Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
February 16 - February 22

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For the third time in just four months, Apple has released a massive $200 million movie that will ultimately wind up on its streaming service in theaters. This time, they partnered with Universal Pictures to release director Matthew Vaughn's original comedic spy thriller "Argylle." Given how barren the early part of 2024 has been at the box office, this is a movie that theaters truly needed. So, in that way, it's certainly nice that it played on more than 3,600 screens all across North America over the weekend rather than have it dumped directly to streaming. It's just a shame that audiences weren't nearly as interested in seeing the film in question as the industry at large had hoped...

Working with Hollwyood studios and vendors, cinemas are buttering up their bottom line by selling popcorn containers that can range in price from $25 to $50. Concession-stand prices for specialty merchandise, including cups or popcorn containers, tend to start around $20 but can go up from there for a more elaborate or unique creation. Aside from a cultural behemoth like Star Wars, the most successful merchandise drops are typically ones that tap into rabid fan bases. For last May’s release of Universal’s Fast X, theaters promptly sold out of a popcorn-storing replica of the 1970 Dodge Charger belonging to Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto. And earlier this year, 15 percent of Mean Girls attendees during opening weekend cited merchandise inducements as their reason for buying a ticket. Last summer, AMC chief Adam Aron predicted that 25,000 special edition Barbie Corvettes would sell out by the end of opening weekend at $34.99 a pop. He was right, and that means nearly $1 million in revenue, or $875,000...

Woody Allen’s ‘Coup de Chance’ is the hottest ticket in town, if you can find it! The film debuted at the Venice Film Festival out of competition in early September 2023 to solid reviews, and is currently boasting an 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The droll relationship drama with a soupçon of criminality has accrued $7.4 million in receipts, according to BoxOfficeMojo, with its top four markets being Italy, Spain, Russia and France. An invitation-only movie torrenting site now hosts a version uploaded by a cinephile/linguist known only as “Fergus,” who apparently “used the retail Dutch subtitles as a point of departure” and “walked carefully through them line by line, making a lot of adjustments and corrections while watching the film several times.” A bar/event space in New York’s East Village recently hosted an underground “NYC Premiér” of Coup de Chance and announced that the evening’s entertainment was hosted by “Woody Allen et ‘Movie Friends.”...

For over a year, director Erica Tremblay‘s acclaimed Sundance drama “Fancy Dance” went undistributed without a means to see it. Its star Lily Gladstone, Oscar-nominated for another Native American-led film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” has taken time from her awards campaign to champion the film and urge anyone in Hollywood to support it and give it a home. Today, that effort has finally paid off. Apple Original Films has acquired the global rights to “Fancy Dance” and will release it both in theaters and on Apple TV+ later this year. A release date was not specified, and terms of the deal were not disclosed. “Our film ‘Fancy Dance’ has found the perfect home with Apple, and I am thrilled to share this beautiful story of two Seneca-Cayuga women with a global audience.” Tremblay said in a statement. “As a Native American filmmaker, seeing my community included in the rich tapestry of cinema is a dream come true.”...

Eminem, whose 2000 song “Stan” coined the term for fanatical and sometimes delusional superfans, is co-producing a documentary on the phenomenon via his Shady Films, in association with DIGA Studios and Hill District Media, with initial distribution from Paramount/MTV. The film, directed by Steven Leckart (“Challenger: The Final Flight,” writer of “What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali” and writer and executive producer of the Hulu series “Legacy: True Story of the L.A. Lakers”), is slated for release later this year. According to the synopsis, the film — with the working title “Stans” — is a “revealing, edgy, and disarmingly personal journey into the world of superfandom, told through the lens of one of the world’s most iconic and enduring artists, Eminem, and the fans that worship him.”...

Sylvester Stallone appeared on a recent episode of “The Tonight Show” and gave Ryan Gosling his blessing to star as the next Rambo in a potential revival of Stallone’s iconic action franchise. Stallone said when asked why Gosling is his top pick to play a new iteration of Rambo. “Obviously we are opposites. He’s good looking. I’m not. Seriously! Could you imagine me as Ken? It doesn’t work at all.” “[Ryan] goes, ‘I was fascinated by Rambo and I used to go to school dressed as Rambo and people would chase me away and I still didn’t stop. I’d vacation as Rambo.’ He just kept saying that he had a lot of affiliation with Rambo,” Stallone continued. “And I thought, you know, this is interesting. If I ever pass the baton, I’ll pass it on to him because he loves the character.”...