Tampa next February.

Hugh Jackman Bringing Back Wolverine for “Deadpool 3” with Ryan Reynolds, Of Course (Watch) John Krasinski, Too?

Roger Friedman
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Hugh Jackman Bringing Back Wolverine for “Deadpool 3” with Ryan Reynolds, Of Course (Watch) John Krasinski, Too?

PS John Krasinski just quipped on Twitter: “Wait… Is this our movie?” Maybe he’s in it, too.

Ryan Reynolds announces Hugh Jackman will join him as Wolverine one more time in “Deadpool 3.”

Is Wolverine dead? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. This will be a massive Marvel hit, and very, very, funny.

Bruce Willis’s Family is Cool with Exploiting Him as an “AI” Paste-on On Other Actors’ Bodies

Roger Friedman
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Bruce Willis’s Family is Cool with Exploiting Him as an “AI” Paste-on On Other Actors’ Bodies

Bruce Willis’s family is cool with exploiting his image now that he can’t work.

In fact, Bruce hasn’t really been able to work for a long time. He has an official diagnosis of aphasia– he can’t speak — but really his problems with memory, speech, etc go back almost a decade.

His family has nonetheless allowed him to make dozens of cheap, bad movies in which he works a day or so, sometimes is second billed to D level actors. Bruce says a few lines fed to him through a hearing device.

Now comes word that his family has licensed his image to an artificial intelligence company that can take his likeness and stick it on another actor’s body. The company is called Deepcake because they do deepfakes. Horrified by this greed? You should be.

All of this began last year when Deepcake, according to the Daily Mail, grafted Bruce’s face onto understudy Konstantin Solovyov for a commercial for Russian telecoms giant MegaFon. More Willis deep fakes are coming, apparently.

Meantime there are still more really forgettable junk movies with Willis involved. There have already been eight — yes EIGHT– in 2022, with three more left. The last one, set for next year, co-stars the other D lister of note, John Travolta, in what should be the shit show of all time, “Paradise City.”

Sad what’s happened to Bruce. But no one close to him seems to care that they’ve ruined whatever there was of his legacy with all this crap.

Global Citizen Special on ABC Was Lowest Rated Network Show Sunday Night, Squandered 3 Million Viewers

Roger Friedman
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Global Citizen Special on ABC Was Lowest Rated Network Show Sunday Night, Squandered 3 Million Viewers

The Global Citizen special on ABC was the lowest rated show network show Sunday night on the four main broadcast networks.

Only 1.2 million people tuned in to see whatever the heck Global Citizen was selling with music acts and vague promises of peace and love. No one knows what they’re doing but spending money on themselves.

For ABC that 7pm hour shook off around 3.6 million viewers who’d watched their ABC Evening News just before. Then oddly 3 million people returned at 8pm for Celebrity Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

Where’d they go at 7pm? To “60 Minutes.” The venerable news show scored 7.1 million viewers sandwiched between an NFL football game and “Big Brother.”

On YouTube, the Global Citizen fest found just 733,000 viewers.

Meantime, over on HBO, “House of the Dragon,” which is not a Chinese restaurant, brought in the same 1.86 million viewers on its main channel. Some people who watched the 9pm showing tuned in again because they didn’t understand it (maybe it was because football was on). Um, that was me.

Julian Lennon Makes a Statement for New Album with Cover Photo by May Pang, John Lennon’s Famous Girlfriend

Roger Friedman
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Julian Lennon Makes a Statement for New Album with Cover Photo by May Pang, John Lennon’s Famous Girlfriend

Julian Lennon, 59, the oldest son of John Lennon, has a new album out called “Jude.” It’s excellent. The title is a reference to the song Paul McCartney wrote for him after a visit to Julian and his mom, Cynthia Lennon, in 1968. It’s called “Hey Jude.” You may remember it.

Julian has made a quite statement with the cover photo for “Jude.” It’s a picture taken of him circa 1973 by May Pang. May, an accomplished photographer and memoirist, was John Lennon’s girlfriend for 18 months around that time, a time referred to by Lennon and Beatles historians called “The Lost Weekend.” That period is also the subject of an amazing new documentary about May Pang and John Lennon that we’ll see soon.

That Julian chose this photo by May Pang makes quite a statement. Although he’s close to his half-brother, Sean Ono Lennon, Julian spent a lot of years locked in a financial battle with Yoko Ono. Because John died suddenly in 1980 — killed in cold blood by Mark David Chapman — Julian suddenly found himself odd man out in the ex-Beatle’s estate. It took many years to reach an agreement with her.

Both John and his mother Cynthia became great friends with May Pang as the years went on. Once John went back to Yoko, all three of them were out in the cold, so to speak, giving them common ground. I actually met Cynthia, who died in 2015 from cancer at 75, years ago through Pang. And the friendship with Julian has endured.

Even so, May noted on Facebook today she was surprised to see the photo on the cover of “Jude,” and used for the record label as well.

“Jude” is a surprise. In the 80s, Julian had a couple of big hits with the songs “Valotte” (also the name of his album) and “Too Late for Goodbyes.” He made some more records but drifted away from music, putting out releases sporadically. “Jude” obviously took a lot of thought and work. None of the songs are his sole compositions, but his stamp is strong all over them. The production work is sterling, and his voice rings out with the Lennon trademark. The album is on BMG Records, which did a good job of a stealth release ten days ago.

“Jude” benefits from a lot of great songs. “Lucky Ones” is co-written with Gregg Alexander from New Radicals fame. There are several haunting ballads, each of which could be radio hits. They’re as haunting as May Pang’s photo, a lovely tribute to a period Julian obviously remembers fondly.

Alec Baldwin Faces Potential Criminal Charges in “Rust” Movie Case as Santa Fe DA Asks for “Emergency Funding” to Try Four Possible Homicide Statutes

Roger Friedman
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Alec Baldwin Faces Potential Criminal Charges in “Rust” Movie Case as Santa Fe DA Asks for “Emergency Funding” to Try Four Possible Homicide Statutes

This is serious– and why Alec Baldwin has been selling off his New York properties.

Last week the Santa Fe District Attorney participated in a Zoom meeting with the New Mexico State Board of Finance to get emergency funding for four possible murder trials in the “Rust” movie case.

D.A. Mary Carmack-Altwies said she was waiting for the final report from the Sheriff’s Department, that could come in “weeks if not days.” She told the board there was the potential of charging between “1 and 4 people with criminal charges, homicide cases.”

Carmack-Altweis said, “One of the people we’re looking at has attorneys in New York and Los Angeles.” That would be Baldwin.

Last year, on October 21, 2021, Baldwin allegedly pulled the trigger on a prop gun that killed “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza. Baldwin claimed that he never pulled the trigger. But a report that came out later stated it was impossible he didn’t. Baldwin and others from the set have been sued civilly over Hutchins’ death.

The D.A. asked for $635,000, saying that her office wasn’t big enough to handle the cases and needed to hire a full time attorney and more staff. The Board of Finance approved just half that amount, suggesting they’re not convinced about putting funds to the prosecution. Baldwin’s very expensive defense lawyers on both coasts definitely took notice of the Board of Finance’s ambivalence in pursuing the matter.

The D.A. definitely has an uphill battle to prosecute these cases they way she’d like.

You can fast forward to 1:35 to pick up this discussion.

“House of the Dragon” Jumps 10 Years without Explanation, Actors Change, Plots Fly By Like…Dragons

Roger Friedman
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“House of the Dragon” Jumps 10 Years without Explanation, Actors Change, Plots Fly By Like…Dragons

At the end of Episode 5 of The House of the Dragon we kinda knew what happened and where everyone was. In any other series, it might be time to slow down and explore relationships, show something of Westeros, let everything settle down.

But no. Episode 6 begins and you have no idea who half the people are, or what’s happened to them. We only learn from listening that ten years have passed since the last episode. New actresses are playing Rhaenyra and Alicent, even though we loved the young women who were playing them. They’ve been aged — Rhaenyra’s case I’m not sure so successfully. They also each have children. Alicent had them earlier, by Viserys, Rhaenyra’s father.

When we start this episode, a now much older looking Rhaenyra has two kids and is giving birth to another. Their father is not her gay husband (also played by a new actor) or her lover Cristin Cole, but a guy we barely know and who is killed (along with his own father) by the end of the episode.

People are literally coming and going now faster than you can learn their names.

How and why did Rhaenyra hook up with Harwin “Breakbones” Strong? We have no idea. She really dug Ser Cole, but he turned out to be a little nuts. And why has the gay husband gone along with all this? He knows these three little boys aren’t his because Rhaenyra’s cousin (or is it her aunt?) — reminds me, snidely. (He’s Black, by the way.)

And what of Daemon, Rhaernyra’s uncle, who she slept with in Episode 5? He was evil, and married. But now he’s married to someone new — Laena, the grown up version of the 13 year old who almost married the King. They have kids, and she’s pregnant. But Laena, who we’re supposed to feel something for (I liked the actress) doesn’t make it out of the episode.

Daemon? He’s no longer the villain? That role has been transferred to a newish character, the brother of Harwin, Larys Strong, who seems to be the Rasputin of this gang, confidant of the Queen (now played perfectly by Olivia Cooke).

Confused? At least on “The Crown” they wait until a new season before introducing all new actors. Here we now have some leftovers, some new, and no real reason for anything that”s happened. I think getting rid of Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra was a mistake. Also, Paddy Considine has been made into a lame King Lear as Viserys. I’d have like to see him a little more before his nose started bleeding and he was asking for tissues.

No, I have not read this book. But “Game of Thrones” was fun. “House of the Dragon” is not. (I’m sure no one appreciated seeing the now teenish Aemon, son of the King and Queen, wildly pleasuring himself naked in a window — except his mother.)

Oh well, it’s fiction. But what happened to Steve Toussaint as Laena’s father? And Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower. DId they cost too much?

Lesson learned: don’t get attached to anyone in this series. They may be used for grilled cheese before the hour is up!

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