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The mostly animated sequel did over $56 million to end
American Sniper’s box office reign, though the six-time Oscar nominated film did come in with a very respectable $24.2 million, to give it a cumulative of more than $282 million since its release. Meanwhile,
Jupiter Ascending came in third, with $19 million.
(BO)
Richard Linklater’s magnum opus won the British Academy’s top prize, while he also won the Best Director prize. Meanwhile,
The Theory of Everything won Best British Film, as expected, and all four acting awards likewise played out predictably, with Eddie Redmayne, Julianne Moore, J.K. Simmons and Patricia Arquette all taking their respective categories. Empire has the full list of winners.
(EMP)
Alejandro González Iñárittu and his team won the guild’s top prize, beating Linklater and his
Boyhood team. That means that, while
Boyhood has swept many of the critics prizes, including the Golden Globes
, Birdman has now taken the SAG, PGA and DGA awards. Meanwhile,
Homeland and
Transparent were the big TV winners, with Lesli Linka Glatter and Jill Soloway, respectively, winning trophies.
(TP)
According to reports, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are in talks to frontline the sci-fi love story, based on a script by Jon Spaihts that has been in development purgatory for years. Story follows a passenger on a colonization ship traveling through deep space who wakes decades before the journey’s planned end, and then wakes another passenger to share those decades with.
(SF)
The embattled NBC news anchor and managing editor of the news division has backed out of his scheduled segment. He was originally scheduled to appear on Thursday night’s episode of
The Late Show With David Letterman, but that was put together before the controversy erupted over his lying about being on a helicopter under enemy fire in Iraq in 2003.
(VAR)
Sam Taylor-Johnson, director of the first film which is out in theaters on Friday, attended an advance screening of the film Friday in New York City, where she told an enthusiastic crowd that the two follow-up books in the E.L. James-penned series would indeed be made into films. Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan and Marcia Gay Harden star in the first film.
(THR)
Looking to make its own
Game of Thrones, the online streaming service is working with Nintendo on the series, based on the Japanese company's video game.
Zelda, which is one of Nintendo's most popular games, follows the young boy Link on his journey to save Princess Zelda and the fictional kingdom of Hyrule. The goal would be to make the fantasy program for a family audience.
(HP)
Upstart distributor Broad Green Pictures picked up North American rights to
Knight Of Cups, starring Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, and Rooney Mara, among others, and will probably release it this spring. The company also picked up the rights to Malick’s next film, still untitled, which also stars Bale and Fassbender.
(IW)
The first look at the electrifying red band trailer for the upcoming biopic about N.W.A. The film, directed by F. Gary Gray, and starring O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown Jr. and Paul Giamatti, opens nationwide August 14th.
(DH)
A strategy is a no-brainer when it comes to making screenplay submissions. But surely, it’s all a bit “hit or miss” as standard and it’s impossible to predict how an industry as mad as ours will turn out?! Nope! Fact is, a screenwriter – new, middling or veteran –
can come up with a submission strategy that
works.
(SM)
