Gabe Cohn

That’s not quite what Disney had wanted to hear after this weekend’s release of “Toy Story 4.” The studio had expected its latest animated blockbuster to debut with around $22 million more than that in domestic ticket sales — but $118 million is what it got.

Even the expected sales of at least $140 million wouldn’t have reached the $182.7 million that the previous Disney-Pixar movie, “Incredibles 2,” opened with last year. But the gulf between the two movies’ totals suggests that perhaps “Toy Story,” Pixar’s longest-running series, has limited power to convince families that they need to rush out for a fourth installment, which for many is a tougher sell than an initial sequel.

That being said, the franchise’s name recognition still counts for something. “Toy Story 4” made well over double the $50.8 million that “Coco” earned during its first weekend in domestic theaters in 2017. And it had the third-best opening North American theaters have seen so far this year, behind two other Disney releases: “Captain Marvel” ($153.4 million) and “Avengers: Endgame” ($357.1 million).

The studio said “Toy Story 4” brought in an additional $120 million internationally this weekend.

There was only one other brand-new release in the top 10 this weekend, the horror movie “Child’s Play,” from Orion Pictures, which opened at No. 2 with $14 million in domestic ticket sales. The movie is a re-imagining of the 1988 slasher film of the same name, which gave birth to the killer doll known as Chucky.

Third place went to Disney’s “Aladdin,” which made $12.2 million in its fifth weekend in American theaters, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. “Men in Black: International” dropped to fourth in its second weekend, bringing in $10.8 million and continuing to be a disappointment for Sony. The animated “Secret Life of Pets 2,” from Universal and Illumination, rounded out the top five with $10.3 million.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/movies/toy-story-4-box-office.html" id="04c8bb65-c019-31e3-a1fa-82c0681c9279">The New York Times</a>.

'Toy Story 4' tops Box Office, but falls short of studio's hopes

“To $118 million, not beyond!”

Sony’s “Men in Black: International” sold $28.5 million in domestic tickets Friday through Sunday. While that was enough to make it the best-selling movie in North American theaters this weekend, it was a moderately disappointing result given that analysts expected sales above $30 million — and that the movie’s production budget was reportedly over $100 million.

True to its name, “Men in Black: International” took in more overseas; according to the studio, it sold an additional $73.7 million in tickets internationally this weekend.

The sequel replaces Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, the stars of the first three “Men in Black” blockbusters, with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, pitting the new pair against alien invaders abroad. Many critics found that formula stale, and the movie holds a 24% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Nearly everything here reminds you of something else, often better, cleverer, funnier,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times. (“‘Innocuous!’ would be my pull quote,” she added.)

It’s the second weekend in a row to be led by a sequel that failed to meet expectations. “The Secret Life of Pets 2,” from Universal and Illumination, underperformed but nonetheless opened at No. 1. That movie fell to second place this weekend, with $23.8 million in domestic sales. Disney’s “Aladdin,” another family-friendly option that’s been out for four weekends now, came in third, with $16.7 million.

And things are looking dire for “Dark Phoenix.” That “X-Men” sequel from Fox sold just $9 million in domestic tickets this weekend, its second in theaters. That’s a 73% drop from last weekend according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data, and a feeble figure considering the movie’s reported $200 million budget. The movie also earned $24.2 million overseas, according to the studio.

“Rocketman,” Paramount’s Elton John biopic, rounded out the top five with $8.8 million in domestic sales.

Warner Bros.’ “Shaft” sequel, the only newcomer in the top 10 other than “Men in Black: International,” also disappointed in its first weekend, selling just $8.3 million in tickets — well below expectations.

'Men in black international' leads a parade of slumping sequels

The latest entry in the “Men in Black” series arrived at the top of the box office this weekend, but its black suits aren’t as sharp as they once were.

'Men in black: international' leads a parade of slumping sequels

Disney’s live-action “Aladdin,” with Will Smith as the blue genie, brought in around $86.1 million domestically from Friday through Sunday, according to the studio. Disney says it expects the North American total for the long Memorial Day weekend, Friday through Monday, to reach $105 million, exceeding analysts’ expectations.

That is a strong showing for a movie that cost a reported $183 million to make, particularly given the additional $121 million the studio says the movie made overseas through Sunday.

“Aladdin” is the latest in Disney’s series of live-action remakes of its animated classics. The previous entry, Tim Burton’s “Dumbo,” earned $45 million in North America in its opening weekend in March.

Other than Smith, the new “Aladdin” doesn’t come with much star power: Mena Massoud, a Canadian actor whose most prominent role had been as a recurring character in the Amazon series “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” plays Aladdin opposite British actress Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine.

Disney can now say that it is behind the top three highest-grossing openings so far in 2019. Only the Disney-Marvel movies “Captain Marvel” (opening weekend: $153.4 million) and “Avengers: Endgame” ($357.1 million) had better openings than “Aladdin.”

And “Avengers: Endgame” is still making money. That superhero movie came in third this weekend with around $16.8 million in domestic ticket sales from Friday to Sunday, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. Second place went to Lionsgate’s “John Wick: Chapter 3,” which sold $24.4 million in tickets over the three-day period.

The only other newcomer in the top five was Sony’s “Brightburn,” a superhero origin story that mixes in elements of horror. Both genres have produced notable box-office successes in recent years, and “Brightburn” brought in around $7.5 million through Sunday; the movie’s reported budget was $6 million.

United Artists’s “Booksmart,” the critically lauded directorial debut of actress Olivia Wilde, landed in sixth place with $6.5 million in ticket sales over the three-day period.

'Aladdin' gives Disney another live-action hit

This time last year, Disney was picking up the pieces after a notoriously disappointing opening for “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” The studio had better luck this year — with a genie’s help.

But the Marvel heroes still came out on top.

Disney-Marvel’s behemoth “Avengers: Endgame” led the box office for a third weekend in a row, selling $63.1 million in tickets domestically. The movie’s North American ticket sales now total $723.5 million, higher than the $700.1 million earned by “Black Panther” and the $678.8 million for “Avengers: Infinity War” over their theatrical runs last year.

Overseas, “Avengers: Endgame” sold $102.3 million in tickets this weekend, which brings its global gross to a dizzying $2.49 billion since its release in late April, according to the studio.

It wasn’t all great news for Disney-Marvel this weekend, though: Domestic sales for “Endgame” fell 57% week over week. That is a decidedly steeper slump than that of “Infinity War,” which dropped around 46% in its third week.

The decrease allowed Pikachu to come within striking distance.

“Pokémon Detective Pikachu” opened this weekend to $58 million in ticket sales. With the title’s animated Pokémon character voiced by Ryan Reynolds, the movie follows a young man (Justice Smith) who teams up with Pikachu to solve the mystery of his father’s apparent killing. Directed by Rob Letterman, the movie received a modestly positive response from critics (it currently holds a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

According to Comscore, which compiles box-office data, “Pokémon Detective Pikachu” actually did slightly better per theater than “Avengers: Endgame.” “Pikachu” sold an average of $13,803 in tickets at each of its 4,202 locations, while “Endgame” averaged $13,525 at 4,662 American theaters.

In a distant third was United Artists’ “The Hustle,” a comedy in which Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway play rival con artists. The movie received mostly weak reviews and opened to $13.5 million in domestic sales this weekend.

Sony’s “The Intruder,” a thriller that opened as the top non-Avengers movie a week ago, brought in an additional $6.6 million this weekend to land in fourth place.

This article originally appeared in <a id="641c15b1-6c8d-3c40-a3f2-17afedd6188f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/movies/pokemon-detective-pikachu-box-office-avengers-endgame.html">The New York Times</a>.

Solid opening for 'Detective Pikachu' as 'Avengers: Endgame' rolls on

Warner Bros.’ “Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” an animation-live action hybrid centered on a creature whose powers include electricity and cute marketing, finally provided the heroes of “Avengers: Endgame” with some real box-office competition this weekend.

Doeringer, known for his appropriations of works by famous contemporary artists, had been holed up in his studio on a graffiti-speckled block in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, working on his new project. On Friday, he will debut “Christy’s,” a show at the Chelsea gallery space High Line Nine curated by A Hug From the Art World. Doeringer will be exhibiting and selling bootleg versions of artworks up for auction this month at the Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale at Christie’s New York.

The authentic versions of the works, on view at Christie’s New York beginning Saturday, include pieces by Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Their expected sale prices reach well into the millions.

The asking price for Doeringer’s copies? A flat $1,000 each.

“In the art world, auction prices are pretty much the only public record of what a work is worth, so it sort of sets the value of artists’ work,” Doeringer said. “The idea was to take this event and knock it off and make these multimillion dollar works of art available for a lot less.”

On the studio walls hung Doeringer’s versions of works by Frank Stella, Wayne Thiebaud, Kaws, Giorgio Morandi, Rauschenberg and Warhol. The knockoffs are smaller than the pieces they’re based on and with clear imperfections — a wobbly line here, a visibly pasted-on bit there — but instantly recognizable.

“They’ll fool you from a distance,” Doeringer said. “They won’t fool you close up.”

Doeringer, 44, who has an MFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, has made his bootlegs of famous art since 2001, when he began selling homemade copies of works by artists like Elizabeth Peyton, John Currin and Damien Hirst from a stand he set up on West 24th Street, near galleries that was showing some of the very work he was appropriating.

He was inspired, he said, by vendors selling knockoff handbags on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan.

Since then, he’s exhibited in actual galleries, and recently started making more altered riffs on famous works. (“Those in search of exact look-alikes, beware,” Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times in a review of Doeringer’s 2014 exhibition, “Paintings &amp; Sculpture,” which featured his takes on Warhol soup cans at the now-shuttered Lower East Side gallery Mulherin &amp; Pollard. “These works are not copies as much as updates based on current company designs.”)

What does Christie’s think of Doeringer’s latest imitations?

“We’re flattered,” Alex Rotter, the chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, said in an email. “Whether it is art or music, a good bootleg version reminds you of an experience that you enjoyed and want to hold onto. We hope people will come and experience the original artworks at Christie’s as well as the bootleg versions in Chelsea — both are free and open to the public. I may do some shopping myself.”

Making the bootlegs — Doeringer is creating versions of around 30 artworks for the “Christy’s” auction — involves working backward. For a knockoff of Warhol’s “Double Elvis,” a silk-screen portrait of two identical, overlapping images of Elvis Presley in cowboy regalia, Doeringer found a digital version of the original photo Warhol used — a publicity still from the Don Siegel western “Flaming Star” — and created a stencil from it. So Doeringer’s version, titled “Andy Warhol (Double Elvis),” was essentially made using a digital approximation of Warhol’s method.

For a collage copy of Thiebaud’s “Eating Figures (Quick Snack),” a painting of a man and a woman sitting holding hot dogs and drinks, Doeringer painted a white background and chair legs onto canvas and stuck on top of it a digital print of the two people taken from an image of the original painting — which he pulled from the Christie’s website.

For an impromptu in-studio demonstration of how he created a scaled-down version of Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit,” an iconic stainless steel sculpture that Christie’s estimates will sell for $50 million to $70 million, Doeringer inflated (by mouth) one of several plastic rabbits he bought online. Its shape, it had to be said, was strikingly similar to Koons’ sculpture — though it was also translucent neon yellow and had a cartoon face.

“It’s not exactly right,” he said, holding out the fully inflated bunny. “But it’s pretty close.”

‘Christy’s’

Through May 30, High Line Nine, highlinenine.com.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/arts/design/eric-doeringer-christies-auction-andy-warhol-robert-rauschenberg.html" id="e9f5b059-a8a0-3cac-ae95-f0fe4a316e95">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — “I’ve never actually had to go to court over one of these things,” Eric Doeringer said last week, standing in front of a wall of his latest artworks. “Generally, when they ask me to cease and desist, I do that.”

Move Over, Richard Prince. Here Comes Bootleg Art From 'Christy's'

Irish playwright Enda Walsh, who wrote the book for the theatrical adaptation of Carney’s film “Once,” has written the book for the new show. And Like “Once,” about a busking folk musician, “Sing Street” is also set in Dublin — albeit in the wild-haired mid-1980s.

The show, about a teenager who starts a band to impress a girl, will have music and lyrics by Carney and Gary Clark, who was the frontman of the Scottish pop band Danny Wilson, which got its start around the time that “Sing Street” is set.

Rebecca Taichman, who won a Tony Award in 2017 for her production of Paula Vogel’s “Indecent,” is slated to direct.

The new musical has big shoes to fill. After a run in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “Once” debuted off-Broadway at New York Theater Workshop in 2011. Transferring to Broadway, the production played 1,167 regular performances and won eight Tony Awards, including best musical, best direction of a musical (for John Tiffany) and best book of a musical, for Walsh. (His adaptation of the novel “Grief is the Thing With Feathers” just opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse.)

The theater’s upcoming season will also include “Sanctuary City,” a new play by Martyna Majok, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for “Cost of Living.” The play will be directed by Rebecca Frecknall, who is fresh off the success of her London production of Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke,” which won an Olivier Award earlier this month.

“Sanctuary City” centers on a newly naturalized teenager’s decision to marry her undocumented friend. It was originally slated to debut as part of the theater’s 2018-19 season, but subsequently postponed. In an email, the theater cited scheduling conflicts as the reason for the delay.

Also featured in the season are “Runboyrun” and “In Old Age,” a pair of plays by Mfoniso Udofia that are part of “The Ufot Cycle,” a series of her plays that focus on a single family in examining the history of Nigerian immigration in America. They will be directed by Loretta Greco and Awoye Timpo. Another pair of plays from the cycle had their New York debuts at New York Theater Workshop in 2016.

Two more productions for the theater’s season will be announced at a later date.

This article originally appeared in <a id="92f8a58b-82a5-3b15-a178-61ca966ecddd" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/theater/sing-street-new-york-theater-workshop.html">The New York Times</a>.

'Once' creators will reunite for stage version of 'Sing Street'

NEW YORK — Members of the creative team that made “Once” into a Tony Award-winning stage show have a new music-themed movie adaptation on tap: “Sing Street,” based on the 2016 film written and directed by John Carney, will open at New York Theater Workshop next season.

First, the physical: SummerStage’s main venue has undergone a $5.5 million renovation, with a new stage, canopy, new LED screens, sound system, lighting and improvements away from the stage for both general audience members (raised bleacher seating) and those in the VIP area (a new balcony).

Good news for musicians: SummerStage has also built new dressing rooms.

“It started with the need to replace the canopy on our stage,” the City Parks Foundation’s executive director, Heather Lubov, said in a phone interview.

“As we thought about it, we really thought the venue needed a refresh overall,” she said.

Along with these changes comes a change to the way the festival approached booking: SummerStage signed on with the global initiative Keychange, which asks festivals to pledge to a 50-50 gender balance in their programming.

“We always go into a season looking to book a very diverse set of artists,” Lubov said. But, she added, “This is the first year that we’ve hit 50-50.”

The full lineup includes more than 100 performances, most of them free, in 18 parks across the city.

In addition to King and Durand Jones &amp; the Indications, the main Central Park space will host the R&amp;B; singer Corinne Bailey Rae; the New Orleans bounce musician Big Freedia; the jazz musicians Jack DeJohnette and Ravi Coltrane; the indie rock acts Japanese Breakfast and Alvvays; a Latin Grammy Awards-related event and many more, in addition to previously announced benefit shows from George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Kurt Vile, the B-52s and others. Merce Cunningham’s centennial will be recognized, and events will commemorate the 50th anniversaries of the Harlem Cultural Festival and the Stonewall Riots.

A full lineup is available at cityparksfoundation.org/summerstage.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/arts/music/summerstage-renovation.html" id="31cf4916-ffd2-36d6-a89d-c5116d7a284d">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — When the R&amp;B; singer Emily King and the soul group Durand Jones &amp; the Indications open the newly minted Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage festival in Central Park in June, they will be kicking off a new era in more ways than one.

SummerStage Will Have a New Feel This Season

It worked fairly well for both of them.

Warner Bros.’ “The Curse of La Llorona,” the latest horror movie from some of the producers of the popular “Conjuring” series, topped the domestic box office with $26.5 million in ticket sales. That’s a solid start; the movie reportedly cost just $9 million to make. While it pales in comparison to the $53.5 million that “The Nun,” a recent “Conjuring” offshoot, made during its opening weekend in September, it is above the roughly $21 million opening weekend that analysts expected for “La Llorona.”

Directed by Michael Chaves, “La Llorona” stars Linda Cardellini as Anna, a widow. The plot involves Anna and her two children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Sam (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), being haunted by La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez), a weeping woman based on a figure associated with Mexican folklore. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the movie “an enjoyably old-fashioned ghost story.”

Warner Bros. also took the No. 2 spot with its lighthearted superhero movie “Shazam!,” which brought in $17.3 million during its third weekend. Its domestic gross is now $121.3 million.

The other new movie this weekend was Fox’s faith-based “Breakthrough,” which landed in third place with $11.1 million. Based on a 2015 incident in which a Missouri teenager survived after being submerged for 15 minutes in a frozen lake, the movie stars Chrissy Metz as a mother who prays for her son (Marcel Ruiz) to make a seemingly impossible medical recovery.

Disney’s “Captain Marvel,” in its seventh week, rose from sixth place last week to fourth, earning another $9.1 million this weekend. The movie, which was the debut of Brie Larson’s superhero, now has a cumulative domestic total of $400 million — just in time for Larson to outpace herself as part of the “Avengers” ensemble this week.

'Curse of La Llorona' is No 1 as Box Office braces for more 'Avengers'

With “Avengers: Endgame” positioned to wipe out any competitors come Friday, only a couple of studios dared to roll out new movies this weekend.

'Curse of La Llorona' is No. 1 as Box Office braces for more 'Avengers'

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/movies/curse-of-la-llorona-box-office.html" id="9abd1d34-c4c1-3841-abcc-e7589446560d">The New York Times</a>.

'Curse of La Llorona' Is No. 1 as Box Office Braces for More 'Avengers'

Warner Bros.’ “Shazam!” made $25.1 million domestically, a solid sum that kept it in first place after a strong debut last weekend.

That PG-13 film centers on a teenager (Asher Angel) who can transform into a hero with an adult body (Zachary Levi) by speaking the word “shazam.” Based on a DC Comics character, "Shazam!” has a jaunty and lighthearted tone, and its continued box-office success provides further evidence of the success of Warner Bros.’ shift away from the dark mood of “Suicide Squad” and “Justice League.”

“Shazam!” picked up an additional $35.9 million outside of North America this weekend, according to Warner Bros., which brings the film’s worldwide gross to $258.8 million. That’s more than double the roughly $100 million the movie cost to make.

But a mix of wisecracks and superpowers is no guarantee of success, as evidenced by another new movie: Lionsgate’s “Hellboy,” financed by Millennium Media.

That film, a bloody, R-rated affair with a cherry-red, semi-demonic superhero (David Harbour) at its helm, landed in third place with a dreary $12 million in North American theaters this weekend, well below analysts’ expectations. A reboot of the Guillermo del Toro movies (themselves based on comic books by Mike Mignola), the new “Hellboy” was directed by Neil Marshall, with Harbour taking over the title role from Ron Perlman. It had a production budget of $50 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

Though it keeps the unserious tone that helped del Toro’s movies develop a cult following and stand out from other superhero stories, the new “Hellboy” arrived to poor reviews from critics — it currently holds a 15 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

More successful was Universal’s “Little,” which landed in second place with $15.5 million, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. It had a reported production budget of around $20 million.

“Little,” a comedy directed by Tina Gordon, is like “Shazam!” in reverse: The story is about an adult CEO (Regina Hall) who gets transformed into her 13-year-old self (Marsai Martin).

Paramount’s “Pet Sematary,” based on the novel by Stephen King, came in fourth place with $10 million domestically.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/movies/shazam-hellboy-box-office.html" id="1c152204-9503-3182-af9f-f324a6d6da27">The New York Times</a>.

Two superheroes, both alike in not taking themselves too seriously, had very different experiences at the box office this weekend.

'Shazam!' Keeps Box-Office Lead as 'Hellboy' Flounders

The annual prize has been awarded since 1960 to creative people seen as having made an outstanding contribution to American culture. It is awarded by the MacDowell Colony for artists in New Hampshire.

“Charles has been a leading figure in the conceptual art movement on the West Coast for more than 40 years,” Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Works by Gaines, who is based in Los Angeles, have been exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has become known for politically attuned, conceptual multimedia pieces like “Skybox I,” in which three LED panels displaying historical texts on oppression, colonialism and class gradually transform into what look like stars in deep space; and “Manifesto 2,” an installation that blends atonal music with four revolutionary manifestoes, including ones by Olympe de Gouges and Malcolm X. He has also taught at the influential California Institute of the Arts since 1989.

The panel that awarded Gaines the MacDowell Medal included Philbin; writer Hilton Als; curator Naima J. Keith; and artists Barbara Kruger and Arthur Simms. Simms is also on the board of directors of the MacDowell Colony, which was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian MacDowell, a pianist.

The colony has provided residencies to thousands of artists and writers, including James Baldwin, Meredith Monk and Taylor Mac. Past recipients of the MacDowell Medal include Robert Frost, Georgia O’Keeffe and Toni Morrison.

This article originally appeared in <a id="09f07085-0f13-46e4-95b4-b9d4bceeb0e3" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/arts/charles-gaines-edward-macdowell-medal.html">The New York Times</a>.

Charles Gaines to receive MacDowell Colony honors

Charles Gaines, a conceptual artist whose most recent works have taken a turn for the political, has been named the latest recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal, the MacDowell Colony announced Sunday.

But that figure fell slightly below analysts’ expectations of around $50 million, and overall made for a moderately disappointing opening for the Tim Burton film, which reportedly had a production budget of $170 million.

An additional $71 million in overseas sales brings its global weekend total to $116 million.

Like the animated original, Burton’s “Dumbo” follows the trials and eventual triumph of an elephant outcast. Unlike the original, the new film is led by famous flesh-and-blood actors: Danny DeVito, Colin Farrell, Eva Green and Michael Keaton. It’s a darker (if PG-rated) take on the story, with DeVito playing the owner of a scrappy circus that gets bought by a powerful big-city entrepreneur and amusement-park owner (Keaton), who intends to exploit the circus’ discovery of Dumbo, the flying elephant.

“Dumbo” is the latest in a string of live-action, CGI-buttressed Disney remakes. Its slight underperformance may be due in part to the unenthusiastic reception it received from most critics — it currently holds a 50 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

By comparison, last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh tale from Disney, “Christopher Robin,” received 72 percent positive reviews, and 2017’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast” holds 71 percent. Remakes of “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” are slated for release later this year.

There probably wasn’t much competition between “Dumbo” and this weekend’s other big movie.

Universal’s “Us,” Jordan’s Peele’s family-unfriendly follow-up to his landmark 2017 feature debut, “Get Out,” easily landed in second place, selling $33.6 million in tickets, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. That’s more than enough to send its cumulative sales past the $100 million mark: after two weekends, the film has now made about $128.2 million domestically.

'Dumbo' falls short of box-office expectations but still comes in 1st

Nearly eight decades after the 1941 original, Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” arrived in theaters this weekend to $45 million in ticket sales, topping the domestic box office.

Nearly eight decades after the 1941 original, Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” arrived in theaters this weekend to $45 million in ticket sales, topping the domestic box office. But that figure fell slightly below analysts’ expectations of around $50 million, and overall made for a moderately disappointing opening for the Tim Burton film, which reportedly had a production budget of $170 million. An additional $71 million in overseas sales brings its global weekend total to $116 million.

“Dumbo” is the latest in a string of live-action, CGI-buttressed Disney remakes. Its slight underperformance may be due in part to the unenthusiastic reception it received from most critics — it currently holds a 50 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. By comparison, last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh tale from Disney, “Christopher Robin,” received 72 percent positive reviews, and 2017’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast” holds 71 percent. Remakes of “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” are slated for release later this year.

That puts “Us” slightly ahead of where 2018’s “Halloween” was after its second weekend. “Halloween,” which carried both the name recognition and baggage of a 40-year-old franchise, had a North American total of about $126.7 million by that point. But it also had a significantly higher debut weekend ($77.5 million versus the $70.3 million brought in by “Us”).

The other newcomer in the top five was Pure Flix’s “Unplanned,” an R-rated Christian drama about a young woman who founds an anti-abortion organization. That movie opened to $6.1 million this weekend, landing in fifth place. Neon’s “The Beach Bum,” the latest comedy from director Harmony Korine which stars Matthew McConaughey as a Florida pothead, flopped with just $1.8 million in domestic sales.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/31/movies/dumbo-box-office-us.html" id="82423d56-12e7-358e-a163-92a7270d8b30">The New York Times</a>.

“Dumbo” was no runt — but it was no mammoth hit, either.

'Dumbo' Falls Short of Box-Office Expectations but Still Comes in 1st

Universal’s “Us,” the latest politically resonant horror movie from Peele, sold an estimated $70.3 million in tickets over the weekend, easily leading the domestic box office and more than doubling the opening-weekend ticket sales of $33.4 million for Peele’s smash-hit directorial debut, “Get Out.”

It makes sense that audiences were primed to see “Us”: When “Get Out” was released, Peele was still best known for sketch comedy, not directing horror movies. The runaway success of “Get Out” (it went on to gross about $175 million) was a product of euphoric reviews and strong word-of-mouth as the movie dominated the cultural discussion in the days and weeks after its release.

Even so, few predicted this level of success for “Us.” Analysts expected its first-weekend ticket sales to land closer to the $40 million mark.

The movie stars Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex as a family tormented by their evil, scissor-wielding doppelgängers. The film’s generally strong reviews (it holds a 94 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) likely helped sustain excitement going into this weekend; many critics said the movie is both scarier and more ambitious than “Get Out,” although perhaps lacking that film’s clarity.

The promise of Peele’s scares-with-a-message was more than enough to deliver “Us” the No. 1 spot. It unseated Disney’s “Captain Marvel,” which landed in second place with about $35 million in its third weekend, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data.

Both “Us” and “Captain Marvel” are diverse movies, with the former led by black actors and a black director and the latter starring a female superhero, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film to do so.

Third place went to Paramount’s animated “Wonder Park,” which sold $9 million in tickets. And CBS Films and Lionsgate’s romantic drama “Five Feet Apart” came in a close fourth, with about $8.8 million. Both of those movies were in their second weekends.

Jordan Peele is holding a new mirror up to society, and this weekend proved just how many moviegoers want a look at its reflection.

Jordan Peele scores bigger hit with 'us

<h1>Disney-Marvel can breathe easy. Their latest superhero origin story, the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe dedicated to a female superhero, sold an estimated $69.3 million in tickets nationwide this weekend, bringing its North American total to around $266.2 million.</h1>

That’s a higher figure than the lifetime domestic gross of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” ($259.8 million), and already makes “Captain Marvel” the 13th-best-selling film in the current 21-movie Marvel series — with room to grow.

“Captain Marvel” has done well internationally, too, with $120 million in overseas sales this weekend, according to the studio, for a global total of $760 million. While the figures aren’t earth-shattering, they indicate a solid success for Disney-Marvel.

That success came despite attempts by trolls to derail “Captain Marvel.” Before its release, the film was the target of efforts at online sabotage by users apparently lashing out against its star, Brie Larson, who has been outspoken in her support of more diverse representation in Hollywood movies. The campaign prompted review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes to make major changes to its long-standing rules, including the elimination of audience reviews for movies that have not yet been released.

Free from any targeted online attack was Paramount’s “Wonder Park,” an animated family movie about a young girl who dreams up plans for an amusement park and sees them colorfully brought to life. That movie sold $16 million in tickets domestically this weekend, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. While a far cry from “Captain Marvel,” the figure was more than enough to land “Wonder Park” in second place.

The only other newcomer in the top five was Lionsgate’s “Five Feet Apart,” in third. The movie, about a couple whose shared genetic disorder forces them to maintain physical distance from each other despite their growing romance, sold $13.2 million in tickets.

'Captain Marvel' climbs the list of superhero hits

As “Captain Marvel” swooped into its second weekend in theaters Friday, the question wasn’t really whether it would top domestic ticket sales, but by how much.

Disney-Marvel can breathe easy. Their latest superhero origin story, the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe dedicated to a female superhero, sold an estimated $69.3 million in tickets nationwide this weekend, bringing its North American total to around $266.2 million.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/movies/captain-marvel-box-office.html" id="1a11c1eb-d9dd-3cff-a5b4-eb0c83e060b1">The New York Times</a>.

'Captain Marvel' Climbs the List of Superhero Hits

Disney’s “Captain Marvel” rode a wave of enthusiasm for more diverse superheroes, a hunger for blockbusters at a quiet time of year and a large helping of ‘90s nostalgia to sell $153 million in tickets in U.S. theaters over the weekend.

It was easily the best stateside debut weekend of any movie this year as it breezily outperformed expectations and brought the domestic box office a much-needed boost.

The Brie Larson-led movie’s opening weekend was the seventh best of any in the 21-film Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, behind the $174 million brought in by “Iron Man 3” and just ahead of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which made $147 million during its first weekend. (Topping that list: “Avengers: Infinity War,” which took in $257.7 million when it debuted.)

“Captain Marvel” is the first film in the franchise dedicated to the story of a female superhero. DC-Warner Bros. and their Gal Gadot-led “Wonder Woman” broke a comic book glass ceiling in 2017, but “Captain Marvel” had an even stronger opening, bringing in more than $50 million more than “Wonder Woman,” which sold around $100.5 million in tickets during its opening weekend. While DC-Warner Bros. hired a single woman — Patty Jenkins — to direct “Wonder Woman,” Disney-Marvel’s movie split directing duties between Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who wrote the script with Geneva Robertson-Dworet.

An origin story whose soundtrack trades in the likes of Salt-N-Pepa and Nirvana, “Captain Marvel” is set principally in 1990s California, where Larson’s hero crash-lands and eventually teams up with Nicholas Fury, a government agent familiar to Marvel fans and here played by a younger-looking, digitally rejuvenated Samuel L. Jackson. Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening and Lashana Lynch play other major roles.

“Captain Marvel” received fairly positive reviews — it currently holds an 80% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes — but its critical reception hasn’t been as strong as some other high-grossing Disney-Marvel entries (by comparison, “The Avengers” holds a 92% “fresh” rating; “Captain America: Civil War” holds 91%). Whether the critics’ responses affect the new movie’s staying power remains to be seen, but its strong start is good news for Disney.

The studio is also using “Captain Marvel” to drive up interest in “Avengers: Endgame,” the next entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that’s slated for release next month. That film will count Larson’s newly-minted character among its ensemble of heroes, alongside Chris Evans’ Captain America, Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and others in what is essentially the popcorn movie equivalent of a musical supergroup.

Moviegoers who didn’t see “Captain Marvel” this weekend mostly picked between two other films. Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,” now in its third weekend, brought in about $14.7 million. And Lionsgate’s “A Madea Family Funeral,” the swan song of Tyler Perry’s long-running title character, sold $12.1 million in tickets according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Other than “Captain Marvel,” there were no first-week movies in the top 10.

This article originally appeared in <a id="d5d9ff56-bdc0-4cec-9973-6cb9d6d72ac0" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/arts/captain-marvel-has-the-years-best-opening-weekend-at-the-box-office.html">The New York Times</a>.

'Captain Marvel' has the year's best opening weekend at the box office

If movie studios needed another reminder that audiences are craving for new kinds of superpowered heroes, they got it this weekend.

“Captain Marvel” is the first film in the franchise dedicated to the story of a female superhero. DC-Warner Bros. and their Gal Gadot-led “Wonder Woman” broke a comic book glass ceiling in 2017, but “Captain Marvel” had an even stronger opening, bringing in more than $50 million more than “Wonder Woman,” which sold around $100.5 million in tickets during its opening weekend.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/arts/captain-marvel-has-the-years-best-opening-weekend-at-the-box-office.html" id="300804a3-c412-3c97-ad93-09b02304a257">The New York Times</a>.

'Captain Marvel' Has the Year's Best Opening Weekend at the Box Office

<h1>Maybe the studios just needed a dragon this whole time.</h1>

After several lackluster weeks at the box office, many have wondered when things would pick up this year. A step in the right direction came this weekend: Audiences turned “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” into a bona fide hit.

The third installation of Universal’s animated dragon series sold $55.5 million in tickets, exceeding most analysts’ expectations and giving the franchise the best opening weekend of any of its three movies.

That figure is especially impressive given that the latest (and supposedly final) “Dragon” installment had a slightly lower budget than either of the previous movies — about $129 million, against $165 million for the original (2010) and $145 for the second (2014), according to Box Office Mojo.

Also notable: The two best opening weekends this year have both been for the final installments of trilogies. Until this weekend, M. Night Shyamalan’s “Glass” held the top spot. That superhero thriller opened last month to about $41 million in its first weekend.

There’s a gulf in sales between “Dragon” and this weekend’s second-place movie: Fox’s “Alita: Battle Angel” brought in just $12 million this weekend according to comScore, which compiles box office data. That’s not a great second-week showing for a film that cost roughly $170 million to make. Since opening, the Robert Rodriguez-directed movie has grossed an estimated $60.7 million domestically.

Landing in fourth place, after “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” grabbed third, was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “Fighting With My Family,” the comedic drama based on the life of professional wrestler Saraya-Jade Bevis (known as Paige and played here by Florence Pugh). It opened in Los Angeles and New York earlier this month, but it got its first taste of nationwide ticket sales this weekend, bringing in about $8 million.

That’s respectable for a movie that had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival just last month and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, was produced for only about $11 million. The fact that Dwayne Johnson was a producer probably didn’t hurt.

This article originally appeared in <a id="4383242f-6bc4-4229-b269-343e29003295" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/movies/how-to-train-your-dragon-box-office.html">The New York Times</a>.

'How to Train Your Dragon' brings hope to the box office

The third installation of Universal’s animated dragon series sold $55.5 million in tickets, exceeding most analysts’ expectations and giving the franchise the best opening weekend of any of its three movies.

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Read the latest news across entertainment, sports, business and more. Be first to receive exclusive updates with your free subscription straight to your phone | Pulse Uganda

Gabe Cohn

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