Celebrities Daily News

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 »