“Heat 2: A Novel” by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner (William Morrow)
Hollywood screenwriter and director Michael Mann and veteran thriller writer Meg Gardiner have achieved a rarity with their novel “Heat 2”: a screen-to-page sequel that stands tall on its own.
NEW YORK (AP) — The stylized action romp “Bullet Train," starring Brad Pitt, arrived with a $30.1 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, as the last big movie of Hollywood's summer recovery landed in theaters.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Demolition is scheduled to begin this week on a once-opulent downtown Anchorage movie theater designed by the architect of Hollywood’s famed Pantages Theater.
Anchorage entrepreneur Austin “Cap” Lathrop opened the 4th Avenue Theatre, with nearly 1,000 seats, on May 31, 1947, with a showing of “The Jolson Story.” The art deco theater became the centerpiece of the downtown historic district.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — For a comedy, Jo Koy's new movie “Easter Sunday” had a lot of waterworks.
The film was no ordinary job for the comedian and the rest of the cast. The magnitude of being on a mostly Filipino set led to happy cry-fests, Koy said.
NEW YORK (AP) — In a highly unusual move that rattled Hollywood, Warner Bros. axed the “Batgirl” film planned for HBO Max, opting to shelve the $90 million film as the reorganized studio revamps its approach to streaming and DC Comics films.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Girl Scout and avid reader. A trombone player who loved movies and basketball. A straight-A student who loved Irish dance and was looking forward to a trip to Ireland.
Slide over, Jamaican bobsledders. A group of expats from the ice-free island are hoping to bring a whole new winter sport to their tropical homeland: curling.
Three decades after Jamaica crashed the Winter Olympics — and then crashed at the Winter Olympics — with the bobsled team made famous in the movie “Cool Runnings,” the country has joined the World Curling Federation.
It may be common etiquette to not spoil the end of a film, but Ron Howard learned years ago on “Apollo 13” that knowing the outcome of a story is different from knowing the story itself. And though the 2018 rescue of the Thai boys’ soccer team and their coach is considerably fresher in our collective memories, Howard saw in it a similar opportunity.
NEW YORK (AP) — Producer Janet Yang has been elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group’s board of governors announced Tuesday, making her the first Asian American to lead the film academy.
Aboard the speeding locomotive of “Bullet Train” ride at least five assassins, one venomous reptile (a snake on the train), countless glib Guy Ritchie-esque slo-mo action sequences, and one bucket-hat wearing Brad Pitt.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
The summer box office showed signs of slowing down this weekend as the animated “DC League of Super-Pets” opened in theaters across North America.
The superhero spinoff about Superman’s dog earned $23 million from 4,314 locations, according to studio estimates Sunday.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci and his tumultuous experience during the COVID-19 pandemic are the focus of a PBS “American Masters” documentary.
The film follows Fauci at home and at work during a 14-month period starting from President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, PBS announced Wednesday.
NEW YORK (AP) — In Wes Studi’s potent and pioneering acting career, he has played vengeful warriors, dying prisoners and impassioned resistance leaders. For three decades, he has arrestingly crafted wide-ranging portraits of the Native American experience.
DC films have a reputation for being a little too self-serious. They’ve made significant strides to chip away at that dark and dour image in recent years, but it lingers even with things like “The LEGO Batman Movie.” Sometimes it’s even easy to forget that when it comes down to it, superheroes are for kids.
Sometimes a title just doesn’t help a movie.
Not that directors Anthony and Joe Russo had much choice in titling “The Gray Man,” their new Netflix spy thriller starring Ryan Gosling — they’re adapting the novel of the same name, about a shadowy CIA assassin on the run.
Hollywood film producer Dan Lin — known for movies such as Disney’s live action “Aladdin” and “The Two Popes” — is launching a nonprofit with more than $1 million from the Ford and MacArthur foundations as well as several other philanthropies.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Modern influencer culture is skewered in the smart new satire “Not Okay,” streaming on Hulu starting Friday.
Jordan Peele ’s UFO thriller “Nope” topped the North American charts in its first weekend in theaters with an estimated $44 million in ticket sales, Universal Pictures said Sunday.
Marvel Studios unveiled the first trailer for “ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ” — set to “No Woman No Cry” — to fans at Comic-Con on Saturday in San Diego.
Dwayne Johnson went a few steps beyond merely teasing his long-awaited “Black Adam” movie at Comic-Con in San Diego on Saturday.
Ever the showman, Johnson brought a new traile r for the DC Comics superhero film and some flashy technology, lighting up the biggest room at the annual fan convention all while in costume.
NEW YORK (AP) — Decades after the release of Michael Mann’s “Heat,” the classic crime thriller has endured in the minds of fans, critics, peers and the director himself.
NEW YORK (AP) — India's film industry is one of the most vast and varied in the world — it's really not one but many separate industries, including Bollywood, Tollywood and others — yet few of the country's roughly 2,000 annually produced movies ever make much of a dent with Western audiences.
A great debut in Hollywood can be a blessing and a curse. Once you knock it out of the park like Jordan Peele did with “Get Out,” which captured the zeitgeist so perfectly within the framework of a greatly entertaining thriller, home runs become the standard, not the exception.
NEW YORK (AP) — There's little in contemporary movies quite like the arrival of a new Jordan Peele film. They tend to descend ominously and mysteriously, a little like an unknown object from above that casts an expanding, darkening shadow the closer it comes.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Netflix places one of its biggest bets yet on “The Gray Man,” a globe-trotting action thriller starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Marvel sequel “Thor: Love & Thunder” dropped a hefty 68% in its second weekend of release but still held the top spot at the box office, according to studio estimates Sunday, while the bestseller adaptation “Where the Crawdads Sing” debuted with a better-than-expected $17 million.
HONG KONG (AP) — Action-packed police thriller “Raging Fire” won best film and three other awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards Sunday, beating out a crowd favorite film about late Cantopop singer Anita Mui.
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian arms dealer labeled the “Merchant of Death” who once inspired a Hollywood movie is back in the headlines with speculation around a return to Moscow in a prisoner exchange.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Jane Austen’s last completed novel “Persuasion” gets a fresh spin from British theater director Carrie Cracknell.
Four movies in, Thor is still bringing the hammer down at the box office.
“ Thor: Love and Thunder ” earned $143 million in its opening weekend in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.
James Caan, the curly-haired tough guy known to movie fans as the hotheaded Sonny Corleone of “The Godfather” and to television audiences as both the dying football player in the classic weeper “Brian’s Song” and the casino boss in “Las Vegas,” has died.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Caan, the Oscar-nominated actor known for roles in the “The Godfather," ”Brian's Song,'' “Misery,'' and ”Elf,'' died Wednesday at age 82.
The story of how Croatian filmmaker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović got Martin Scorsese to help her make her first feature is, she thinks, “a boring one.”
Boring might be a bit modest, but it was rather quick.
NEW YORK (AP) — To a large degree, modern blockbuster moviemaking has depended on the appeasement of fans to keep franchise juggernauts smoothly humming. But in making “Thor: Love and Thunder,” Taika Waititi had no interest in that.