Steve Pond's Blog, page 1982
February 17, 2020
3 Surprises From Disney, YouTube, Amazon in First Earnings Season of 2020
Earnings season can be a bit boring. Not this time.
The latest round stood out because several tech and media giants — including Disney, Amazon and Alphabet, Google’s parent company — shared surprising updates about their businesses. Other companies raised eyebrows for what they didn’t share.
“As competition increases in the streaming space, companies are revealing more behind their successes and/or losses that may have been more vague in the past,” Sarah Henschel, an analyst with IHS Markit, said. “With more [entering] the streaming game, companies have to be transparent in order to succeed and find support from their investors.”
To recap, here are three eye-popping surprises of this earnings season:
YouTube: the cash cow
Let’s start with YouTube. The Google-owned video company — for the first time ever — gave investors a peak behind the curtain, revealing it pulled in $4.72 billion during Q4. For all of 2019, YouTube’s revenue topped $15 billion, an increase of 36% from the year prior. This had been a figure Google kept close to the vest for years, leaving analysts to guesstimate just how big the internet’s biggest video site actually is.
Some may have looked at the disclosure cynically, as a potential distraction from Google narrowly missing Wall Street’s revenue estimates for Q4. But even if that is the case, the disclosure removed all doubt YouTube, if it were a standalone company, would be an entertainment titan. Netflix, for comparison, reported about $20 billion in sales last year and carries a $168 billion valuation.
“The headline of earnings was about transparency with Google’s YouTube,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said, calling it “a major step forward that highlights the strength and profitability of this golden jewel.”
Amazon makes unexpected reveal
At the same time, Ives pointed out Amazon’s own “eye-popping” Prime memberships hit 150 million by the end of 2019. This was only the second time Amazon had shared its number of Prime members, and the first update since early 2018, when membership hit 100 million. While Amazon didn’t share how many of those customers routinely watch Prime Video content, new data from Ampere Analysis estimated 42.2 million members watch its shows — indicating Prime members aren’t necessarily signing up just to watch “Fleabag” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Disney+ outpaces Wall Street
The third standout revelation from Q4 earnings came from Disney. It wasn’t that Disney CEO Bob Iger shared how many subscribers Disney+ pulled in during its first few months; that was expected. But the number ended up topping an already bullish estimate from Wall Street of about 25 million, with Disney reporting it had 28.6 million paying subscribers by the end of January. Without counting customers on 12-month free subscriptions thanks to Verizon, Disney is already about halfway to Netflix’s 61 million domestic subscribers.
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Those three surprises made for a distinct earnings season, and YouTube and Disney, in particular, helped add more tiles to the post-TV mosaic.
Henschel said being more transparent with subscriber growth and the overall health of their video businesses is important “because it both encourages transparency in streaming and therefore allows the industry to understand what works and what doesn’t. The industry is able to learn as a collective rather than continue to test what works in silos.”
Still, not everyone played along. One company that conspicuously didn’t share streaming data: Apple.
The $1.4 trillion company launched its Apple TV+ streaming service back in November, right around when Disney+ debuted, yet Apple didn’t have much to say about its performance so far. On the company’s earning’s call, Apple chief Tim Cook said it was off to a “rousing start” — but declined to share any info on its subscriber count. That may be because, as Apple CFO Luca Maestri said later on the same call, Apple TV+ “didn’t have a material impact” on its holiday revenue.
The absence of a subscriber update, compounded by Maestri’s comment, left investors and analysts to speculate Apple TV+ isn’t off to as rousing a start as the tech giant wants you to believe. Part of this could be that Apple TV+ simply doesn’t have enough content to compete on the same scale as Disney and Netflix.
Also Read: How Disney+ and Other Streamers Stack Up Against Netflix in the US | Chart
“There’s not much there there,” Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, said about Apple’s muddled streaming launch. “It helps them get a foot in video streaming, allows them to understand the space a little more, but does this experiment add much value to a trillion-dollar company? No.”
Facebook decided against going the Google route by declining to give investors a look at Instagram’s sales performance — something shareholders and analysts have wait on for years. From strictly a stock performance standpoint, it might have done enough to keep investors from focusing on Facebook’s declining — yet still remarkable — growth rate. (Facebook’s share price, trading at its all-time high of about $223 per share heading into earnings, before dipping a few points post-earnings.)
Those let down by non-update from Facebook didn’t have to wait long, though, with a Bloomberg report coming out only days later that Instagram pulled in $20 billion in revenue last year. It was fitting, considering this earnings season was characterized by major reveals and surprises.
Trey Williams and Tim Baysinger contributed to this report.
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February 16, 2020
Hollywood’s Notable Deaths of 2020 (Photos)
A look at the stars in movies, TV, music, sports and media we lost this year
David Stern,
The former longtime commissioner of the NBA died Jan. 1 following a brain hemorrhage, according to a statement from current NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. He was 77.
Andrew Burkle
Andrew Burkle, an aspiring film producer and the son of billionaire Ron Burkle, died Jan. 6 in his Beverly Hills home, according to People Magazine. He was 27.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
The author of the seminal 1994 memoir “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America” died in a Manhattan hospital on Jan. 7 at age 52.
Silvio Horta
Silvio Horta, creator of ABC comedy series “Ugly Betty,” was found dead in a Miami motel room Jan. 7. He was 45.
14 Worst Celebrity National Anthem Performances of All Time, From Roseanne to Chaka Khan (Videos)
Jackie Evancho already has her work cut out for her when she performs the National Anthem at Donald Trump’s inauguration. But the 16-year-old singer has to hit all the notes too (watch her perform it in 2015). And audiences are never kind when you bungle “The Star Spangled Banner,” no matter how famous you are. Everyone from Roseanne Barr to Steven Tyler‘s Aerosmith has earned America’s scorn over the years.
Roseanne
Believe it or not, Roseanne Barr wasn’t trying to be funny when she screeched her way through the National Anthem in 1990. She told the LA Times she was flattered and that she was a good singer. But she failed to take Johnny Carson’s advice and started too high. The boos come loud and fast, but like any comic who’s bombed before, she barrel rolls through her ear-piercing, crotch-grabbing rendition in a little over a minute, then spits on the mound before bailing.
Carl Lewis
This performance by Carl Lewis before a Chicago Bulls game seems almost inexplicable, because he’s not a singer but an Olympic track and field star. He murdered Francis Scott Off-Key’s song, as these ESPN broadcasters put it, in failing to hit the high notes and apologizing midway through with an intent to make it up to the crowd (he never could). He later told Oprah he was “glad” he botched it.
Fresh off their 2001 album “Just Push Play,” people were “Jaded” after seeing Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler try and spruce up the National Anthem, first by riffing on harmonica, then essentially shouting through the performance. He doesn’t even sing “brave” at the end of the song, opting to call out to the Indy 500 crowd as fireworks went off. You wouldn’t have thought it could get worse until…
R. Kelly
Steven Tyler wasn’t the only one to get creative with the anthem. R. Kelly brought his signature R&B soul to a performance at a boxing match at Mandalay Bay, throwing in some synths, backbeats and hand clapping smoothness into the song. Unfortunately we won’t be getting more of the same at this year’s inauguration, as he’s one of the celebrities who said he won’t perform.
Aaron Lewis
Lead singer of alt-rock band Staind Aaron Lewis delivered a relatively strong, growling rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but early on he missed the line “at the twilight’s last gleaming.” He felt devastated, asking for “the Nation’s forgiveness” by saying his “nerves got the best of me.”
Christina Aguilera likewise nailed her pitch but found herself doubling back to “the twilight’s last gleaming” rather than moving on to “gallantly streaming.” Maybe she doesn’t nail the last note, but she still performed like a pro.
Michael Bolton
The incredible echo you can hear in this video would’ve been enough to doom Michael Bolton’s crooning of the Anthem at this 2003 Red Sox vs. Yankees game, but Bolton had to stop and peek at lyrics scrawled in his palm in order to remember “twilight’s last gleaming,” and the Boston fans let him have it.
Kat DeLuna
This 20-year-old Dominican pop star put a lot of bluster and verve into her performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The eye test would make you think she’s killing it. But a pitchy last note and a chorus of boos from this Dallas Cowboys crowd would disagree.
Maybe this one isn’t bad so much as perplexing. Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea performed a solo, phased out performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at Staples Center this past April for Kobe Bryant’s farewell game that drew mixed reaction. Compare that to when he formed a bizarre duet with Josh Groban singing the Anthem back in 2010.
Alexis Normand
Maybe she would’ve been better of singing “Oh, Canada”? Canadian jazz singer Alexis Normand’s mind went completely blank as she fumbled words left and right to the Anthem that she ended up humming the remainder of the song. Thankfully the crowd was polite enough to bail her out.
Rachel Platten
Rachel Platten, best known for “Fight Song,” messed up the national anthem not once, but twice, while performing before the NWSL soccer game between the Utah Royals and the Chicago Red Stars in April. She forgot the words and had to start over, asking the crowd for help.
Jason Davis, Voice Actor in Disney Channel’s ‘Recess,’ Dies at 35
Jason Davis, best known as the voice of Mikey Blumberg on Disney Channel’s “Recess,” died on Sunday. He was 35.
“I am so heartbroken to share the saddest news of my life that my son Jason Davis passed away this morning in Los Angeles. Jason had a true heart of gold with such a zest for life. He was such a caring soul to everybody who ever knew him. He loved his friends and his family above all else. We ask for privacy as we take time to grieve this most devastating loss,” his mother, Nancy Davis, said in a statement.
The cause of death is unknown at this time.
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Davis, who was the grandson of the late studio Fox chief Marvin Davis and philanthropist Barbara Davis, struggled with substance abuse and appeared on “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” in 2010.
Along with ongoing recovery, in early 2018 he and his mother co-founded the nonprofit charity Cure Addiction Now (C.A.N.), which funds research to find therapies that will end the cycle of substance use and abuse, and helps addicts remain clean and sober.
In addition to voice work on “Recess” and its numerous video offshoots, Davis also appeared on camera in various projects from the age of 10, including 1997’s “Beverly Hills Ninja,” “Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal,” “Rush Hour,” “Mafia!” and “Roseanne.”
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Could ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Speed Paramount’s Recovery at the Box Office?
“Sonic the Hedgehog,” a film once known as a “Cats”-level internet joke, has become Paramount’s biggest box office hit in almost 18 months. With a three-day domestic opening of $58 million, the film based on Sega’s blue speedster has given the Viacom-owned studio its best opening weekend since 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”
That’s welcome news after Paramount’s disappointing $563.9 million in total domestic box office in 2019, when none of the studio’s releases managed to cross $100 million in domestic ticket sales.
While the Elton John biopic “Rocketman” produced a profit with $195 million in global ticket sales against a $40 million budget, the studio struck out hard with would-be blockbusters “Gemini Man” and “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Both films had budgets well over $100 million, and both failed to gross even $300 million worldwide. (Paramount shared the costs on “Gemini Man” with Skydance, Alibaba and Fosun, while “Dark Fate” was co-financed with Skydance and Disney’s 20th Century Fox.)
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With “Sonic” off to a fast start, Paramount is now looking ahead to what it hopes will be a brighter 2020 with a film slate featuring more recognized sequels and mature films with well-known talent — and as many as five films crossing the $100 million threshold at the box office.
Chris Aronson, the former head of domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox who now holds the same position at Paramount, credited Jim Gianopulos’ leadership since replacing the late Brad Grey as the studio’s CEO in March 2017.
“It’s safe to say that this is the first year where the film slate is 100% developed by Jim and his team,” Aronson said, pointing to the studio’s high hopes for two starry sequels backed by recent Super Bowl spots. John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place — Part II,” due March 20, will try to top the $340.9 million global total of its 2018 predecessor while “Top Gun: Maverick” (June 26) will bank on the popularity of Tom Cruise’s 1987 hit — as well as the star’s continued appeal in the action genre.
Following the success of the family-friendly “Sonic,” Paramount hopes for strong returns for May 22’s “The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run” — the first big-screen outing of the Nickelodeon franchise since 2015’s “Sponge Out of Water,” which grossed $325 million worldwide.
“Paramount really needs to get more franchises on their slate, but especially ones that kids are into. When they go to see ‘Sonic,’ they’ll also see trailers for ‘Spongebob’ as well,” said Boxoffice analyst Shawn Robbins. “Sometimes it takes one good hit and that can give a studio months of momentum.”
After the summer, Paramount will still have some sequels and adaptations on the slate, but its biggest bets are based on recognizable stars and filmmakers rather than familiar material. Among them is the September release “Without Remorse,” a Tom Clancy adaptation featuring “Black Panther” star Michael B. Jordan as vengeful Navy SEAL John Clark. Paramount will also release “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” a true-story drama that will be the second film directed by Aaron Sorkin.
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The biggest post-summer release for the studio may be Eddie Murphy’s first studio comedy in nine years: “Coming 2 America,” the sequel to the 1988 John Landis comedy that’s due out Dec. 18. Murphy has been on a roll, returning to the spotlight with the acclaimed Netflix biopic “Dolemite Is My Name” and his first hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live,” both of which have revived widespread interest in the famed comedian.
With five films, including “Sonic,” holding the potential to gross over $100 million domestically, Paramount has the making of a slate that could match 2018’s $769 million total. That year, with both “Fallout” and “A Quiet Place” grossing over $175 million domestically, bumped Paramount’s market share from 5% to 6.4%.
The question is whether Paramount, whose parent company has now re-merged with CBS to become ViacomCBS, will be able to maintain its momentum. The studio’s 2021 slate includes revivals of the microbudget horror series “Paranormal Activity” and the MTV series “Jackass,” along with films based on “Dungeons & Dragons” and “My Little Pony” and the eighth “Mission: Impossible” film.
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‘Eternals’ Star on MCU’s First Gay Kiss: ‘Everyone Cried on Set’
After 12 years and 25 films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have its first LGBTQ kiss when “Eternals” hits theaters this fall, and one of the actors involved says that filming it was a very emotional moment for everyone on set.
“It’s a beautiful, very moving kiss. Everyone cried on set,” actor Haaz Sleiman said in an interview with NewNowNext. “For me, it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be.”
Sleiman plays the husband of Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), who is one of the immortal beings known as the Eternals. The Eternals have lived in secret on Earth for thousands of years, but must come out of hiding after the Earth is threatened by their evil counterparts, the Deviants.
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Phastos, who was described at San Diego Comic-Con last year as an “intelligent cosmic-powered inventor,” is the first openly gay superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sleiman had strong praise for Henry’s performance as Phastos and said he helped bring something to the character that is important for LGBTQ representation.
“Brian is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point,” Sleiman, who came out in a Facebook video on in August 2017, said. “We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious, we forget to connect on that human part.”
While “Eternals” is the first MCU film to explicitly feature an LGBTQ character in its cast, the 2017 film “Thor: Ragnarok” hinted in flashback scenes that Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie was also a queer character. This past week, after winning at the Oscars for his screenplay for “Jojo Rabbit,” director Taika Waititi said that he is open to exploring Valkyrie’s sexuality in his upcoming sequel, “Thor: Love & Thunder.”
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“The IP is not mine. But with the actors, I feel whatever makes them comfortable — whether they feel like there’s a natural choice, or a natural way for that character to go — then I’m pretty supportive,” Waititi told Variety. “If Tessa wanted to do that, I’m in.”
“Eternals” will be released on Nov. 6.
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‘Parasite’ Scores Biggest Box Office Weekend in 3-Month U.S. Run With Oscar Victory Push
A week after making history at the Oscars, “Parasite” is enjoying the best weekend in its three-month run in American theaters, earning an estimated $6.6 million on this Presidents Day weekend as distributor NEON pushed it into wide release.
In the wake of becoming the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Oscar, “Parasite” was expanded from 1,060 screens last weekend to 2,001 screens this weekend. That expansion came with a surge of ticket sales for Bong Joon Ho’s thriller, with Atom Tickets reporting sales doubled for the film week-over-week on their site, while Fandango reported a surge of over 450% over the same timespan.
With a total of $44.3 million in North America, “Parasite” now stands as one of the Top 5 highest grossing non-English language films in American box office history. It sits fourth behind 2002 Jet Li wuxia film “Hero” ($53.7 million), 1997 Best Actor Oscar winner “Life Is Beautiful” ($57.2 million) and 2000 record-holder “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” ($128.1 million).
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NEON also found limited release success with “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” Celine Sciamma’s critically acclaimed LGBT period drama that won Best Screenplay and the Queer Palm at Cannes last year. Released on 22 screens this weekend, the film grossed $514,707 over the 4-day weekend for a $23,396 average.
This came after a two-screen awards qualifying run back in December that earned an average of $33,672, one of the best opening averages of any French film in the US in the last 20 years, behind “Amelie” and “Coco Chanel.” “Portrait” will expand to more than 300 screens as it enters the Top 25 markets next weekend.
Also performing well this weekend is Universal/DreamWorks “1917,” which won Oscars in the cinematography, VFX and sound mixing categories. Though “1917” failed to become Universal’s second straight Best Picture winner, it continues to be a strong box office presence with an estimated $9.3 million grossed on this extended weekend.
That gives the film a $145.6 million domestic total and $323.7 million global total, putting it on the verge of passing the $329.7 million global total made last year by Universal’s Best Picture winner “Green Book,” $85 million of which came from domestic receipts.
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‘Last Christmas’ Director Paul Feig Has a Lot to Say About That ‘Divisive’ Twist Ending
(This interview contains some major spoilers for “Last Christmas,” so if you haven’t seen the film and want to go in blind, you might not want to read this.)
It’s been a long time since a Christmas movie has caused the sort of uproar that “Last Christmas” was received with when it hit theaters back in November. But it’s also unusual for a Christmas movie to rock the boat the way Paul Feig’s film did.
The issue at hand, I think, is that “Last Christmas” was marketed as what appeared to be a standard romantic comedy with Emilia Clarke and Henry Golding. But, in the end, it really defied that label and went off in a direction that caught pretty much everyone off guard with a huge twist in the third act that recontextualizes everything that came before.
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Just the fact that there is a twist at all is the real surprise, and the actual nature of the twist, I would say, is secondary. The true shock here is that the film is not what you expected when you started watching it. But maybe we should have expected this, given that Feig certainly does not have a history that implies he’d churn out a regular studio romantic comedy.
As you likely know if you’re reading this, “Last Christmas” tells the story of a young woman, Kate (Clarke) who works at a year-round Christmas store and is just a real mess of a person. One day she meets a handsome and charming man named Tom (Golding), and they banter and bond and form what appears to be the makings of the standard central relationship of a standard romantic comedy.
But, of course, all is not as it seems. Throughout the film we get references to the fact that Kate had been deathly ill the year before and has not felt “normal” sinse. And it turns out that Tom is dead, and Kate has his heart — literally. Tom had been hit by a truck, and, in a nod to the George Michael song from which the movie got its title, became the heart donor that Kate needed to survive. So Tom is functioning, essentially, as a Christmas spirit in this story.
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“Last Christmas” split critics squarely down the middle, earning a 46% score from Rotten Tomatoes, meaning 46% of critics listed on that site thought it was a good movie. The film is now out on home video, available from digital retailers and on Blu-ray and DVD.
I spoke with Feig about, well, all of this — the twist itself, the reaction to it, and what kind of movie “Last Christmas” actually is. Feig said that “Last Christmas” might have done better with critics if they had a chance to view it a second time, after coming to grips with what sort of film it really was.
“This was probably one of my most divisive movies as far as reviews go,” he said. That’s certainly true, as “Last Christmas” was the first film he directed that didn’t earn an overall “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes (60% or higher) since 2006’s “Unaccompanied Minors.”
But he wasn’t surprised that people were, well, surprised by how the film went.
“I knew we were, Emma [Thompson] and I both knew we were doing something that was going to surprise people,” Feig said. Thompson co-wrote the film with Bryony Kimmings and her husband Greg Wise, in addition to appearing in it as Kate’s mother.
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“In a perfect world, just like with restaurant reviewing, movie reviewers would see a movie at least twice, just so they can get past that first volley of, ‘I expected this. I thought it was going to be this, and it’s not what I thought. I’m knocked sideways. I don’t like this movie.’ I mean, I’ve had this so many times in my career where people don’t respond the first time or whatever and then they’ll kind of go like, ‘Yeah, you know, I ran across that on cable and watched it again and, actually, uh, I really like it,’ You know, because now they know it exists.”
I can personally attest to the validity of this line of thought. In my job here at TheWrap I often have to react to things quickly after only experiencing them once, and my thoughts very often change after a second viewing of a film or TV episode. This is also why I actually like being spoiled, to some extent — it makes it much easier to digest a film on only a single viewing, because it prevents me from getting hung up on things I didn’t expect.
In the case of “Last Christmas,” the hangups I think revolve around the fact that it looks like a fairly standard romantic comedy but is actually not one at all. In a way, it’s like a Christmas-themed episode of “Modern Love,” the Amazon anthology series that has far more than just romantic love on its mind.
So I couldn’t help but bring up the topic of genre to Feig. I wanted to know how he would classify “Last Christmas.”
“I weirdly would call it a romantic comedy, but I guess I don’t define romantic comedy the way that it has been kind of hard drilled into our heads,” he told me. “I would call it a comedic romance but, you know, it’s so much more than that. I mean, it’s really a story about a person healing herself. And what the story drives home is that she really does heal herself, whether you realize it’s happening or not, and you don’t know until the end.
“We just really loved the idea that we end the movie with a woman in a much better place on her own. That just was really important to us. If you look at all my movies, they’ve really shied away from kind of being, ‘And you find your perfect match and then off you go into the sunset.'”
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Feig cited “Bridesmaids” as an example. In that film, Annie (Kristen Wiig) ends up with a dude, but he notes that her getting the guy is just an “extra prize at the end” because the story is really just about Annie reconciling with her friends. “If they drove away, and the next day they broke up, you would still go, like, ‘Oh, but I’m really happy that she’s friends with her pals again.'”
With “Last Christmas,” Feig admitted that before it was released he had to come to grips with the fact that there would always be a certain percentage of the audience who just would not accept the twist.
“Whenever I do my movies, you know, I do tons of test screenings on them as we’re putting them together and switching stuff out and figuring out if we want to shoot anything new and all that stuff. And you get this score at the end of each test screening and it’s based on the number of people that check excellent and very good as what they think the movie is,” Feig told me. “Our last probably three test screenings that we did over the course of a month, we kept getting an 81, which normally my movies are in the nineties.
“And so, finally, we did the last screening where we had put some new stuff in and all that and it just played through the roof, and I was like, ‘Holy s—, like we probably got 100. And it was an 81 again. And I was just, like, ‘What’s going on?’ And somebody at the studio goes, ‘Look, what it is is that there’s just going to be 19% of people in the world who want the couple to be together at the end.'”
It’s worth pointing out as we get to the end here that Feig himself was not at all put off by the twist when he first read Thompson’s screenplay. In fact, he had the opposite reaction.
“When Emma sent me the script, she didn’t tell me anything about it,” he said. “She literally said, ‘Here’s a script. I wrote it. I think we’d have a lot of fun doing it. Give it a read.’ So I had a clean read — and I was really enjoying it the whole way through — and when I hit the twist, I was just, like, ‘Ooh.’ I was so thrown in a great way that I was just, like — I couldn’t recover from it.”
Feig said he knew in that moment that he had to make the film. Yes, he decided to make “Last Christmas” specifically because of the twist. After all the to-do about the direction the story took, that revelation itself feels like a twist.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Last Christmas' Director Paul Feig on How Emma Thompson Convinced Him to Do Another Holiday Movie
What You Need to Know About The Crazy 'Last Christmas' Twist Ending, Explained
'Last Christmas' Film Review: Holiday Rom-Com Brings Cheer, If You're Feeling Charitable
Does ‘Birds of Prey’ Have a Post-Credits Scene?
“Birds of Prey” may not have been the huge blockbuster that Warner Bros and DC fans hoped it would be, but it’s well liked among audiences and critics alike (to the tune of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes). And so it certainly contributed to the continuing rehabilitation of the DC brand on the big screen after the mess that “Batman V Superman,” “Suicide Squad” and “Justice League” made of the DC Extended Universe a few years ago. Compared with that lineup, “Aquaman,” “Shazam” and “Birds of Prey” unequivocally count as a winning streak for a franchise that desperately needed one.
While the DCEU is not currently as interconnected as the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become — this current group of films has a shared backstory, but they don’t really interact with each other — this is still a franchise made up of other franchises. And if “Birds of Prey,” which has a much smaller budget than most comic book movies, manages to pull in a decent amount of money then we should be set for more Harley Quinn madness in the future — she is already slated to appear in James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” and a “Birds of Prey” sequel is certainly possible.
So it’s worth wondering if “Birds of Prey” is looking ahead to future films in the series or the DCEU in general — remember, we also have “Wonder Woman 1984” landing this summer, and it very well could end up being the biggest movie of the year. While DC movies are not typically known to have bonus mid-credits or post-credits scenes the way Marvel movies are, the last three DCEU films have adopted the practice.
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So does “Birds of Prey” have a post-credits scene? The answer is yes, the film does feature a small bit of bonus content at the very end of the credits.
However, it’s really just an extra gag and not like a secret “Wonder Woman 1984” trailer or some other kind of big tease. So if you need to leave before the credits wrap up, you can do so knowing you didn’t miss some kind of major thing. The bit is funny, though, so I recommend sticking around if you can.
I’m gonna describe the joke below. I wouldn’t consider it any kind of spoiler, but if you want to experience the joke fresh you should bail out of this article now.
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So the bonus scene is not actually a scene, but rather some narration from Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) that plays over the last few seconds of the trailer.
In the bit, Harley reveals that she has a “super duper secret” bit of information that she wants to share with the audience, but they can’t tell anyone about it. And that’s because it’s a Batman-related secret.
“Did you know that Batman’s–” she says, being cut off before she says whatever she was going to say. So what was she going to reveal? Batman’s true identity? Some mean and funny insult? Your guess is as good as mine.
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Nikita Pearl Waligwa, Disney’s ‘Queen of Katwe’ Actress, Dies at 15
Nikita Pearl Waligwa, the young actress seen in the 2016 Disney film, “Queen of Katwe,” has died, according to the Ugandan newspaper The Daily Monitor. Waligwa, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016, was 15.
“Queen of Katwe,” about a chess prodigy from a Uganda slum, was based on the true story of 9-year-old Phiona Mutesi, who went on to compete in international tournaments. Waligwa played the best friend of fellow screen newcomer Madina Malwanga’s Phiona. Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo also starred.
When Waligwa was diagnosed, the film’s director, Mira Nair, rallied supporters for the girl to help find her treatment in India as local doctors said they didn’t have the tools that were necessary to fight the tumor.
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Although treatment resulted in an “all clear” from doctors in 2017, another tumor was found last year.
TheWrap film critic and reviews editor Alonso Duralde named “Queen of Katwe” as one of the 10 best films of 2016, writing, “In years to come, we will wonder why so few people saw this inspirational sports movie in theaters.”
In his review, Duralde also noted: “While the key roles belong to Nalwanga, Oyelowo and Nyong’o, the nonprofessional ensemble cast is also wonderful, adding to the sense of rich authenticity in ‘Queen of Katwe.'”
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