Warm Welcome For Climate Change Doc ‘The Territory’ – Specialty Box Office

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: With the exit of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot in what has been a lucrative post Labor Day weekend pre-pandemic, Disney swooped in and booked its 20th Century Studios horror title Barbarian. That pic, directed and written by Zach Cregger, follows a woman staying at an Airbnb, who discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. The movie grossed $3.8M on Friday (including $850K Thursday night previews) and is poised to make around $9M, possibly double digits.

Oliver Stone is in Venice this year to debut his latest documentary, Nuclear. Written alongside political scholar Joshua S. Goldstein, the film sets out to re-examine the role nuclear power can play in our lives and makes the case that the energy source is humanity’s only realistic alternative to fossil fuels in the fight against climate change. Deadline sat down with Stone and Goldstein prior to the film’s premiere on the Lido to discuss why the pair decided to link up and how the lengthy production process almost “took the life” out of Stone.

It’s a boy! Adriana Lima welcomed her third child, her first with boyfriend Andre Lemmers, on August 29.

Film premiere and headlines spilling from a trio of fests in full swing (Venice), just starting (Telluride) and queued up (Toronto) have indie exhibitors and distributors the most hopeful since Covid hit that a stream of new films could fire up the arthouse market.

K.J. Yossman Content studio Propogate, who are currently working on Netflix’s upcoming Anna Nicole Smith documentary, are opening a London office. The company has also appointed Catalina Ramirez and Dan Thunell to co-heads of Propagate International, the company’s global distribution arm. Ramirez has been upped from Propagate International’s vice president of sales and acquisitions. Her new role will include overseeing sales and distribution for LATAM, Asia, and Canada as well as development and production for the company’s Spanish-language content label Propagate Fuego. She will remain based in the L.A. office. Before joining Propogate in 2020, Ramirez worked at Gunpowder & Sky and Magnolia Pictures.

box office, there is a near-term question mark about what will happen next: Will recovery stall due to a paucity of Hollywood tentpole movies? Or will international theatrical decouple and find new drivers to maintain the momentum? The good news is that most of the international market’s top territories are now fully open and operating without significant restrictions on seating capacity. These include the U.K. and Ireland, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The smaller number of territories still laboring under restrictions nevertheless include some valuable ones: China, Turkey, Argentina, Hong Kong and Russia.

Similar to recent weeks, we’re still in a holding pattern at the international box office, awaiting major new wide studio releases. There were a few milestones this session, however, and Japan has in general been a bright spot with local pic One Piece Film: Red and the continued thrum of Top Gun: Maverick while the market does the bulk of the lifting to potentially push Jurassic World Dominion across the $1B mark worldwide.

Jonathan Cohen Billy Joel welcomed surprise guest Olivia Rodrigo Wednesday night during his 82nd consecutive sold-out show at New York’s Madison Square Garden for runs through her hit single “Deja Vu” and his own 1983 smash “Uptown Girl,” released nearly 20 years before Rodrigo was even born. Decked out in a plunging black top, a brown patterned skirt and black leather boots, Rodrigo saluted Joel’s influence on her songwriting with “Deja Vu,” which references both Joel and “Uptown Girl.” The pair embraced warmly following the latter. Beyond a steady stream of hits such as “Just the Way You Are,” “Allentown,” “Only the Good Die Young” and “My Life,” Wednesday’s show included rarities such as the opening “A Matter of Trust” (played for the first time since 2019 and featuring Joel on electric guitar rather than piano), “I Go to Extremes” and “The Downeaster Alexa” (with a ripping solo by guitarist Tommy Byrnes).

“I consider this land mine,” a Brazilian man, identified by onscreen text as a “settler,” informs the camera at one point during “The Territory.” The land in question is a section of the Amazon rainforest in the state of Rondônia, encircled by modern development, which is, in fact, the homeland and protected territory of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous people. Whether or not such legally recognized sovereignty is, in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, any match for white vibes is the subject of director Alex Pritz’s first feature, which won an Audience Award and a Jury prize at this January’s Sundance and is an issue-driven documentary gratifyingly interested in action as much as advocacy.

Altitude has boarded international sales and UK and Irish distribution on Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras’s Nan Goldin bio-pic All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, ahead of its world premiere at Venice and North American debut at Toronto.

K.J. Yossman New York and London-based American-European entertainment fund APX Group has appointed Andy Capper as chief operating officer and head of North American operations.He will oversee strategic and financial coordination of APX’s North America activity as well as business activities across the European divisions.

Casey Affleck shared a throwback photo from 2002 accompanied by a heartfelt message with his brother Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez after missing their Georgia wedding weekend.  "Good things are worth waiting for," he wrote on Instagram. "Here is to twists and turns, new beginnings, and finding new reservoirs of old love.  "Welcome to the family. Get ready for some real dysfunction! Kidding.

Continuing its hypersonic run, Paramount/Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick has, in its 13th weekend of release, crossed the $1.4B mark worldwide, lifting the cume to a touch over $1.403B through today.

“People are catching up on films,” is how one arthouse executive described the current moment in specialty, which echoes the slowdown in studio wide releases.

Two wide studio releases will hopefully prevent this summer from reaching another low at the box office after last weekend’s $67.3M. If there’s one movie that’s going to pull ahead, sources are betting on Crunchyroll’s Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. That distributor has proven in a short amount of time that they can draw a great deal of anime fans in a Friday through Sunday span. The Tetsuro Kodama directed animation movie is looking at anywhere from $12M-$15M, ahead of Universal’s genre lion-stalking film, Beast, starring Idris Elba; that pic hoping for at least double digits.

Sony’s Bullet Train was the global and international box office leader for the studios during its sophomore frame with an added $17M from 61 overseas markets for an offshore cume of $60M and global riding the rails past $100M for $114.5M through Sunday.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterJordan Peele’s science-fiction thriller “Nope” landed at the international box office, generating a so-so $6.4 million from 19 territories.The film had the biggest start in the United Kingdom and Ireland with $2.1 million, which ranked below the $2.6 million haul that the opening of Peele’s debut feature “Get Out” amassed in the same territory. In Australia, “Nope” scored $1.2 million, which falls below “Get Out’s” $1.4 million debut in the country.

J. Kim Murphy “Bullet Train” is maintaining the top slot at the box office this weekend, fending off the newcomers “Fall” and “Mack and Rita,” as well as the expanding slasher-comedy “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”Sony’s Brad Pitt action vehicle added $3.865 million on Friday. The film remains the widest release in the country with 4,357 locations.