Dune: Prophecy wasted relatively little time setting itself apart from the movies. In the season one premiere of the Dune prequel series, a war is violently declared by the killing of likely the youngest person ever murdered onscreen in director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune universe.
Dune: Prophecy wasted relatively little time setting itself apart from the movies. In the season one premiere of the Dune prequel series, a war is violently declared by the killing of likely the youngest person ever murdered onscreen in director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune universe.
Wine snobs can be some of the most insufferable people out there. This is displayed perfectly in Alexander Payne’s 2004 dramedy Sideways, if not just through the movie’s most famous line. As delivered by depressed oenophile Miles (Paul Giamatti): “If anyone orders merlot, I’m leaving. I am not drinking any f*cking merlot!” And with that, sales of merlot dropped straight into the barrel.
That sounds like it could be a story tied to the film, sort of like the unfounded rumor that sales of undershirts plummeted because Clark Gable didn’t wear one in a movie. But this is absolutely true. In a new feature marking the 20th anniversary of Sideways, winemaker Doug Margerum remembered the ripple effect that line had, saying everybody started switching to pinot noir instead of merlot. “We were having a hard time selling pinot then, but after the film came out, everyone wanted to drink it and sales skyrocketed. We went from having one page of pinots on the wine list to three.” There was even a Sideways pinot noir released a few years ago.
And this kept building, with sales of merlot continuing to drop while pinot noir – the preferred wine of Giamatti’s Miles – took off. Production even slowed down, with one master sommelier being quoted as saying, “The film had a massive impact on merlot. In many ways, it was necessary. Merlot was planted in vineyards where it should not have been. This led to overplantings. After the film, growers planted less of it.”
One person who could have never figured on such an impact would be admitted merlot fan Alexander Payne, who directed Sideways and co-wrote it with Jim Taylor. “As we were making Sideways, I thought it was just a nice little comedy and had no idea that it would ever stand the test of time. And the merlot line that supposedly changed the wine industry? Well, it was just a joke, one single line in a movie. Who could have ever predicted that?”
Payne and Taylor would end up winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, with the film also snagging four other nominations, including Best Picture. It would also sweep the Independent Spirit Awards, taking home six.
The post How Sideways put a cork in the wine industry’s merlot scene appeared first on JoBlo.
When part one of Kevin Costner’s planned multi-film epic Horizon: An American Saga tanked at the box office – taking in under $30 million on a reported $50 million budget – you really felt bad for the guy. Here was someone who had put over 20 years and millions of his own dollars into his passion project, only to see it pulled from theaters after just a few weeks. But it wasn’t only Chapter 1 that saw an impact: the rest of the four-part saga is suffering as well, with Chapter 2 being lassoed away from the calendar. Yet, while the future seems uncertain for Horizon, Kevin Costner is remaining optimistic.
Appearing at Deadline Contenders Los Angeles, Kevin Costner said he still hopes that Horizon will be seen to its conclusion. “I’m hoping, I’m dreaming, I’m meeting all the billionaires that we all hear about — they’re all hiding in the shadows.” And after Chapter 2, he’s moving onward to the remaining films. “I’m don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to make it and then I’m going to make the fourth one. And if you want to say ’the end’ at that point, then that’s the end.”
As of now, it feels that, sadly, Chapter 1 might be the end. Shortly after that first part of Horizon was pulled from theaters, it went to Max, marking a rather tragic turn for Kevin Costner, who is one of the biggest champions of the cinemagoing experience. Whether you’re a Costner fan or not (maybe you still hold a grudge over the Yellowstone debacle?), this is awful to see, especially since Chapter 2 had a release date lined up for this past summer.
Our own Chris Bumbray gave Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 a 7/10, saying that had Chapter 2 also been showing that day, he would have caught it immediately after. But with no clear path for that follow-up, it’s hard to say if we’ll ever get a chance to watch all four films consecutively.
Did you see Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1? Do you want to see Kevin Costner complete his Horizon epic?
The post Kevin Costner hopeful that he can finish his Horizon saga appeared first on JoBlo.
Poetry Comics Month, Day 17: Sky
Is Dwayne Johnson still as big of a star as he seems to think he is? That’s the question that will be at the tip of everyone’s tongue this weekend, with his latest four-quadrant family film, Red One, opening to an underwhelming $34 million domestically. While that’s not a truly terrible number, what makes it sting more than it would otherwise is that the movie carries an astronomical budget of at least $200 million, meaning the movie may – rightly or wrongly – be viewed as something of a flop.
Consider this: Black Adam, which has a reputation for being a flop, still opened with about twice what Red One did. Unless word-of-mouth is terrific, Red One might have difficulty crawling to $100 million domestically.
Yet, it may not be as big of a flop as some think. The fact is, it was designed as a streaming movie for Prime Video, so one could view the theatrical release as an extended tease for its inevitable streaming launch. With the holiday theme, I’d expect it to premiere on Prime within weeks, which may hurt its long-term box office viability. Still, it opened with about $9 million more than I thought it would, and the A-minus CinemaScore rating isn’t half bad.
Venom: The Last Dance slid into second place, with a third weekend total of $7.35 million, adding up to a $127 million total, posting a 54% decline from last week. While that’s not an amazing domestic total for a superhero film, overseas, Venom 3 has been a blockbuster, with it on the cusp of breaking $500 million internationally before long.
Lionsgate’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is on track to become their highest-grossing film of the year, making $5.4 million for a total of just under $20 million. It should be able to pass Lionsgate’s biggest earner of the year so far, The Strangers: Chapter One, which made $35 million domestically. Ouch – $35 million is their best? It’s been a BAD year for this studio.
Meanwhile, A24’s Heretic fell 52% – which is a solid number for a horror movie – to a second-weekend gross of $5.3 million and a $20.4 million total, which ain’t bad for a movie that cost under $10 million. The Wild Robot rounded out the top five with $4.3 million and a $137 million total, while Smile 2 started to wrap up its run with $2.9 million in sixth place. The $65 million total is far below the $100 million plus made by the first film, but it still performed well for an R-rated horror film.
Another movie that’s proven to be a word-of-mouth hit is Focus Features’ Conclave. The film only fell 28% this weekend and made $2.85 million for a $26 million gross. It’s nice to see an adult drama having such staying power, which is also the case for Sean Baker’s Anora, which is further down the chart in 10th place with $1.8 million and a $10.5 million gross for Neon.
The Filipino romantic comedy sequel Hello, Love, Again came out of nowhere to make $2.3 million on only 250 screens. It had the highest per-screen average of the week, with $9.3K per screen. Finally, Searchlight’s Sundance breakout, A Real Pain, had a solid wide break with $2.3 million in ninth place. We loved this indie gem (read our review), and it deserves to be seenI
Next weekend should give the box office a huge boost, with Hollywood hoping the Glicked phenomenon (Gladiator/Wicked) becomes the next Barbenheimer. Only time will tell!
The post Weekend Box Office: Red One has an underwhelming opening appeared first on JoBlo.
Have you ever wondered why, in the year 2024, we don’t have flying cars or instant teleportation the way some of our favorite movies and TV shows predicted we would? We look at entertainment from the 70’’s and 80’s and see fantastical inventions plastered on our screens of a future that never actually ever happened. Granted, who would want to live in the bleak futures of a Mad Max or Blade Runner but I’d gladly slide my small Pizza Hut pizza into a hydrator and have it come out a fully cooked delicious meal in seconds the way they did in Back To The Future Part II, which if you think about it: the future of Back To The Future Part II now takes place in our past!
For our newest series, we wanted to take a look at movies of the past and see how they predicted the future. What they got right, what they got wrong and even what may have been invented as a direct result of their inclusion in these movies. Writers have a fantastical mind, it is their job to create, of course they have the luxury of being able to come up with a concept without ever actually having to figure out if it is logical.
For someone like James Cameron, it would be a fever dream of a metallic torso holding kitchen knives dragging itself from an explosion that would plant the seed of an idea about a future destroyed by nuclear war and the rise of artificial intelligence, with a little time travel thrown in for good measure. The idea would lead to one of the most innovative low-budget films ever created (which has just gotten a controversial 4K re-release) where the vision of the future was not as rose-coloured as one may hope. As we approach the year in question, 2029 to be exact, in this video (embedded above) we take a look back at James Cameron’s seminal 1984 film The Terminator and figure out if Cameron himself was sent from the future to warn us of what was to come or simply just a darn good storyteller!
Here are some of the things we dig into:
In today’s world, Drones are not just used for modern warfare, where a member of our armed forces can take out an enemy from six thousand miles away, but also for filming some of our favorite movies, creating amazing displays in our skies and even as a toy for our children. What began as a way to vanquish our enemies, is now something we buy our five-year-old for Christmas!
Consider the recent Hollywood guild strikes and the battle they had to ensure AI didn’t steal jobs. With the rise of ChatGPT, writers fear that in the future studios will simply use artificial intelligence to craft their films and television programs. Many say that no artificial intelligence can ever match the humanity of a human, and right now if you ask ChatGPT to write something, the result is very mechanical, but with the incredible advancements in technology over just the past few years, how long is it until something can mimic true human emotion? And what other jobs are at stake? How soon before AI technology replaces manual labour, coding, drivers and more?
Technically speaking, travelling through time is possible. I am merely a writer of all things entertainment who is fairly good at research, the realities of time travel do not fall under my area of expertise, but if you want to understand the true complexities of time travel and wormholes, check out the writings of Kip Thorne. If you want to keep it movie-related, check out his excellent book “The Science of Interstellar” where he discusses how the film Interstellar, which he consulted on, is actually one of the most realistic looks at how time travel would and could actually work.
The question is: can time travel ever truly exist as depicted in something like The Terminator? For many, the idea seems to far fetched. If time travel were ever to be possible, wouldn’t we have been made aware of it by now? Wouldn’t some future person or machine have come back in time by now? Well, who is to say they haven’t?! Perhaps there are strict rules for traveling back in time such as you must blend in with your surroundings. Who is to say the person you walked by on the street an hour ago wasn’t someone from a distant future? You can’t, can you? But it would seem that as far as being able to strap into a device and travel through time, we aren’t quite there… yet!
For more on what The Terminator got right and wrong about the future watch the video above!
The post The Terminator: What James Cameron’s classic got right about the future is pretty terrifying appeared first on JoBlo.
From the best decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket to a ludicrously expensive card in the original game—and a bunch of other updates, guides, and recommendations in between—here are the most helpful tips we published this week.
From the best decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket to a ludicrously expensive card in the original game—and a bunch of other updates, guides, and recommendations in between—here are the most helpful tips we published this week.
The bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul may have been a disappointment for viewers, but they helped make it a tremendous success for Netflix, seeing upwards of 65 million concurrent of the highly-anticipated fight…which means far more than that were ticked off by the constant streaming interruptions.
While the numbers won’t officially be known until later in the week, it was determined by Netflix over the weekend that 60 million households were tuned into the Tyson and Paul fight, a little under a quarter of their total subscribers. With 6,000 bars/restaurants also streaming the match, it was also found to be the most commercially distributed combat sports event ever.
But whether at home or at the watering hole, the Tyson and Paul fight was marred by seemingly constant lags — and we’re talking about the streaming itself. According to Downdetector, there were around 90,000 reports of streaming issues with Netflix even ahead of the main event. While there were fewer reports during the headline fight, there were still serious problems with buffering, pixelization, and crashing. Even still, trying to watch the Tyson / Paul match on Netflix was almost nothing but headaches, especially for those hosting watch parties or who placed bets.
With Netflix laying out their plans to get in on streaming live sporting events, they have their work cut out for them if the Mike Tyson / Jake Paul bout is anything to go off of. Not only did they snag streaming rights to WWE Raw for $5 billion but they also have two NFL games set for Christmas Day: the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers. With all of those teams holding winning records (as of publication) and the Chiefs themselves undefeated and defending Super Bowl champs, Netflix has a lot on the line here. If you thought people were irritated with Friday night’s service, wait until you get on the wrong side of a football fan! Raw will debut on Netflix on January 6th.
Mike Tyson and Jake Paul would end up going the full eight rounds, with Paul winning by unanimous decision. Also unanimous: how terrible the streaming quality was.
What are your thoughts on how Netflix presented the fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul? Share your thoughts and frustrations with us below.
The post Mike Tyson / Jake Paul fight KO’d by Netflix streaming issues appeared first on JoBlo.