On this week’s Screen Talk, co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio dig into Ryan Coogler’s $90-million period vampire musical “Sinners,” starring Michael B. Jordan as twins Smoke and Stack, as well as the boffo box office and the controversial deal.
Warners opened the movie to a bigger-than-expected $48 million Easter weekend, and a weak $15 million overseas. The only other horror film to ever earn an A CinemaScore was James Cameron’s sequel “Aliens” in 1986. It’s rare and bodes well for a broader audience. Nearly half of the opening-day audience was Black, which increased to 38 percent by the weekend’s end.
Warners has bragging rights over this one and, with “A Minecraft Movie,” enjoyed two movies grossing over $40 million. It spells some relief for embattled studio heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. The movie is original and unusual, and thoughtful and entertaining enough to warrant success. It’s exactly what we have all been clamoring for timid Hollywood to do. Anne commends Michael De Luca for taking this shot.
The controversy is how so many media analysts, including The New York Times, gauged these grosses and the film’s chances of success. There was undue skepticism, which people like the Russos and Ben Stiller called out for their framing of the film’s success after opening weekend. Remember, we have PVOD coming down the pike, where Warners can take a huge chunk of the at-home gross. Plus, there’s a landmark deal at play with Coogler taking ownership rights of the film after 25 years, and not the studio. It’s seeing an uptick in grosses throughout weekdays which is rare for a horror movie, these often take a sharp fall. Plus, 70mm screenings on weekdays at the AMC Lincoln Center are regularly sold out; it’s become the hardest ticket in town.
The movie scored rave reviews, as most of Coogler’s movies have done. All of his directed films are in the 80s on Metacritic, except for the “Black Panther” sequel. And “Black Panther” was the only Marvel film to be nominated for Best Picture. He elevated the “Creed” franchise. He deserved the unusual deal he got from Warner Bros. to take rights ownership after 25 years.
Meanwhile, we have some new entries at Cannes. As we expected, they added Lynne Ramsay’s Jennfier Lawrence and Robert Pattinson vehicle “Die, My Love” in competition. And Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut “Chronology of Water, an Un Certain Regard entry, will compete for the Camera d’Or. Ethan Coen’s “Honey, Don’t” starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans is a Midnight movie, whatever that means.
Of course on the TV side with “The White Lotus,” “The Pitt,” “1923” and “Landman” in the rear view, we’re now reveling in Craig Mazin’s “The Last of Us” Season 2, which broke our hearts and many others’ last week, as well as Season 2 of Tony Gilroy’s “Star Wars” TV prequel “Andor,” the best “Star Wars” pinoff since “Mandalorian,” starring the fabulous Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgård. We will dig into that next week.
Anne caught up with “The Accountant 2” from producer-star Ben Affleck and director Gavin O’Connor, who is a strong director of actors and action. It follows up on the first 2016 film, reuniting the autistic accountant (Affleck) with his brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), who is now a lethal assassin. So is the accountant when he wants to be. The movie veers from character study and brother bonding to an action nail-biter. Cynthia Addai-Robinson returns as agent Marybeth Medina, horrified by the ways the brothers extract their info.
Neither of us loved Daniel Minahan’s “On Swift Horses,” starring Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Will Poulter in a clunky period melodrama. We root for Edgar-Jones to get together with Elordi’s footloose veteran turned gambler, whose performance is modeled after early Montgomery Clift, rather than his romance with Diego Calva. It’s a sad film where nobody gets what they want, and the characters are lost in their own suffering.
Last up, we ask what took the Academy so long to demand that members watch every film in every category in order to vote for them? See all the Academy’s new rules here.
Listen to the episode below or watch in the video above.
