Box Office: ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Aims for $60 Million Debut, Battles ‘Spider-Verse’ for No. 1

Naman Ramachandran Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse” swung back to pole position atop the U.K. and Ireland box office, dethroning Warner Bros.’ “The Flash” in the process. In its fourth weekend, “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse” collected £1.99 million ($2.5 million) for a total of £23.4 million, according to numbers from Comscore. In its second weekend, “The Flash” took £1.3 million for a total of £6.7 million. Sony’s “No Hard Feelings” bowed in third place with £1.18 million, while Universal’s “Asteroid City” debuted close behind in fourth position with £1.17 million.

Darrell Issa Guest Columnist Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet represents California’s 48th Congressional District. Later today on the Nashville, TN campus of Belmont University, I’ll convene a field hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. The hearing won’t just take place in Music City, USA but five years after Congress achieved that rarest of things: A consensus solution that recognized the rights of musical artists and created a way they could be compensated fairly by publishers. It may be hard for some to believe, but at the time we crafted this legislation, the music industry and other content owners were being crushed by widespread piracy and an inability to monetize the value of musical creativity.

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 20 premiere of ABC’s The Bachelorette.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor As “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” rolls through its premiere schedule like a boulder chasing the eponymous hero, Variety spoke with Harrison Ford at the 69th Taormina Film Festival. On the terrace of Hotel Metropole, Ford looked resplendent in his black tuxedo, reminiscent of the suave version of Indiana Jones that opened “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Despite a curmudgeonly reputation, underlined even more by his role as the scene-stealing psychiatrist Paul in the hit Apple sitcom “Shrinking,” Ford seems to be enjoying his goodbye tour as he celebrates his fifth and final outing as the whip cracking archaeologist.

$2.3 billion “Avatar: The Way of Water” raked in last Christmas — movie theaters are back to being an armory of high-profile bombs. This weekend, wobbly Warner Bros.’ “The Flash” dropped a staggering 73% in its second week to a worldwide total of just $210 million. A more-than-50% decline for an expensive DC Comics superhero film spells trouble.Consider that fellow Justice League member “Aquaman” made $229 million by his second weekend in the US and Canada alone.Pixar’s uninspired “Elemental,” released June 16 and so far having grossed $121 million, will wind up as one of the Disney-owned animation studio’s biggest failures ever.

Drive auteur Nicholas Winding Refn is is forging a TV adaptation of The Famous Five for the BBC and ZDF.

EXCLUSIVE: James DuBose, the former Fox Soul General Manager, is launching his own AVOD platform, In The Black Network, a streaming service that highlights Black voices and original stories. 

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story mentions a few significant plot developments in “The Flash,” currently playing in theaters. In the climax of “The Flash,” Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) watches helplessly as his timeline-hopping escapades cause several other superhero universes to careen into each other and become obliterated in the process. Ironically, Warner Bros. is facing almost an identical dilemma — and the stakes could be nearly as existential. “The Flash” is the second of four mega-budgeted DC adaptations the studio is set to release this year, starting with “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” in March, and followed by “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” in August and December. Yet these movies were conceived and greenlit by an executive team that all have departed the studio; in their place, new DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have announced they will reboot the DC franchise in 2025, starting with Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy.”

Ben Croll The walls of Barcelona’s international convention center might soon rattle once the 4,000 European exhibitors, suppliers and service providers in town for the CineEurope trade show breathe out a collective sigh of relief. At the root of such succor are Europe’s more than encouraging box-office admissions, which saw a marked uptick in late 2022 and have continued to rise into the new year. “I think this edition will be very much about celebrating because 2022 was a much better year than 2021,” says Laura Houlgatte, CEO of the Intl. Union of Cinemas (UNIC), which tends to the needs of cinema trade associations and exhibitors across the old continent. “[What’s more] the numbers for the first quarter of 2023 have left everyone in a very good mood.”

On the Friday after Tom Wambsgans became the new puppet CEO of the Waystar-Royco media empire, the actor who has spent the past five years essaying the character’s ups, downs, and withering one-liners is propping up the bar of a small boutique hotel in London’s Chelsea. Matthew Macfadyen is nursing a lime tonic and contemplating a rest after several months of hard work on Succession’s blockbusting fourth season. In some other world, one imagines his fictional alter-ego is already discovering the poison in the chalice of the job he has spent a lifetime coveting. Macfadyen, instead, is content simply to think ahead to a quiet family dinner, and to reflect on the adventure of his past half decade.

A version of this story about H.E.R. and “Beauty and the Beast” first appeared in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.Few multi-hyphenates working these days can claim the take-over of industries quite like H.E.R. In just the last four years, the California native with the signature spectacles has racked up five R&B Grammys, an Oscar (for her stirring “Fight for You” from “Judas and the Black Messiah”) and a Children’s and Family Emmy for a tune from Netflix’s “We the People.” And after her spirited turn as the beloved Belle from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” in ABC’s 30th anniversary special, the Primetime Emmy might be calling.

“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” stormed into theatres worldwide this weekend, amassing a staggering $110 million at the international box office. 

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” kicked off at the international box office with $110 million from 68 markets, including a decent $40 million start in China. The seventh installment in Paramount’s action franchise also pulled in $60 million in its North American debut, bringing its worldwide tally to a solid $170 million. Overseas audiences will be key to the theatrical success of “Transformers,” which cost $200 million. Prior entries in the 16-year-old series have earned as much as 70% of overall box office returns outside of the U.S. and Canada. At the international box office, ticket sales for “Rise of the Beasts” are pacing 32% below “Bumblebee,” which is the most recent entry in the series. The newest chapter has managed to set franchise records in eight smaller markets, including Indonesia, Argentina and Peru. The Autobots will take the box office milestones where they can get them.

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is predicted to earn a disappointing $60million at the US box office in its opening weekend.As reported by Deadline, box office analysts are predicting the fifth and final film in the franchise will take between $60 million to $70 million over a five-day holiday opening. While those sort of numbers would be reason to celebrate for most movies, Harrison Ford’s last outing as the archaeologist action hero was expected to be a big hitter for Disney and Lucasfilm.The Dial Of Destiny‘s 3-day opening is down from the $100.1million opening for Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, which is widely considering to be the worst film in the franchise.It’s unclear why The Dial Of Destiny is projected to underperform at the box office, but it could be related to the mediocre reviews that followed the film’s premiere at Cannes last month.

Jon Burlingame On the scoring stage at 20th Century-Fox studios in Burbank, composer Jongnic Bontemps is walking around in a “Transformers: The Movie” T-shirt – that’s the animated cartoon from 1986, not the $200-million summer blockbuster he’s just scored. “Violins, play a little softer,” he tells the musicians via intercom from the glass booth behind the stage. “It has to be emotional.” Later, after a rehearsal on a different cue, he tells the string players, “It needs to feel like a warm blanket.” Bontemps is making movie history. He has just spent two years writing the music for “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh in the big-screen franchise, and he’s supervising the recording of the final pieces of the score with a 74-piece orchestra. The film opens Friday.

The first round of box office projections for Disney/Lucasfilm’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have arrived, and they are predicting a significant drop from the film’s 2008 predecessor “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with an opening weekend of around $60 million. By comparison, “Crystal Skull,” which opened on the Thursday before Memorial Day 15 years ago, earned a Fri.-Sun.

Lorna Courtney was barely out of the University of Michigan when Broadway first came calling. A native New Yorker – Queens, to be exact – and graduate of Manhattan’s performing arts LaGuardia High School, Courtney was a standby in Dear Evan Hansen in 2019 and 2020 before being cast in director Ivo van Hove’s boldly reimagined West Side Story, a production that did away with the iconic Jerome Robbins in favor of the riskier, more avant-garde stylings of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” webbed up a stellar $120.5 million in its domestic box office debut. In beating expectations, it landed the second-biggest opening weekend of the year, behind only “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” with $146 million, as well as the third-biggest opening weekend for any “Spider-Man” film. Sony’s animated sequel is benefitting from great reviews and positive word-of-mouth, as well as goodwill from its predecessor, 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Initial ticket sales were significantly higher than the first film, which introduced audiences to Miles Morales and the idea that “anyone can wear the mask” and opened to just $35.5 million. But it stuck around in theaters for a while, ending its big-screen run with $190 million in North America and $384 million globally.

Marvel‘s Spider-Verse franchise in a new interview.The suggestion came up while Isaac was speaking to to the British edition of GQ to promote the latest animated Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.Isaac – who voices Spider-Man 2099, a futuristic version of the web-slinger in the film – was asked by journalist Lucy Ford if there was anyone he hoped would join the cast in the franchise’s coming films.“I don’t know,” he responded. “They’re so brilliant at finding the right person for the right character, but maybe Pedro Pascal.

Katherine Ryan has signed on for ‘Celebrity Gogglebox’. The 39-year-old comic said she is “excited” to appear on the star-studded edition of the Channel 4 show alongside her husband Bobby Koostra, 40. She told The Sun: “It’s usually just the dogs who get to see us watch TV, so we’re excited to welcome viewers into our home as we decompress in our favourite spot – the sofa.