OK, it’s like shooting very large fish in a snug little barrel by now, this whole riffing on the much-celebrated duo of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey from True Detective during its now-concluded first season.
Nevertheless, with the real Harrelson guest hosting last night, Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update segment set Taran Killam loose on a wild McConaughey riff that was deadly as both impression of the actor and parody of the role. Tell us what you think…

Continuing its assault on country-queen-turned-pop-star Taylor Swift, Saturday Night Live ran one of its signature phony TV ads, this time for “Swiftamine,” a pill to counter the severe vertigo many people feel brought on by the mere mention of her seemingly everywhere name.
Among the “ordinary people” relating their bad-trip experiences was Chris Rock, who memorably was SNL‘s guest host just two weeks ago.
One little fact check, though: the faux testimonials included a…

SNL continued its climb out of the late-night dregs into its best season in years (if not decades) as host Woody Harrelson celebrated the 25th anniversary of his debut as the show’s guest host.
He had surprise help from some folks whom he vaguely remembered as recent colleagues: his Hunger Games co-stars Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson. Aptly, he used the occasion to toss a few grenades into the Taylor Swift camp with a so-bad-it’s-brilliant parody…

Update, Sunday, 1:15 AM: Big Hero 6 was bench pressing and drinking Red Bull yesterday as the kid toon surged 105{e44777159f4460b4149aae83a2b5a6bf29fb2a90e7eca4046095a1ce55bcfa3b} in its second Saturday over its second Friday with $16.5M, kicking Universal’s Dumb and Dumber Two To into second for a day’s haul of $14.39M. While industry weekend estimates as of tonight see DDT taking the 3-day with $36.5M vs. BH6‘s $35M, the buzz is that the latter could continue to tap matinee rocket fuel and fool the idiot comedy into second place…

Sons Of Anarchy may be starting its final season this fall but the tales of the FX drama are not over. “We are having serious conversations about our prequel,” said SOA creator Kurt Sutter to loud applause today at Comic-Con. “My sense is right now that I don’t know if it will be a full on-series or a mini-series.” While this is far from the first time the showrunner has talked about going back to SAMCRO’s roots, it had special significance Sunday in the massive Hall H for what is expected to be SDCC vet SOA’s last appearance.
“They’ll be no spinoffs,” added Sutter to talk of continuing the SOA story. “I think spinoffs work well on procedural dramas, which this clearly is not,” he added. The SOA story will also continue in Bratva, the show’s first novelization. The upcoming book picks up after Season 4 with the characters from the show, said Sutter today as he showed fans the cover art.
Earlier in the panel, the often acerbic Sutter teared up when others from the show thank him for creating the series and the experience of working on it. “Sit the fuck down,” a Sutter told the cast and the thousands in the hall who gave … Read More »

UPDATE, 12:24 PM PT: All studios have now reported with Fox the weekend Victor (or Caesar in this case). Swinging on 12,035 screens in 59 countries, the studio’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes grabbed another $54.4M internationally to win the weekend. Notable bows included across Latin America where the simians had been waiting out the World Cup. A different kind of creature feature, Warner Bros‘ Godzilla, finally hightailed it to his last territory – the old familiar stomping ground of Japan. The film, which is released locally by Toho, was No. 1 with a projected three-day gross of $6.95M on 481K admissions from 427 screens. Warner says that when comparing Saturday/Sunday figures, the results are on par with Transformers 3 and more than double the numbers for Pacific Rim. The film’s international cume is now just shy of $300M with worldwide about to cross $500M. Also notable out of Asia are the performances of Chinese romance/drama Continent which earned $33M over the frame for a $45M cume, and Korea‘s Kundo: Age Of The Rampant which was a clear No. 1 at home with $20.1M. I’ll … Read More »

Spoiler Alert: Story reveals details about The Following season 2 finale and direction of season 3.
Warner Bros. TV’s Comic-Con panel for The Following started with a literal bang this morning, showing an alternative ending where serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) is shot by Lily Gray’s son Mark (Sam Underwood). Commenting on Carroll’s life or death and how it might impact Season 3, creator Kevin Williamson said, “We have a brand new story whether Joe is alive or dead. We don’t know how he’ll appear in season 3. We always saw it as a reset.”  The cast was aware that they were shooting two endings, but did not know which one would ultimately air (we see Carroll being hauled off in chains). Nonetheless, Carroll alive leaves open his possible future involvement.
“There’s a lot of closure and resolution with Joe,” said star Kevin Bacon about the obsession his character, an FBI agent, has had throughout the series.
Other Season 3 details: Bacon’s Agent Ryan Hardy is in a better place with a romantic interest, but his stressful career chasing killers will always get in the way of his evolution. The Following will be set largely in New York this season.
“In episode one, we find that Ryan has looked at every case, just to make sure it isn’t Joe Carroll related,” said Jennifer Johnson, the new showrunner. “There’s a brand new threat that throws New York under a lockdown.  The city … Read More »

UPDATE 2, 1:15 PM, Sunday: And a little more. The organizers of the ZombieWalk officially declined comment regarding the Saturday evening incident, as the the event was breaking up, between the costumed crowd of participants and a car filled with a deaf family, an incident that left a 64-year-old woman hospitalized with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. We’ll continue to update as we get more.
UPDATE 1, Noon, Sunday: A little more information, very little, and a lot of heated reaction, are coming out this morning after last night’s incident at the end of the annual San Diego ZombieWalk, when a car with a deaf family in it hit and possibly broke the arm of a woman at the end of the event and a crowd of other ZombieWalkers in costume began beating on the car, panicking the family.
A San Diego Comic-Con executive said the event was not directly affiliated with the convention, declined further comment and directed inquiries to the San Diego Police Department. The SDPD watch commander said the department was continuing to investigate, and would have no further comment until Monday. The commander reiterated that the driver of the car was NOT arrested, contrary to reports from some media outlets.
The office of Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who had ziplined in the Comic-Con opening ceremonies to help kick off the annual confab, could not be reached in initial calls, and city permitting offices were … Read More »

EXCLUSIVE: Five-year-old Miles Scott touched hearts all over the world last November when he donned a cape and cowl to “save” Gotham City – aka, San Francisco – as “Batkid.” Now award-winning filmmaker Dana Nachman (Witch Hunt) is taking his story to the screen in a feature-length crowdfunded documentary (watch the trailer exclusively on Deadline).
The Batkid phenomenon went viral after the Make-a-Wish Foundation staged its most elaborate wish to date: The charity, with the help of The City, President Obama, and thousands of supporters, turned the streets of San Francisco into Gotham City on Nov. 15, 2013. Scott, a leukemia patient now in remission, got to live every superhero-loving child’s fantasy as he played sidekick to the Caped Crusader in a series of staged missions as onlookers cheered him on. It all culminated with Scott receiving the key to the city from Mayor Ed Lee. The entire event sparked more than 400K tweets in 117 countries, among much else social-media attention, and received a Digital Visionary Award from the Producers Guild.

Nachman brought docu Batkid Begins to Comic-Con with a panel presentation Sunday. The project  has raised $45,500 of a $100K goal on Indiegogo to complete the feature. Here’s the Batkid Begins trailer that was just unveiled this morning at the convention:

The trailer has roared into town for Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller‘s long-in-coming next installment to his great dystopian sci-fi series of films. This one, which drew some of the biggest cheers of the weekend when it was shown last night at San Diego Comic-Con, will feature Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Nicholas Hoult when it arrives next year. Miller shares writing credit with Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris. Producers are Miller, P.J. Voeten and Doug Mitchell. Warner Bros. is distributing.

Bold debuts from two of the weekend’s openers in a crowded specialty box office included yet another Woody Allen film as well as a last starring turn from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight was another solid opener in a string of recent successes for the veteran writer-director, with a good per-screen average. That said, the numbers were less stratospheric than some of his recent summer films when comparing on a straight theater average, though this go-around did bow in substantially more locations.
Magic is Allen’s third consecutive summer release (and seventh if you count the ”shoulder” seasons).  The formula continues to be a lucrative one for Allen and his backers. In its opening weekend, Magic brought in nearly $426K in 17 theaters, for a solid $25K PTA. The film, starring Colin Firth and Emma Stone, bowed with 11 more runs than last year’s box-office and award-winning behemoth Blue Jasmine (the best performer of Allen’s very long career), which debuted to a $102K PTA in 6 theaters. That film also had a $612K opening weekend and went on to cume over $33.4M.

“Blue Jasmine had cross-over appeal and [Magic] is ideally suited for it as well,” Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker said earlier this week. “[Allen] has found new and younger audiences, which started with Midnight In Paris. The totals for these [recent] films … Read More »

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly Sunday column, two old friends get together and grind their axes on the movie business.
Bart: You’ve been hanging at the epicenter of pitchdom all week at San Diego Comic-Con so you have watched the masters at work (also the loser geeks). But my thoughts this week were focused on a different generation of marketing mavens — those of Jeff Blake’s generation. Blake was “let go” this week after serving as Sony’s king of marketing and distribution for a couple of decades. Another of his generation, Dan Fellman of Warners, also is set for the sidelines. These were not the Comic-Con types — they were thoughtful pros who knew how to set strategy, pick dates — and tactfully tell filmmakers when their movies were dead on arrival. They didn’t bullshit about social marketing like their young cohorts. One studio chief told me recently that all social marketing represents is a road map for spending less money while still failing to find an audience. The Comic-Con-crowd would likely disagree.
Fleming: This is movie business in Moneyball mode. We are seeing a profound change of the studio guard as they figure out how to tap a completely … Read More »

13th and 14th UPDATES, Sunday, 6:30 AM and 8 AM: As the industry waits for next weekend’s Guardians of the Galaxy to lift the summer box office blues (it will start next Thursday at 7 PM), this weekend is wrapping up: Lucy will end the 3-day with $44M for Universal, director Luc Besson and our new solo, female action star Scarlett Johansson. On a budget of what the studio claims to be $40M, this picture should turn a profit with international yet to weigh in (it doesn’t open until next weekend) and Johansson already an known entity overseas from all the Marvel movies she’s been in. Now, if Sunday moviegoing drops more than 20{e44777159f4460b4149aae83a2b5a6bf29fb2a90e7eca4046095a1ce55bcfa3b}, Lucy will come in around $43.5M for its debut weekend. Its second weekend could dive, given the mixed reviews and the C+ CinemaScore it received Friday night.
This weekend continues to be down around 14{e44777159f4460b4149aae83a2b5a6bf29fb2a90e7eca4046095a1ce55bcfa3b} from last year at this time, and overall moviegoing is off about 6{e44777159f4460b4149aae83a2b5a6bf29fb2a90e7eca4046095a1ce55bcfa3b} from 2013′s record-breaking box office year and what was the all-time highest summer (with a total of $2.753B from the beginning of May through Sept. 2). So far, May 2nd to July 27th 2014 is $2.930B compared to last year’s $3.674B year’s for the same period. Now, if you bring the April bow of Captain America: The Winter Soldier into the mix, moviegoing is off 14{e44777159f4460b4149aae83a2b5a6bf29fb2a90e7eca4046095a1ce55bcfa3b}. … Read More »

Deadline Hollywood’s 2nd annual event THE CONTENDERS about the movie awards season was held November 10th at LA’s Landmark Theatre for invited Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Science and Guild voters. Watch the video of its marquee event: The ‘Deadline Moguls Panel’ composed of Warner Bros’ Jeff Robinov, Twentieth Century Fox’s Jim Gianopulos, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Amy Pascal, Paramount’s Rob Moore, Universal’s Adam Fogelson, Summit/Lionsgate’s Rob Friedman, and DreamWorks’ Stacey Snider who all discussed the challenges of this movie awards season. It was an insightful and  fascinating discussion moderated by Deadline Awards Columnist Pete Hammond and Film/NY Editor Mike Fleming. A transcript follows the video below:

Transcript: ‘Deadline Moguls Panel’ at The Contenders November 10th:

DEADLINE’S PETE HAMMOND: We have an incredible panel once again this year: the heads of the studios, the distributors, that are very involved in this year’s Oscar race and turning out the movies that you see. So let me introduce them here. To my right is Chairman and CEO of Twentieth Century Fox Jim Gianopulos. To his right, the Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures Rob Moore. The President of the Warner Bros Picture Group [and one of the triumvirate making up the Warner Bros Office Of The President] Jeff Robinov. Having a very good weekend with the new James Bond, the Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Amy Pascal. The Chairman of Universal Pictures, Adam Fogelson. The Co-Chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Pictures … Read More »