Morbius reigned king at the box office this weekend; Will Smith fallout; Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is making a new movie that’s even “more violent” than Squid Game called Killing Old People Club; Questlove’s Summer of Soul won a Grammy for best music film. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
Sneak Moves: Netflix quietly put Will Smith’s new film in development, Fast and Loose, on the “back burner” after that Oscars snafu, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s merely a coincidence that director David Leitch pulled out as director of Fast and Loose a week before the Oscars in favor of directing Universal’s Fall Guy starring Ryan Gosling instead.
Anything Else? THR notes that Apple+ still has Smith’s slavery escape drama Emancipation in post-production. It is expected this year, but does not have a release date. THR also cites a source who says production has been paused on Bad Boys 4 at Sony.
Box Office: Daniel Espinosa’s Marvel comic-book movie Morbius, starring Jared Leto as the titular vampire creature, was No. 1 at the box office this weekend with a $39 million opening at the domestic box office and $84 million globally, according to Variety. It’s a modest sum compared to other Marvel movies of late, like Spiderman: No Way Home, which grossed $260 million in its opening weekend. (That was the second-highest box office opening weekend in history behind Avengers: Endgame, which earned $357 million during its debut weekend.)
Just Don’t Read Morbius Reviews: Because they are not kind. The film currently has a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. However, that will not stop me from watching it, because I feel deep down that I’m going to like it.
Oh, and Listen to This: Espinosa told MovieMaker that Jared Leto method-acted as a “fully-disabled” person on the set of Morbius, even when the cameras weren’t rolling.
Espinosa Says: “When he walks in, he is Michael Morbius… He would often play Michael Morbius prior to him becoming Morbius, so he would always come in, you know, as a fully disabled person. It would take him like 20 minutes to come to the front of the camera, because it was so hard [to walk]. This would also create pains in his body, to twist himself like that. But it was for him to remember the pain that the character had.”
‘More Violent Than Squid Game‘: That’s how Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk describes his next film, which is tentatively titled K.O. Club. What does the K.O. stand for, you ask? Killing Old People. No, I’m serious. According to Variety, Dong-hyuk said all this at an MIPTV panel, explaining that he already has a 25-page treatment that is so “controversial” that he might have to hide from old people after it comes out.
Meanwhile, in Young Person News: Sam Zaslow-Braverman, a student at the pre-kindergarten-through-12 Golda Och Academy in West Orange, New Jersey, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Montclair Emerging Screenwriter Competition for his original screenplay, Resurrection. He even got to see his screenplay performed live by a cast of professional actors on Saturday at the red-carpet award ceremony held at Monctclair’s Cinema505.
Some Grammys Highlights: Does anyone remember what award Chris Rock was handling out when The Slap happened? That would be Best Documentary Feature, and the very deserving winner was Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul. The documentary also won the Grammy last night for best music film, beating out Bo Burnham: Inside, Spike Lee and David Byrne’s American Utopia, and Music, Money Madness… Jimi Hendrix in Maui. (In non-movie categories, Album of the Year went to Jon Batiste’s We Are; Song of the Year went to Silk Sonic’s incredible earworm Leave the Door Open, and Joni Mitchell actually appeared in-person to introduce a performance by Brandi Carlisle. Music is still alive and well!)
Congrats: To everyone who won a Grammy on Sunday, including H.E.R., who is now halfway to an EGOT with checkmarks in both the Oscars and Grammys categories after winning the Grammy for best traditional R&B performance for her song “Fight for You.” Now she just needs to start doing TV and Broadway. I, for one, would love to see H.E.R. get her own drama series on HBO, and her own Broadway show, too, while we’re at it.
Finally, a Word From Questlove: I think we can all guess what he’s talking about, right?
Can we FINNNNNNNALY stop talking about it?
— ?st (@questlove) April 1, 2022
Main Image: Lee Jung-jae, Oh Young-soo in Squid Game season one, courtesy of Netflix
Share:
