Moviegoers ‘Can’t Be Sustained’ on ‘Easter Eggs’ and ‘Multiverse Stakes,’ Says ‘Spider-Verse’ Duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The official trailer for “Barbie” begins with a now-iconic shot: Margot Robbie’s eponymous doll steps out of her high-heel slippers to reveal her bare feet are still arched and ready to be slipped into whatever next shoe accessary awaits. For anyone wondering: Yes, those really are Margot Robbie’s arched feet. As revealed in a new Time magazine cover story on the making of the “Barbie” movie: “The shot took eight takes. [Margot Robbie] had to hold onto a bar to keep her feet flexed. And, yes, those are her feet. ‘I really don’t like it when someone else does my hands or feet in an insert shot,’ she says.” Robbie also told Time that she would’ve turned down “Barbie” had Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script not incorporated many different Barbie characters. Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa and more actors also play Barbie in the Warner Bros. tentpole.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter In another universe, “The Flash,” once touted by its own studio as “one of the greatest superhero movies of all time,” would be towering over the box office with ease in its second weekend of release. But in this universe, audiences are flat-out rejecting the Warner Bros. movie, starring Ezra Miller as the eponymous, timeline-spanning speedster. Rather than taking a victory lap, the comic book adventure is cratering in third place with $15.3 million from 4,265 North American theaters, marking a brutal 73% decline from its unimpressive $55 million debut. That’s a far bigger drop than recent DC adaptations, including “Black Adam” (59%) and “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” (69%), which ended up as huge money losers for the studio.

After nearly a month in theaters, “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse” looks like an early frontrunner for 2023’s movie of the summer. And while the film faces off against “Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny” next weekend, Sony‘s animated film is off to a great start at the box office.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Samuel L. Jackson revealed in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly that his watermarked script for “The Avengers” was stolen from Marvel Studios’ production offices, leading the company to set up a fake buy after the stolen screenplay popped up online for sale. Marvel has since gone on to beef up its security protocols, even going as far as shooting down drones that fly over their production lots hoping to capture set photos and footage. “They shot one down,” Jackson said. “And they followed one back to where the dude was. They found him and, yeah, they got him.” “There are worse examples than that,” Jackson added. “I remember when we got ready to do ‘Avengers,’ someone printed out a copy of my ‘Avengers’ script that had my watermark on it, and put it online for sale. I was shooting in Canada and Marvel came to Canada. It had been printed in the production office… They found out who it was, dude quit, left the country. They set up a fake buy for the script, dude didn’t show up. It was crazy.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford is retiring from playing Indiana Jones after the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but that doesn’t mean Ford himself is leaving Hollywood behind. Far from it. During an upcoming interview on CNN and Max’s “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” (set to air and stream on June 23), Ford laughs at the idea of retiring from acting. Next month, he will turn 81 years old. When asked if he plans to retire, Ford replied, “I don’t. I don’t do well when I don’t have work. I love to work. I love to feel useful. It’s my jones. I want to be helpful” Why does Ford still have the acting bug as he gears up to turn 81 years old? “It is the people you get to work with,” he said. “The intensity and the intimacy of collaboration. It’s the combined ambition somehow forged from words on a page. I don’t plan what I want to do in a scene. I don’t feel obliged to do anything. I’m naturally affected by things that I work on.”

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has notched another box office milestone, crossing $500 million globally. So far, Sony’s animated comic book sequel has grossed $290.4 million in North America and $215.9 million internationally, which brings its worldwide tally to a mighty $506.3 million. It currently stands as the third-highest grossing domestic release of the year, behind Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($572 million) and Disney’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($345 million). And it’s the fourth-biggest global release following “Mario” ($1.3 billion), “Guardians” ($822 million) and “Fast X” ($679 million). “Across the Spider-Verse” opened on June 2, collecting a huge $120 million during its first weekend in theaters. Despite competition from “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” another comic book adventure “The Flash” and Pixar’s animated “Elemental,” the second “Spider-Verse” remained a huge draw at the movies and even managed to surpass the entire run of its 2018 predecessor, “Into the Spider-Verse” ($384 million), after just 12 days of release.

With Tuesday’s global business factored in, Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has swung past the half-a-century mark worldwide, grossing $506.3M through yesterday.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christopher Nolan has a warning for anyone purchasing “Oppenheimer” tickets: The film might emotionally destroy you. Speaking to Wired magazine in a new interview, Nolan said that some early “Oppenheimer” viewers have had a visceral reaction to the film, which follows theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as he creates the atomic bomb to end World War II. “Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said about early screenings. “They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Arnold Schwarzenegger would throw his name into the race for U.S. president if he was eligible, the actor and former California governor told Chris Wallace on a recent episode of Max and CNN’s “Who’s Talking?” interview series. The action movie icon already has a history in U.S. politics, as he served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011. “The Constitution says that the President has to be a natural born US citizen. If not for that, would you have run for president?” Wallace asked Schwarzenegger. “Well, yes, of course,” Schwarzenegger responded. “I mean, I think the field was wide open in 2016. And I think the field is open right now. I mean, think about it right now. I mean, who is there? There is really not a person that can bring everyone together. Who is here today that people say okay, he’s not too old or he’s not too this or too that, or is that because it’s now a question about who do you vote against then who do you vote for?”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Chris Hemsworth has no idea what the future has in store for Thor, which is currently the only character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be at the center of four standalone movies (although Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is surely next). Hemsworth’s last Marvel outing, 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” turned off many Marvel fans with its silly humor and unappealing visual effects, so much so that even Hemsworth himself called the film “too silly.” In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hemsworth confirmed nothing is official regarding his Marvel return. He wants a potential “Thor 5” to be “unpredictable,” but he also doesn’t want to risk playing Thor for so long that Marvel fans start rolling their eyes.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Wes Anderson told IndieWire ahead of “Asteroid City” opening in theaters that Bill Murray is his family and their working relationship will not be affected by various misconduct claims made against the actor, who has starred in a total of nine Anderson movies over the years. “My experience with Bill is so extensive,” Anderson said. “Bill was such a great supporter of me from the very beginning,” Anderson said. “I don’t want to speak about somebody else’s experience, but he’s really part of my family. You know, he’s my daughter’s godfather. In fact, he actually baptized her. He’s the one who splashed the water.” Anderson said reports of Murray’s inappropriate behavior will not impact their working relationship. Murray helped launch Anderson into the mainstream with his role in “Rushmore,” and he was the title character in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” He’s had supporting roles in “The Darjeeling Limited,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and more. Murray was originally set to star in “Asteroid City” but had to drop out of the production. The actor’s exit had nothing to do with the accusations against him.

Ethan Shanfeld After fans reported sound mixing issues in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Sony Pictures has sent an updated version of the film to movie theaters. The complaints were mainly targeted at low audio levels during the introductory scene in the animated Spidey sequel, which centers on Hailee Steinfeld’s Spider-Woman character, Gwen Stacy. While the sound issue was isolated to only a “handful of theaters,” a source close to the movie tells Variety that “all the prints” of the film have been updated, adding that it’s not entirely uncommon for distributors to send re-edited prints to exhibitors, “if the opportunity presents itself.”

Preston Mutanga is 14-years-old, and like many kids, he likes to post things online.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” using Legos. The trailer became such a viral sensation that he got a call from the film’s writer-producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who wanted him to make a scene for the film.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The name Preston Mutanga might not ring a bell, but anyone who has contributed to the $235 million and counting box office haul for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has seen his work on the big screen. Mutanga is a 14-year-old from Toronto, Canada, who landed a role as an animator on “Across the Spider-Verse” after he recreated the film’s trailer shot-for-shot in the style of LEGO blocks and left producers Chris Lord and Phil Miller dazzled (via The New York Times). Not too bad for your industry debut. Mutanga uploaded his LEGO remake of the “Across the Spider-Verse” trailer to Twitter on Jan. 2 (see the post below). Lord and Miller, both active Twitter users, caught wind of the clip and were impressed — the directors know a thing or two about crafting LEGO-inspired sequences as the directors of 2014’s “The LEGO Movie.” When the team decided they wanted a scene in “Across the Spider-Verse” set in a LEGO universe, they decided to reach out to Mutanga.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Chris Hemsworth told GQ UK that he’s been thinking about death a lot more lately as his forties quickly approach and in the aftermath of his “Avengers” co-star Jeremy Renner suffering a near-fatal accident in January. Renner was hospitalized with blunt chest trauma, over 30 broken bones and more after his snow plow ran him over at the start of the year. “We were all on our ‘Avengers’ text chain, we were all chatting. And it was wild,” Hemsworth said about the immediate aftermath of Renner’s accident. “None of us really knew how serious it was. I think anything like that, it’s an immediate realization of ‘Wow, any of us can go at any minute…’”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Captain America: New World Order” is now “Captain America: Brave New World.” Marvel Studios announced the title change for its upcoming fourth “Captain America” movie on social media alongside a first look photo of stars Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford on the film’s set. Marvel originally announced last July that “Captain America 4” would be subtitled “New World Order” and be released on May 3, 2024. The release date remains unchanged for the newly-titled “Brave New World.” Anthony Mackie stars in the title role, making “Captain America 4″ his first outing as the eponymous hero in a feature film. The actor got his start in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Falcon, but he took on the Captain America shield in the Disney+ series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Chris Evans originated the role of Captain America in the MCU, but he exited the part in “Avengers: Endgame.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christoper Nolan revealed to Empire magazine that he did something during the development of “Oppenheimer” that he’s never done before in more than two decades of making movies: He wrote a script in the first person. “There’s the idea of how we get in somebody’s head and see how they were visualizing this radical reinvention of physics,” Nolan said. “One of the things that cinema has struggled with historically is the representation of intelligence or genius. It very often fails to engage people.” When sending the finished “Oppenheimer” screenplay to his visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, Nolan stressed to him that “we have to find a way into this guy’s head. We’ve gotta see the world the way he sees it, we’ve gotta see the atoms moving, we’ve gotta see the way he’s imagining waves of energy, the quantum world. And then we have to see how that translates into the Trinity test. And we have to feel the danger, feel the threat of all this somehow.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was no exception, though that shouldn’t be surprising given that just like its predecessors, the latest entry of the Marvel movies in order was written and directing by James Gunn, a man with excellent comedic sensibilities. In fact, in a viral  Vol.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Somehow, the movie is even more ambitious and complex than the original film. Not only is it significantly more complicated on a visual level, but the emotions this time around are even deeper, as we traverse the larger Spider-Verse with Miles and Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), meet the hard-assed Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) and ponder the question: can you even be Spider-Man without being saddled with a tragic backstory?TheWrap sat down with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” writers and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, along with the directors Kemp Powers, Justin K.