Prabhas’ ‘Adipurush’ Scores Divine Debut at International Box Office Despite Mixed Reviews

Naman Ramachandran Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £7.1 million ($9 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. The release marked the fifth biggest opening weekend for a film in 2023 in the territory, including previews, with a market share of 43%. In its fifth weekend, Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” racked up a further £1.5 million in second place, taking its total to £25.9 million. Universal’s “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” debuted in third position with £885,056. In its sixth weekend, Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” earned £837,859 in fourth place for a total of £25 million.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Bucheon film festival’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films project market wrapped up three days of meetings and pitching sessions on Monday with a prize ceremony that disbursed cash, post-production support and invitations to related genre film events. “The Passport,” a Tamil- and English-language Malaysian project about an Indian rockstar who is forced to confront cultural expectations and her interactions with an imaginary friend, won the headline Bucheon Award for director Ananth Subramanian and producer Bel Choo Mun. It was both a popular choice among other NAFF participants and the unanimous decision of the jury. The numerical winner was “Please Bear With Me,” which saw director Gabriela Serrano and producer Gale Osorio from the Philippines collect three prizes. The project is a sci-fi and social issues mash-up about a call center operative who gets paid in dream-time and uses it to relive her glory days as a pop star. A clearly-surprised Serrano used her second visit to the stage to explain the film’s origins as a deep frustration with seeing Filipina women stuck at the bottom of society and yet apologizing for their ambitions.

Disney+ Hotstar lost the rights to offer Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket last year, but the streamer remains India’s market leader, according to Ampere Analysis.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is stumbling in its box office debut, generating $70 million internationally and $130 million globally to start. Those ticket sales wouldn’t be bad for a film aimed at older audiences, except for the fact that Disney and Lucasfilm spent $295 million before marketing to bring the fifth and final action-adventure, starring Harrison Ford, to the big screen. “Dial of Destiny” is posting similar numbers to Warner Bros. and DC’s misfire “The Flash,” which opened to $75 million internationally and $139 million globally but cost $100 million less to make. Both tentpoles are expected to lose money in their theatrical runs.

Refresh for latest…: Disney/Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is off to a disappointing start with a $130M global opening. Of that, $70M is from 52 international box office markets as the the fifth installment in the beloved 42-year-old franchise came in below projections.

Naman Ramachandran SonyLIV has acquired exclusive streaming rights to acclaimed Bangladeshi films “Hawa” and “Saturday Afternoon” from Reliance Entertainment and Continental Entertainment PTE Ltd (CEPL). Directed by Mejbaur Rahman Sumon, “Hawa” follows the journey of an all-men team on a fishing trawler, whose routine is disrupted when they haul in a mysterious catch. The cast is led by hugely popular star Chanchal Chowdhury and includes Nazifa Tushi, Sariful Islam Razz, Sumon Anowar, Nasir Uddin Khan and Shohel Mondol. The film was Bangladesh’s entry to the Oscars and is one of the highest grossers from the country having also found distribution in India, Singapore and the Middle East. It will premiere July 7 on SonyLIV.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egyptian comedy “Beit El Ruby,” about social media’s disruptive impact on the life of a quirky family, has scored a strong opening weekend in Saudi Arabia, ousting “The Flash,” in its second frame, from the top spot. The local farce led by Egyptian superstars Karim Abel Aziz and Kareem Mahmoud Abdel Aziz was released on June 22. It has scored roughly 73,000 admissions across Saudi Arabia, grossing more than $1.1 million in its first frame. “The Flash,” by contrast, garnered a combined total of 91,000 admissions in Saudi cinemas in its first two frames. According to the film’s co-distributor Front Row Arabia, the “Beit El Ruby” bow marks the fifth highest opening for an Arabic film in Saudi, which is the Middle East’s top theatrical movie market.

Kamal Haasan, one of the biggest stars of India’s Tamil-language film industry, has joined Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and Disha Patani in the cast of Telugu sci-fi epic Project K.

Refresh for latest...: After two major studio movies bowed last weekend, this session was one of holdovers for Hollywood with mixed results.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Flash” continues to stumble at the box office, collecting $26.6 million from 78 international territories over the weekend and bringing its overseas tally to just $123.3 million. The Warner Bros. comic book movie, starring Ezra Miller as the eponymous, timeline-spanning speedster, has grossed $210.9 million globally, including a lousy $87 million at the domestic box office. It’s far less than what a film of its size and scope — it cost $200 million to make and another $100 million to market — needs to break even in its theatrical run. China is leading the foreign territories with a lackluster $23.6 million followed by Mexico with $14.4 million and the United Kingdom with $8.5 million.

Naman Ramachandran Veteran Indian actor Kamal Haasan is joining Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, Amitabh Bachchan and Disha Patani on the cast of Nag Ashwin’s “Project K.” The film, a big-budget sci-fi action epic, is directed by Nag Ashwin (“Mahanati”) and produced by C. Aswani Dutt’s Vyjayanthi Movies, marking the banner’s 50th anniversary. Haasan starred in and produced “Vikram,” one of the biggest hits of 2022 and has “Indian 2” in the works. Following the tremendous critical and commercial success of “Nayakan” (1987), he will also reunite with Mani Ratnam, who has had hits with the two-part “Ponniyin Selvan” films.

may have lost the title of best dressed at the to a one-year-old.That's a joke, of course, but Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas's one-year-old daughter, , did make her Royal Ascot debut wearing a beautiful tiered white dress with floral embellishments and matching sandals. On June 22, shared a gorgeous family photo on Instagram Stories, holding her daughter in her arms as her husband places the child's “first fascinator” atop her head. Chopra further captioned the post, “Ready for Ascot MM?”As for Malti's parents, the wore a white short-sleeved button-up and matching pants while the 40-year-old Citadel actor stunned in a sheer white ensemble by Pooja Rajpal Jaggi and golden statement earrings by Indian jewelry brand Isharya.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent India looks to be moving closer to hiking its recently inaugurated cash rebates on international shoot spend in the country, including on animation and VXF works. The confirmation came at last week’s Animation Film Festival, as India showed further signs of expansion in animation on various fronts: “Heirloom,” an Annecy Residency project from India’s Upamanyu Bhattacharyya, bowed at MIFA feature film pitches, the strongest in memory, and though it didn’t take a prize, it was regarded as one of the section’s standouts; Annecy-backed, AniMela, India’s first international festival for animation, VFX, XR, gaming and comics (AVGC-XR), revealed dates for its first edition in 2024.    

Naman Ramachandran Warner Bros.’ superhero film “The Flash” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £4.2 million ($5.4 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. In second place, in its third weekend, Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse” swung to £2.6 million for a total of £20.3 million. In third position in its fourth weekend, Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” earned £1.3 million and now has a splashy £22 million total. Paramount’s “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts” collected £1.1 million in fourth place in its second weekend for a total of £4.99 million. Elysian’s “Greatest Days” debuted in fifth position with £536,955.

Ben Croll An evangelist for the premium format, France’s CGR Cinemas has forged a growing number of international partnerships since the exhibition chain began exporting its proprietary Immersive Cinema Experience (ICE) model in 2017. At the start of this year, CGR – through its export arm ICE Theaters – had already opened premium rooms in Barcelona, Los Angeles, New Dehli and Jeddah, among others; by December, the premium format will win over new converts in Colombia, Ecuador, Thailand and Estonia, with even more to come. As part of its strategy, ICE Theaters teams with local distributors and top exhibition chains, lending “legitimacy” to a still-young brand, designed in-house, that outfits a row of LED panels on both sides of an auditorium and fills them with bespoke visuals extending the action onscreen (“It’s like surround sound but for light,” is how an ICE exec describes it).

Chris Hemsworth is proud of his daughter for her scene-stealing work on. However, that doesn't mean he's in a hurry to get her next project lined up.The handsome star walked the carpet at Netflix's Tudum: A Global Fan Event, held in São Paulo, Brazil, and he stopped to talk with ET's Denny Directo about working alongside his family.Hemsworth, who is starring in Netflix's blockbuster action sequel, is married to model and actress Elsa Pataky, who recently starred in the streaming platform's thriller .

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter After struggling at the domestic box office, this weekend’s two major releases — the Warner Bros. superhero adaptation “The Flash” and Disney’s Pixar adventure “Elemental” — failed to catch fire with international audiences. “The Flash” pulled in $75 million in its international box office debut, which doesn’t sound all that bad… except when considering the movie is available in 78 overseas markets. That means it failed to hit $1 million in the vast majority of the territories in play. China led the way with a lackluster $13.8 million, followed by Mexico with $9.4 million, the United Kingdom with $5.3 million, Korea with $3.7 million and Brazil with $3.5 million.

Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/DC’s The Flash sped into 78 overseas markets this weekend, grossing $75M, below the $85M-$95M we saw coming into the frame. With domestic’s slow-crawl three-day included, that makes for a $139M global opening. This is lower than projections, with general audiences not rushing out to see the deeper universe pic.

Naman Ramachandran Netflix has unveiled a new teaser for “The Archies,” a coming-of-age, live action musical set in 1960s India based on the teenagers of Riverdale. “The Archies” is a feature film adaptation of the Archie comics, which are hugely popular on the Indian subcontinent. The teaser, released during Netflix’s Tudum fan event, reveals that the film is set in 1964 in Riverdale, described on a railway sign as a “hill station,” a term dating back to colonial time that refers to a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain. One of the transport links servicing the hill stations are small mountain railway trains running on narrow gauge tracks, known affectionately in India as “toy trains” and the teaser opens with a shot of top train puffing into Riverdale station.

The Post noted in a review that called the flick “solidly entertaining.”The film is tracking to open in the $70 million range over the long Father’s Day and Juneteenth weekend, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Next in line was Pixar’s new animated adventure film “Elemental,” which grossed $11.8 million in its opening night on Friday. It could end up being Pixar’s lowest debut, wrote the blog Slashfilm.The family flick is set in a New York-esque metropolis inhabited by anthropomorphic wind, water, fire and Earth citizens, and is sweet but underwhelming, said The Post.“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” took third in the box office, raking in $8.1 million.