The Force Awakens will cross $900M domestic at the box office today, and $2B worldwide tomorrow, Disney announced.
In related news, Lionsgate said today that Star Wars is partially at fault for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2‘s less-than-predicted performance, lessening the November movie’s numbers by “somewhere between $50M and $100M.” Don’t blame the players, blame the game? And maybe even the ever-more-eye-rolling trend of splitting adaptions into two parts… I saw both Mockingjays in the theater, but I gotta tell you, by the second movie I was pretty much already over it.
→ The sound we hear in The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren uses the Force has an unexpected source: A purring cat, Dave Acord tells Nerdist. Matthew Wood also talks about recording Ren’s mask dialogue with Adam Driver. (Acord also reveals there’s a sound from Raiders of the Lost Ark in the mix.) At The Daily Dot, Wood gets into even more detail about the archival sounds used in the new film, as well as the ADR process and other details.
→ I’ve never been particularly fond of the autograph racket that goes on in this fandom, but I gotta say, the latest controversy – involving Daisy Ridley – really takes the cake.
How long was the splitting “trend”, anyway? Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games… I think that’s it. Allegiant isn’t being split, and neither is Death Cure.
The Hobbit, which probably shouldn’t have been two movies as originally planned, let alone three. (Though you can argue that’s a whole different deal and it’s not like was unexpected from the man who somehow made King Kong, a movie that should barely fill 90 minutes, more than three hours long.)
I have no idea what Death Cure is, but the Allegiant adaption is being spit up. They were smart enough to give the second/fourth part a whole new name, Ascendant, but given that that franchise has done okay but never quite on the level of a THG or a HP, if it ‘underperforms’ that might be the last nail in the coffin. I have no idea if it even needs to be split, as I never made it through the second book in that series. I saw why they did it with HP and THG, I wasn’t able to muster up the enthusiasm for Mockingjay Part 2 that I felt for Part 1 this time. Even as I was watching it! But that’s just me… It may be you need something on the level of a Harry Potter or a Twilight to pull it off successfully: large dedicated fandom and gigantic doorstop books that look too long to be one movie.
Oops, forgot about the Hobbit. Of course, that adaptation wandered off the farthest, spreading out from one plot thread to three (Bilbo and the dwarves, Azog, and Dol Guldur), so it sort of makes sense.
At least they’re not just calling it part 1/part 2 anymore with Allegiant–although the retitling breaks the phonetic symbolism of “gent” in the last syllable. Wow.
Death Cure is the third novel in the Maze Runner series, the movie is slated for 2017.
Oh yeah, I recognize The Maze Runner but not the individual titles. If Divergent can’t pull it off, no way those will.
There was always Kill Bill vol 1 and 2…
Not a book adaptation.