Category: 5. Entertainment

Buckingham Palace always keeps us on our toes.

The royal palace often shares surprise photos of the family on their official Instagram, but their latest post is one we didn’t see coming—a picture of King Charles’s brother, The Duke of Edinburgh, who has been in Canada to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the PEI Regiment. Serving as the official Colonel-in-Chief, the Duke looked spiffy in a grey checkered suit as he met with members of Canada’s military and policemen, pet horses and enjoyed a boat ride that offered stunning views of the city.

The event-filled action didn’t stop there, as, according to the palace, the Duke joined a Freedom of the City parade in Charlottetown, met with the Abegweit First Nation and took part in an education forum for his International Award, which he established as an organization to challenge young people to find their purpose, passion and place in the world. And that was just for Prince Edward Island!

The Duke of Edinburgh also made a stop in Toronto, where he celebrated Canada’s military and police services with visits to the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, HMCS York, CFB Trenton, and the Toronto Police Marine Unit and Emergency Task Force, and concluded his trip in Ottawa, which saw him joining the Canada Day celebrations, and, as Honorary Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, visiting the Musical Ride stables.

Dan Mullan/Getty Images

The Duke’s charitable initiatives certainly didn’t go unnoticed, with one commenter writing, “The Duke of Edinburgh does brilliant work for the family. HRH is a dutiful and kind man, and it’s always amazing to see more of what he’s been doing,” and another adding, “Dutiful humble Duke who has been rewarded in titles and our respect for his years of service.”

This visit to Canada follows the royal’s formal induction into the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which is also described as an Honorary Fellow of “Scotland’s National Academy.”

Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

The Duke was inducted by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) president, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, and said in his address to the RSE Fellows and members of the Young Academy of Scotland, “I am proud to join and recognize this institution’s rich history and its unwavering commitment to the advancement of knowledge for good, and it has been wonderful to learn about the breadth of this work today.”

A great week for The Duke of Edinburgh.

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Dinosaurs ruled the box office once again this weekend as “Jurassic World Rebirth” hauled in a strong $147.3 domestically over the five-day Fourth of July period to kick off what industry insiders hope will be an impressive month at movie theaters.

The holiday total for “Jurassic World” in the U.S. and Canada exceeded industry expectations. Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World” reboot was expected to gross $120 million to $130 million during its long opening weekend, according to analyst and studio projections.

The movie unseated Apple’s Brad Pitt racing film “F1 The Movie,” which landed in second place with $26.1 million domestically, bringing its total to $109.5 million in North America, according to distributor Warner Bros.

“Rebirth’s” 2022 predecessor, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” debuted with $145 million from its first three days of release and went on to collect $1 billion globally. The new movie carries an estimated production budget of $180 million, not counting marketing costs.

Big-budget creature features have global appeal, as the numbers showed. Opening in 82 countries outside the U.S. and Canada, “Rebirth” grossed $171 million internationally. That included $41.5 million from China, proving that Hollywood movies can still do well in the Middle Kingdom despite the dominance of local production in the populous country.

The global total for “Rebirth’s” opening was $318.3 million.

Directed by Gareth Edwards (“The Creator,” “Rogue One”) and starring Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, “Rebirth” earned unenthusiastic reviews from critics, notching a 52% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The “Jurassic” franchise has seen multiple iterations since Steven Spielberg’s landmark 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park,” based on the popular Michael Crichton science fiction novel, wowed audiences with its combination of practical and computer-generated effects that gave the T. Rex and other killer dinos their stunning realism. That film spawned not only sequels but toys, theme park attractions, animated series and video games.

Although the sequels, starting with Spielberg’s own “The Lost World,” never achieved the acclaim of the original, they continued to mint money for Universal and Spielberg’s production company, Amblin.

Prior to “Rebirth,” the “Jurassic” movies had grossed a total of roughly $6 billion worldwide, not adjusting for inflation, according to box office website The Numbers. The first “Jurassic Park” grossed $978 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, which is equal to $1.86 billion in today’s dollars.

The latest “Jurassic” movie did not get a slot at Imax theaters, since those were taken up by “F1.” Next week, the valuable Imax real estate will be taken up by Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ “Superman.” Films shown on Imax often reap bigger box office numbers, aided in part by the higher ticket prices at those theaters, and because they’re viewed as more of a must-see “event.”

“Jurassic World” is the first of three big tentpole films arriving this month in theaters. In addition to “Superman,” Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios’ “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opens in a few weeks.

July has historically been one of the strongest summer months at the box office, putting more pressure on these three films to deliver.

Despite big box office gains in April and May, June saw a string of underperforming films such as Lionsgate’s “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” Sony Pictures’ “Karate Kid: Legends” and Disney and Pixar’s original animated effort “Elio.”

Theatrical business in June was 25% lower compared to the pre-pandemic average of June 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to David A. Gross’s FranchiseRe movie industry newsletter. It was also down 5.3% compared to last June, which saw big hits like Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”

“We see this ebb and flow,” said Shawn Robbins, founder of the website Box Office Theory. “These next four to five weeks will certainly give us a sense of how to grade the summer overall.”

50 Cent adds another victory for the green light gang and a birthday gift in the form of another lucrative deal. Coinciding with the G-Unit head’s 50th birthday on Sunday (July 6), the 50 Cent Action channel has officially launched on Pluto TV.

In partnership with Lionsgate, 50 Cent Action will stream a free lineup of cinematic thrillers and blockbuster series personally curated by the rap and film mogul.

Celebrating 50’s birthday weekend, 50 Cent Action launches with a Curtis Collection of movies starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, including Freelancers, Righteous Kill, Fire with Fire, Set Up, Blood Out and Caught in the Crossfire.

“I’m excited to bring 50 Cent Action to Pluto TV. Building on the channel’s success, this is the next big step — and launching on my birthday makes it even bigger,” 50 Cent said in a statement to Billboard. “I’ve partnered with Lionsgate to deliver nonstop, high-powered entertainment, and now even more fans can watch for free.”

Launched in 2013 and based in Los Angeles, Pluto TV is a streaming service owned by Paramount Studios with over 250 channels. Before landing on Pluto TV, 50 Cent Action is available on Roku, LG, Prime Video, Sling TV and DIRECTV.

The grind never stops for 50 as he continues to build his film empire. The Queens legend has also been cast in Street Fighter, where he’ll play the role of Balrog, who’s a former boxer playing the security guard for the movie’s main villain.

There are more roles on the way, as 50 will also star in a horror film titled SkillHouse, which hits theaters in July, and Deon Taylor’s upcoming Free Agents.

Keeping up with Karen Pittman has been a tall order in June.

The actress, one of the stars of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show who recently starred on Forever on Netflix, spent a big chunk of the month in Europe where she attended back-to-back film festivals with Filming Italy Sardegna followed by a pit stop in Malta for the Mediterrane Film Festival’s closing night Golden Bee Awards.

It was on the latter’s blue carpet where Pittman offered The Hollywood Reporter a few minutes of her time before she headed inside to the black-tie gala at which she presented a trophy alongside Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier. “It’s amazing. It’s beautiful,” she said of her first impressions of Malta. “It’s an extraordinary island. The weather, the sights, the architecture, everything. But what I love most about Malta is the people — warm, inviting, welcoming. I would love to come back here and film something. As an artist, you want to be in a community and in an environment that is just like this.”

Though she’s been doing a bit of globe-trotting, Pittman said she’s always keeping an eye on what’s happening in America, especially as one of the stars of a show centering on the news.

“Coming to Europe has been this extraordinary experience because they don’t look at news the way that American television news looks at news,” explained Pittman, who acknowledged the “difficult” and “turbulent” landscape of American politics. “I stay tuned in on behalf of the work that I do on The Morning Show. I also think it’s important as an artist to be in the know. I look at my acting as activism, and so I know a lot about what roles I want to take and what I want to do next based upon what my own personal politics are, but also what the world is telling me, what’s orbiting us as human beings. It’s really important for me to pay attention.”

Speaking of being alert, The Morning Show will drop a new batch of season four episodes on Sept. 17. “It’s a wild ride,” teased Pittman of the upcoming season in which she reprises her character of Mia Jordan. “We are going to be in New York and Europe in September. We are taking the story much wider, I feel like, than we’ve ever taken it before. I’m so excited to be a part of the story that they’re telling in season four. A lot happens with Mia. She goes for it. A lot happens for a lot of people.”

“I say I’m not retired because if something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, no,” 80-year-old actor said

Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey, Black Mess, Suspiria) is “likely to direct” her first feature based on a script by an autistic actress, wants to continue telling female-centric stories through her TeaTime Pictures, avoid “toxic sets,” measure the sucess of movies in terms of viewer impact rather than box office, and would love to play a psychopath and an action role, the actress said on Sunday.

Asked by reporters during a press roundtable at the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic about whether she will move beyond acting and producing into directing, Johnson replied: “I think I will direct a feature, a very small one, hopefully soon. And it’s really close to my heart and very close to TeaTime. We’re making it with Vanessa Burghardt, who played my daughter in Cha Cha Real Smooth. She’s an incredible autistic actress.”

The star shared: “I’ve always felt that I’m not ready to direct a feature. I don’t have the confidence. But with her, I feel very protective, and I know her very well, and … I just won’t let anybody else do it.”

As a director, Johnson has already made the Coldplay music video “Cry Cry Cry” and the short film Loser Baby.

What attracts her interest when picking TeaTime projects? “Usually, it’s something that is either visually or emotionally provocative. And I don’t mean that in a sexual way. I mean it in [the sense] that it provokes something that is different than what you see on TV right now or on streaming platforms. A lot of them are also female characters. So it’s female-centric films where the woman is different from what you see, and complex and nuanced, and maybe an anti-hero that you love.” Projects could even feature a woman “who maybe does things that you would deem atrocious, but you are really on her side because she’s angry” and real, Johnson explained.

Producing has the benefit that she can surround herself with people who create a positive work experience. “I can’t waste time on toxic sets anymore,” Johnson said. “With producing, that’s one of the perks.”

She told reporters that she was “pretty vocal” when issues arose on set or beyond from a very young age. “Now, … being a producer and developing my own films, I can choose all the people.”

The star also called for new ways to measure the success of movies. “I think that the barometer for that is shifting right now. It’s hard to measure success based on box office numbers now, because it’s so all over the place,” she offered. Mentioning that Jurassic Park Dominion has “slayed,” she said that, “the way I measure success is [in terms of] people who felt something or it meant something to them” – or people coming up to her in the street and telling her that they loved a film.

Johnson made time for meeting the press before receiving the KVIFF President’s Award on Saturday evening before a screening of her new film Materialists, which was directed by Celine Song and also stars Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans.

The second film that Johnson presented at KVIFF is the Michael Angelo Covino-directed romantic comedy Splitsville, which she also produced under her TeaTime Pictures banner, launched in 2019 with her producing partner Ro Donnelly.

Are there any roles she’d love to take on in the future? “There are roles that I dream of playing,” Johnson shared. “I would love to play a psychopath, would love to do an action film.”

Johnson made her film debut at age 10 in Antonio Banderas’ 1999 movie Crazy in Alabama. In 2010, she appeared in David Fincher’s The Social Network. Her recent credits have included the likes of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter (2021) and Carrie Cracknell’s Persuasion (2022). She next stars in Amazon’s Michael Showalter-directed romance thriller Verity opposite Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett.

“Dakota Johnson continues her family’s multigenerational acting tradition, as represented by her grandmother Tippy Hedren and both of her parents, award-winning Hollywood stars Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson,” festival organizers had highlighted when they unveiled that she would visit the picturesque Czech spa town to receive the honor.

“Madame Web” star Dakota Johnson, attending the Karlovy Vary Film Festival where she is set to receive the event’s prestigious President’s Award, is close to locking in final details for her directorial feature debut.

Speaking with Variety in the Czech spa town, the actor says her debut is a project “very close to her heart.” The film is one she is working on alongside “Cha Cha Real Smooth” co-star Vanessa Burghardt, who she calls “an incredible autistic actress.” 

“I’ve always felt that I’m not ready to direct a feature,” she continues. “I don’t have the confidence, but, with her, I feel very protective and I know her very well. I can see this world, so I just won’t let anybody else do it. That’s the real answer.”

On top of receiving the award, the “50 Shades of Grey” alum is at the festival with two films: Celine Song’s three-hander romance “Materialists,” in which she stars alongside Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, and Michael Angelo Covino’s Cannes sensation “Splitsville,” which she also produced under her TeaTime Pictures banner.

Johnson plays a matchmaker in Song’s sophomore effort and, when asked about the matchmaking qualities required of a producer, the actor says she “cares a lot about how people get along on a set and how people collaborate.” “If there’s not a healthy collaboration, if it’s not a good match, then it’s not a good match. And we really don’t move forward if it’s not a good match,” she emphasizes. “I can’t waste time on toxic sets anymore, or in situations that are not fun or fulfilling or healthy. That’s one of the perks of [producing], because I get to put amazing people together and make something.” 

Speaking about what she considers a toxic set to be, the actor says that she doesn’t want to face “anybody who’s mean or condescending or unkind.”

“I don’t want to face people who are not willing to collaborate,” she continues. “And then there are obvious things. We all know what a toxic set is by now. We’re artists, so there’s room for expansive personalities, and we’re working with emotions. I love a healthy argument on a set, and I also believe that the most excellent idea wins. It’s not a fight. It’s not a race. It’s a collaboration.” 

When it comes to standing up for herself when such toxic situations arise, Johnson says she feels she was “pretty vocal” about her feelings from a very young age. “I think now, just being in the position of being a producer and developing my own films, I can choose all the people who are in it, and that makes a huge difference.”

As someone who has navigated a wide gamut of films within the industry, from producing and starring in indie productions like “Am I Ok?” to major studio projects like “Madame Web,” how does Johnson perceive the idea of success when it comes to filmmaking? “I think that the barometer for that is shifting right now,” she answers. 

“It’s hard to measure success based on box office numbers now because it’s so all over the place,” she adds. “[‘Jurassic World Rebirth’] slayed, and of course, they knew that it was going to do really well, but it did so well. I feel so excited that people are going to the movie theater. Even ‘Materialists’ did so well for a tiny little movie, and that’s really, really exciting.”

She continues by saying that success, to her, is measured by “people who felt something” when watching a film or films that are meaningful to audiences. “Honestly, it’s a success just getting a movie finished. It’s really hard to make movies right now and to get people to believe in what you want to say. I don’t think movies will save the world, by no means, but I do think it’s nice to have them around,” she concludes.

Talking about the roles she would still love to play, the actor says she’s itching to play a “psychopath” and “would love to do an action film.” “I’m open to anything. Certain things [just have] to align.”

As for her next acting project, Johnson just wrapped shooting Amazon MGM Studios’ film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling psychological thriller “Verity,” directed by Michael Showalter and also starring Josh Hartnett and Anne Hathaway. Of taking on another wildly beloved book adaptation over a decade after the “50 Shades” series, the actor says adaptations can be hard because “sometimes a book doesn’t exactly translate to the screen.”

Johnson brought up Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” an adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s eponymous novel, saying the actor-turned-director “was able to really go into her imagination and soul and put her taste on everything. When that can happen, it’s great, and I think it makes the fan base feel both inspired and maybe divided, and that’s also great.”

“Books are hard,” she goes on. “Everybody has their own image of what the story is. I hope people feel inspired in one direction or another.” When asked about what’s next after “Verity,” Johnson teased a very exciting project she already has lined up but can’t disclose further details for now. Watch this space.