“A Minecraft Movie” is barreling toward the $1 billion mark with global ticket sales at $720 million after three weekends of release.

The Warner Bros. PG blockbuster, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, added another $59 million internationally and a massive $100 million globally over the Easter holiday weekend. Now, “Minecraft” has generated $376.2 million overseas and $720.8 million worldwide to date. It’s already Hollywood’s highest grossing film of the year, and at this pace, “Minecraft” is poised to be the first to join the billion-dollar club.

Meanwhile, “Sinners,” a vampire thriller from “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan, opened to $15.6 million overseas from 71 markets. The film was far bigger in the U.S. and Canada, topping the box office with $45.6 million. In all, “Sinners” has amassed $61 million in its global debut. It’s a great result for an original, R-rated horror film that takes place in the 1930s, yet the Warner Bros.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, more than found redemption at the Easter weekend box office. Ditto for Warner Bros.

In a surprise upset, the movie beat fellow Warners blockbuster A Minecraft Movie and topped the chart with an estimated $45.6 million from 3,308 theaters, including Imax screens, well ahead of an expected $40 million. Based on Friday’s gross of $19.2 million, Sinners looked to open to the latter figure, but a spike in walk-up Saturday business changed the landscape.

Sinners achieved its victory after earning near-perfect reviews and stellar audience scores. Overseas, it started off with $15.4 million from select markets, for a global total of $61 million.

Not that Minecraft, now in its third weekend, is any slouch as it jumped the $700 million mark globally. Based on early weekend grosses, it appeared the record-breaking video game adaptation would stay No. 1 with $45 million. Instead, it’s on course to take in $41.3 million...

Worldwide box office: April 18-20 Rank Film (distributor) 3-day (world) Cume (world) 3-day (int’l) Cume (int’l) Territories 1 A Minecraft Movie(Warner Bros) $100.3m $720.8m $59m $376.2m 77 5 Sinners(Warner Bros) $61m $61m $15.4m $15.4m 72 3 Detective Conan: One-Eyed Flashback (Toho) $28.8m $28.8m $28.8m $28.8m 1 4 The King Of Kings(Angel Studios/various) $19.1m $48.7m $1.8m $3.4m 28 5 The Amateur(Disney)

$18.8m $64.3m $11.6m $37m 53 6 Warfare(A24/various) $7.2m $19.7m $2.4m $2.6m 22 7 Drop(Universal) $6.4m $20.6m $3m $7.1m 66 8 Snow White(Disney) $5.87m $194.2m $4.7m $109.6m 53 9 Kesari Chapter 2 (various) $5.82m $5.9m $5.1m $5.1m 20 10 A Working Man(Amazon MGM/various) $4.6m $86.5m $3.4m $50.6m 68

Credit: Comscore.

If you were an actor in the 2010s looking for job security, "The Walking Dead" was not the show for you. The series was famous for killing major characters in a way that makes rewatching the early seasons extra depressing. You'll be enjoying a season 1 scene with Andrea (Laurie Holden), Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn), Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and Shane (Jon Bernthal), only to remember that not a single one of them made it past season 3. Some characters did manage to stick around for surprisingly long, like Carol (Melissa McBride) or Daryl (Norman Reedus), but most people on the show only stuck around for two or three seasons tops.

Case in point: Tyreese (Chad Coleman) was introduced midway through season 3 before being killed off halfway through season 5. Admittedly, though, casual fans didn't have much hope for Tyreese in particular, given the early seasons' suspicious tendency of killing off established Black characters...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains plot details from Ryan Coogler‘s “Sinners,” now playing in theaters.

Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw vividly remembers when Ryan Coogler sent her the script for “Sinners.”

It was January 2024, the day before she would start shooting “The Last Showgirl,” and Coogler sent an email seeking her thoughts on the piece, which he’d told her was quite personal to him. She read the script later that night, all in one sitting.

“I was blown away. I had no idea about it being a period piece or that Michael [B. Jordan] would be playing twins,” Arkapaw tells Variety. “I had a huge email that I sent him about my thoughts. He always teases me, because for me to read something all the way through in one pass is more difficult these days, but that’s the kind of script that you just can’t put down.”

Amid the...

There's a whole lot of "TV show" in the TV show "Riverdale." Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's small screen Archie Comics adaptation -- an inspiredly chaotic queer work that's as cheerfully absurd as it is painfully earnest when it wants to be -- burns through storylines like there's no tomorrow. It's how, in the end, the show is able to indulge in subplots involving everything from illegal teen convict fight clubs to diabolical sorcerers from alternate realities to the tickle porn industry. (That last one is very real and even features "The Last of Us" actor Spencer Lord.) The same goes for the genres it dabbles in, though there are two in particular that "Riverdale" consistently returns to throughout its run: horror and musicals.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that "Riverdale" birthed a pair of spin-offs in the forms of the horror-flavored "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" and the wholesome showbiz fantasy of "Katy Keene.

Warner Bros continued to pull North American box office out of the doldrums as Ryan Coogler’s new vampire horror Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan arrived on an estimated $45.6m over Easter weekend and replaced stablemate A Minecraft Movie at the top of North American box office amid several firsts.

‘Sinners’: review

The studio became the first to have two films gross more than $40m in a weekend this decade after Warner Bros/Legendary’sMinecraft added an estimated $41.3m from 4,032 locations in its third weekend to soar to $344.6m. For Sinners, this was the biggest debut by an original...

Korean scripted shows, or K-dramas, have looked to American and British sources of inspiration before, even providing their own spin on Agatha Christie's British literary detective Miss Marple. For the 2020 psychological thriller "The World of the Married," however, the show's creative team took inspiration from far darker and more recent source material. Indeed, the acclaimed 2015 British series "Doctor Foster," which features a strong early performance from Jodie Comer, served as the narrative basis for the K-drama. Though both shows share an underlying conflict and escalating brutal stakes, the Korean iteration deviates from the British show quickly and noticeably.

Both stories focus on a successful doctor: Gemma Foster (Suranne Jones) in the original and Ji Sun-woo (Kim Hee-ae) in the Korean version. Seemingly happily married, the protagonists learn that their husbands are cheating on them with younger women, leading to an unraveling of more devastating secrets. The wronged wives pursue...

Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" Trilogy benefits from some seriously stellar casting, and among the clearest bullseyes it hit was the decision to cast Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth. The British veteran has the exact right screen presence to match -- and, when necessary, one-up -- the specific energy Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne has, and more than enough gravitas to tell off the billionaire vigilante in a way that's utterly believable.

As a winner of two Academy Awards, Caine has been around the block as an actor and seen some seriously great performances. Still, even he had to do a double take when the trilogy's true Mvp entered the game. "The Dark Knight" remains Heath Ledger's best movie, thanks to his magnificent portrayal of the Joker. Caine's Alfred famously delivers the iconic description of the Joker and others like him in "The Dark Knight" (2008), and in his memoir "Don't Look Back,...

Actor Tom Mix made his feature film debut, as far as film scholars have been able to determine, in the 1909 Western "The Cowboy Millionaire" (directed by Francis Boggs and Otis Turner). The name of Mix's character is not known. "The Cowboy Millionaire" is a rarity in Mix's filmography in that it survives to this day. Most of Mix's films, sadly, are lost media; no prints survive. He was one of the most prolific American actors of his generation, appearing in multiple one-reel Westerns every year from 1909 to 1929. In 1916 alone, he appeared in 37 movies, which is three films per month and one extra besides. 1914 was also a banner year for Mix, as he appeared in a mere 15 movies yet directed 14 of them. Overall, Mix appeared in about 150 films in his career, usually playing the same type of paternal, friendly, heroic cowboy character in each one. Of those films, however, only about 35 survive.

In 1991, MTV debuted its animated shorts showcase program "Liquid Television," and it was a huge step for the medium. Underground comics artists and up-and-coming animators suddenly had a location, on one of American television's most popular stations, to exhibit their work and make bold experiments. In the early 1990s, animation was taking a turn -- pointedly -- away from the previous decade's corporate mentality, and toward edgier, creator-driven works. "The Simpsons" and "The Ren & Stimpy Show" pushed the boat out, and "Liquid Television" was an entire marina full of smaller support craft (not to strain a metaphor).

"Liquid Television" was where audiences first saw Mike Judge's "Beavis and Butt-Head" first goofing off, and where they got their first taste of Peter Chung's "Æon Flux." Those shorts eventually spun off into their own standalone animated shows. "Liquid Television" was a testing ground for new animated voices.

In 1994, however,...

This article contains spoilers for every "Final Destination" movie.

For over 25 years, the "Final Destination" series has instilled a very special fear of death with audiences. Everyone meets their end at some point or another, but these movies take perverse pleasure in showing all of the grisly manners it can manifest. Unlike other horror franchises like "Friday the 13th" or "Scream," where you can physically see the killer coming toward you, in the world of "Final Destination," Death can take the form of just about anything. All it takes is a loose screw, a curling iron, or a creep with a box full of hook hands to get the ball rolling.

It's very fitting for a franchise about a deadly omniscient presence to make you anxious of your surroundings at all times. But try as they might, the characters in every "Final Destination" usually meet a grisly end one way or another.

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"Star Wars" is full of surprise cameos, from fan-favorite characters to niche pieces of Legends lore. However, the coolest cameos are the ones you're least likely to notice. With the massive success of "Star Wars," it has become an honor and even a tradition to sneak fun celebrity cameos into the films and shows, but thanks to the many fantastical elements within George Lucas' original creation, almost all of them are completely unrecognizable. Whether it be under hours of prosthetic makeup or underneath the helmet of a stormtrooper, one of your favorite actors may have made an appearance in a Star War right under your nose.

Today, all will be revealed as we uncover the best celebrity cameos this franchise has to offer. For this list, we are only including cameos from folks who haven't previously played a major role in the franchise,...

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It may not necessarily get the credit it deserves, but it's hard to find a more successful spin-off in the 2010s and beyond than that of "Young Sheldon." Serving as a prequel centered on Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory," the series enjoyed a healthy seven season run on CBS before going off the air in 2024. One big difference is that the prequel is more of a single-camera sit-com format, whereas the flagship show was a multi-cam, filmed in front of a live studio audience sort of thing. That difference resulted in some long shoots.

More specifically, the staple dinner table scenes in "Young Sheldon" actually took a surprising amount of time to shoot. In a 2024 interview with Variety around the time the show was ending, series star Iain Armitage pulled the curtain back to reveal that those dinner...

Throughout his 50-year filmmaking career, John Wayne was not much of a risk taker when it came to material. Once he broke through as a movie star with John Ford's template-setting Western "Stagecoach" in 1939, he mostly bounced back and forth between oaters and rah-rah war films. When he did futz with his image, he did so with great directors like Ford and Howard Hawks, whose judgment he implicitly trusted.

When it came to experimenting with emerging cinematic technology and new formats, however, Wayne was open to giving anything a whirl that would help movies stave off the stay-at-home threat of television. He made lots of films in Cinemascope and starred in "How the West Was Won," one of the first three-strip Cinerama movies. You might think the 3D fad of the 1950s would've been too sweaty for the Duke, but he actually teamed with director John Farrow to shoot...

Michael Caton-Jones' historical biography "Rob Roy" had the bad luck of being released on April 7, 2025, only about a month and a half before Mel Gibson's juggernaut "Braveheart." Both films were about notable Scottish rebels, with "Rob Roy" centering on a 16th-century folk hero and "Braveheart" focusing on a 14th-century freedom fighter. As such, audiences couldn't help but compare the two films. "Braveheart" was the larger, more expensive, more violent, and more crowd-pleasing of the two, and it would go on to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. "Rob Roy" was kind of swallowed by the Hollywood "Braveheart" hype.

That's a pity, really, seeing as "Rob Roy" is a fantastic film unto itself. Liam Neeson stars in the movie as Rob Roy MacGregor, a put-upon Scottish clan leader who has to borrow some money to establish himself as a powerful cattle trader and feed his people.

As Taylor Sheridan's television empire continues to expand, fans of the wildly prolific writer-director may find themselves struggling to keep up. There are only so many hours in a day, and a well-rounded TV viewer cannot subsist on Sheridan's soapy adult dramas alone. When do you cut bait on one of his series, or, as a new one premieres, simply say, "Nah, Taylor, I'm good"?

For many devout Sheridan worshippers, "Landman" had way too much going for it on the surface to resist. The notion of Billy Bob Thornton playing a gruff petroleum landman operating in West Texas sounded like wheelhouse Sheridan, and, sure enough, fans and many critics got sucked right into the oilfield intrigue. What with Thornton (a natural for Sheridan's macho universe) doing his tough-talking thing alongside a stacked cast that includes Demi Moore, Jon Hamm, Ali Larter, and Colm Feore, even Sheridan's occasionally clunky dialogue...

Tony Gilroy was barely on set for “Andor” Season 2. The series’ head writer and showrunner finished his scripts about a week before the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike began, forcing writers into a state of “radio silence.” When the strike ended and Gilroy returned to work, something amazing waited for him: 12 fully shot episodes.

“You’re always in the cutting room on a show, in a movie, and inevitably, you’re at the point where you say, ‘Man, I’d pay $50,000 if I could see my movie for the first time,'” Gilroy told IndieWire ahead of the show’s Season 2 premiere. “I got to watch all 12 episodes on the run with the freshest eyes I could ever imagine, and I got to watch it as the audience would see it.”

After binging the “rough, shaggy” cuts (an audience wishes — “Andor” will drop three episodes per week from April 22 through...

When Garry Marshall's 1950s nostalgia trip sitcom "Happy Days" premiered on ABC in 1974, no one involved could've predicted that the series would run for 11 seasons and spawn an alien sitcom that launched the acting career of Robin Williams. But the show, which had the very good fortune of premiering a year after "American Graffiti" tapped into Baby Boomers' wistfulness for their carefree childhoods, hooked television viewers of all ages thanks in large part to the preternatural cool of Henry Winkler's Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli.

After "Happy Days" took a ratings nosedive in its second season, ABC actually tried to retool the series as "Fonzie's Happy Days," which would've disrupted the cozy ensemble vibe of the show (and cost the network star Ron Howard). Fortunately, the ratings improved dramatically to the point where "Happy Days" became the top rated series on TV in its fourth season. And this was...

You could write a book about all the hatred the final season of "Game of Thrones" received, and it would still come out sooner than George R.R. Martin's "The Winds of Winter." Even Littlefinger actor Aidan Gillen had some unpopular opinions about how things wrapped up in the closing chapter, and Gwendoline Christie believed that season 8 was "designed to break" the cast.

It didn't have to be that way, though. In fact, the creator of the Seven Kingdoms himself revealed that requests were made to HBO to stretch "Game of Thrones" beyond its eighth season, which ended with only six episodes instead of the typical 10. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal about past negotiations that didn't go as planned, Martin recalled, "I was saying it needs to be 10 seasons at least and maybe 12, 13. I lost that one."

The responsibility of condensing the story was instead left to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss,...

During its run "Bones" was beloved by fans for its off-kilter mix of humor, crime, and horror. Typically, leads Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz would engage in some witty banter immediately before the show unleashed some sort of upsettingly realistic cadaver, which made "Bones" a truly unique experience. The show's graphic corpses were the work of fake body specialists and brothers Kevin and Chris Yagher, who provided bodies, body parts, and all manner of viscera across 12 seasons of "Bones," and at times, they simply went too far.

There was the fresh body on "Bones" that grossed out producer Stephen Nathan, who removed a shot of a detached skull and spine from the season 7 episode "The Crack in the Code," for being "too horrible." Evidently, this particular body was a tad too fresh to be showcased extensively, and if you're not all that familiar with "Bones," that should tell you a lot about the show.

There are a lot of elements that go into making a movie great, from the screenplay, to the direction, and even the editing. It's not uncommon for the main factor to be the actors, as is the case for some of the worst movies ever made. Some of the best "so bad it's good" movies of all time have performances that are so terrible, they're somehow more memorable than some of their actors' greater roles. However, being in a bad movie hasn't stopped some actors from maintaining their reputations in Hollywood.

As proven time and time again, actors cannot be judged by the quality of their worst movies. Some undoubtedly incredible actors have made misguided choices in their careers, whether it's a poor attempt at gaining mainstream attention or a project that just simply didn't come out they way they intended. For years, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were ridiculed...

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Everyone knows Batman's origin story. Let's see if we can condense it into a few simple sentence fragments, the way that Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's "All-Star Superman" did for its lead hero.

Rich couple. Mugging gone wrong. Orphaned son. A Dark Knight.

People often complain that Batman movies put too much focus on the death of his parents. But while Thomas and Martha Wayne are (almost) always doomed as Bruce's origin story, different films offer different interpretations of it.

Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" wasn't the first film to show the Wayne murders, but it was the first to show how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) moved on from that tragedy to become Batman. The film bases its first act on Dennis O'Neil and Dick Giordano's 1989 comic, "The Man Who Falls," showing Bruce traveling the world and learning...

Bruce Springsteen is one of the last titans of rock and roll not to have received a major biopic in recent years, but that will change when Scott Cooper’s “Deliver Me from Nowhere” hits theaters later this year. The film stars Jeremy Allen White as the legendary New Jersey rocker during the early ’80s, when he was both gearing up for the biggest commercial success of his career with “Born in the U.S.A.” and working through his depression on the haunting album “Nebraska.”

Appearing on Variety’s Awards Circuit Podcast to promote the documentary “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” Springsteen discussed Cooper’s approach to the film.

“They pitched the idea, and I said, ‘It sounds like fun,’” Springsteen said. “It’s an interesting concept, because it’s only a couple of years out of my life. It’s ’81, ’82, and centered around the...

Delroy Lindo was happy to help Marvel with its long-awaited “Blade” remake until it all went wrong.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lindo, who was once attached to the Marvel reboot, discussed the problems weighing down the development of the long-delayed vampire flick.

“When Marvel came to me, they seemed to be really interested in my input,” Lindo said. “And in the various conversations I had with producers, the writer, the director at the time, it was all leading into being very inclusive. It was really exciting conceptually, but it was also exciting in terms of the character that was going to form. And then, for whatever reason, it just went off the rails.”

He went on to relate the role he would’ve played in “Blade” to the character he played in Ryan Coogler’s recent take on the action-horror genre, “Sinners.”

“I’m not saying that...

Television westerns are few and far between now, but there was a time where they ruled supreme on all the big networks, with "Gunsmoke" having one of the biggest impacts on CBS. It was notable for being one of the first series westerns for an adult audience, in addition to lasting a then-unprecedented 20 season run across two decades. The craziest part is that the show maintained consistent ratings to the point that its cancellation came as a surprise to everyone involved. As is the case with any long-lasting show, however, it's not at all uncommon for some of the main cast to jump ship in the manner that Dennis Weaver and Amanda Blake did.

But let no one accuse series lead James Arness of never giving 100% to "Gunsmoke" as he played Marshal Matt Dillon, Dodge City's purveyor of justice, through and though for all 635 episodes of the series' run.

Prior...

Though she became known to the world for playing the feisty rebel champion Princess Leia Organa in the "Star Wars" franchise, Carrie Fisher tended to take roles in comedies. Many of her best roles are in comedies, ranging from starring in a sex scene opposite Warren Beatty in "Shampoo" as a teen to playing a middle-aged nun who picks up some stoner hitchhikers in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," but in 1988, she starred in a deadly serious Agatha Christie mystery. "Appointment with Death" follows Christie's most famous detective, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), as he tries to solve the murder of the wealthy Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie) while on holiday in Europe with her family following the death of her husband and some concerns about his will. 

It might seem kind of unusual based on the rest of her amazing filmography, but Fisher starred as Nadine Boynton, the wife of...

A spin-off from the classic ABC sitcom "Perfect Strangers," "Family Matters" didn't take long to captivate viewers, showcasing the hilarious day-to-day lives of Chicago cop Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson), his wife Harriette (Jo Marie Payton), and the rest of their family. Along with shows such as "Full House" and "Step by Step," the sitcom was a reliable mainstay of ABC's "Tgif" lineup from 1989 to 1997. By 1998, though, the show had moved to CBS for its final season, and it had clearly seen better days; it had long felt like "the Steve Urkel show," with said breakout character (Jaleel White) pretty much overshadowing the "family" in "Family Matters." And it wasn't quite the same family anymore, as Judyann Elder replaced Payton in the role of Harriette for the show's last nine episodes.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2017, Payton revealed why she made the decision to leave "Family Matters" after eight seasons and change playing the Winslow matriarch.

Back when there were clearer lines of separation between films and television, there was more delineated cross-pollination between the mediums. Nowadays, the concept of a TV star appearing in a major motion picture or a movie star leading the cast of a series is all too common, but during the 1990s, there was still a novelty to the concept. While a slice of pop culture parodying another bit of pop culture has been around ever since there's been multiple mediums of entertainment, such a thing is made that much more entertaining if one or more of the original creators happen to be involved with the parody.

Although the '90s were a time in which TV stars trying to make the leap to films was still difficult, this was less of a problem for character actors. In fact, supporting actors and character actors were practically embraced by filmmakers and casting...

Don’t count David Cronenberg among the auteurs carrying the torch for theatrical exhibition. Speaking to Jim Jarmusch for Interview Magazine, the body horror legend explained that he doesn’t see communal movie-going as an inherently superior way to watch his films.

“I only see movies in real theaters every once in a while, mostly at film festivals, and I’ve found that the projection isn’t always so great,” Cronenberg said. “I remember being in Venice onstage with Spike Lee and some others. He was talking about the Cathedral of Cinema, the whole religious aspect of it. And I said, ‘Spike, I’m watching “Lawrence of Arabia” on my watch, and there are a thousand camels there. I can see every one of them.’ I was joking, but what I meant was, I don’t find the cinema experience all that great. Maybe it’s because I’m older.

When people think of The Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan is one of the first characters that comes to mind — and with it, the deep rumbling voice of the great Liam Neeson. Neeson voiced the fantasy iteration of Jesus Christ (it's not an allegory — he's literally Jesus in another form in another world) for all three of the Narnia films released from 2005 to 2010. The first two movies, "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" and "Prince Caspian," feature Aslan in a significant role. As with C.S Lewis' source material, however, the third film, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," gives Aslan far less to do in terms of the story. It seems that it was also a significantly less enjoyable experience for Neeson himself as he voiced the Great Lion.

In a 2010 interview with the fansite NarniaWeb, the Irish-born actor was asked if it was difficult to portray Aslan in...

"The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" is surely one of the most significant TV themes of all time, and not just due to its widespread popularity. For some reason the beloved theme has endured multiple music-related debacles and courted controversy ever since the moment show creator Sherwood Schwartz and songwriter George Wyle brought it into existence.

First off, recording the "Gilligan's Island" theme song was as slapstick as the show itself, with a hurried studio session at director Melville Shavelson's house which took place at the same time he and his wife were hosting a large charity event. "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" then underwent an overhaul for the second season of the CBS sitcom. Whereas the first season featured a version of the tune performed by folk group the Wellingtons and which omitted the names of the Professor (Russell Johnson) and Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), the second season debuted with a brand new iteration,...

“Sinners,” an original, R-rated vampire thriller from director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan, topped the box office in its opening weekend despite steep competition from “A Minecraft Movie.”

Boosted by stellar reviews and Coogler and Jordan’s popularity, “Sinners” collected a solid $45.6 million from 3,308 North American theaters. Those ticket sales mark the biggest debut for an original film since Jordan Peele’s “Us” opened to $71 million in 2019. But Warner Bros. spent a staggering $90 million to produce “Sinners” (before factoring in global marketing expenses), so profitability remains a question mark.

At the international box office, “Sinners” added another $15.4 million for a global tally of $61 million.

“This is an excellent opening for a period horror film. It should have a good run now,” says David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe movie consulting firm. However, he adds, “the enormous production cost is going to cast a long shadow and set a high bar to profitability.

Long before Fox's Animation Domination programming block on Sunday nights, there was Adult Swim, the mature audience-oriented block on Cartoon Network. Starting in 2001, Adult Swim initially ran later at night on the cable channel, featuring more risqué content than the daytime programming, at least in terms of humor and violence. As Adult Swim's popularity grew, distinguishing itself further from Cartoon Network's usual programming, the block began to feature a growing amount of original series in addition to licensed shows. This move helped not only expand Cartoon Network's viewership to older audiences but solidified the popularity of adult animation in the United States.

Even though Adult Swim featured the official North American debuts of several popular international series, especially anime, we're focusing on original shows produced specifically for the programming block. From mock live-action talk shows to both serious and comedic animated series, Adult Swim continues to offer a wide variety with its series.

As reflected by its declining ratings in its later seasons, most "The Walking Dead" viewers can pinpoint the moment where they gave up on the show. For many, it's Lucille's reign of terror against Glenn (Steven Yeun) in the season 7 premiere. For others, it's the untimely demise of that kid with the silly hat (also known as Carl). However, my personal breaking point is fairly rare among the fandom: I first stopped watching after the death of Denise (Merritt Wever).

Denise rarely makes the top of any fan's favorite character list, but I like her because of how much she seems like a real person. Most of the characters on this show are cool in a way that feels cinematic, whereas Denise (with her anxiety issues and her nerdy interests) comes across as a person from the real world. She's someone who was probably destined to become a librarian,...

All great vampire movies have some bloodstains left behind by the great genre entries of the past, and "Sinners" is no different. It carries the sharp-toothed tension of the likes of "30 Days of Night" and "From Dusk till Dawn," with writer-director Ryan Coogler also bringing a welcome dose of originality with his eardrum-infesting entry. What's perhaps the biggest and almost bittersweet surprise about "Sinners," however, is in his main vampire antagonist, Remmick, played by the unsettling Jack O'Connell.

Firstly, there's nothing bad to highlight about O'Connell's performance. In fact, we dare say there's not enough of this toothy gatecrasher who rocks up at Smoke and Stack's (Michael B. Jordan) new juke joint. However, deep-cut fans of the fanged variety might find Remmick's tactics strongly reminiscent of a literary vampiric villain by the name of Ben Cortman. A vampire from a different time and of a more scientific origin,...

Director whose work ranged from BBC TV’s Play for Today to award-winning drama and Hollywood thrillers

The Canadian film-maker Ted Kotcheff, who has died aged 94, was denied entry to the US for being a suspected communist, banned for life from the Royal Albert Hall for organising a 1968 anti-apartheid charity show that ended with the burning of the American flag, and directed a TV play, broadcast live, in which one of the actors died during the second act.

If this suggests a calamitous career, the reality was very different. Kotcheff’s beginnings as a hired hand in Canadian television left him well-placed to become one of the most versatile directors in commercial cinema.

This article contains spoilers for "Sinners."

Part of what's made vampires such impactful movie monsters for the better part of the past century is seeing how these bloodsuckers have evolved in tandem with the medium they've thrived in. Their cinematic immortality serves as preserved legends for the next wave of filmmakers to not only learn from, but expand upon. You can glean so much from the creative gap between Carl Theodor Dreyer's "Vampyr" and Terence Fisher's "Horror of Dracula," as much as you can the stretch between Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark" and Ana Lily Amirpour's "A Girl Walk Home Alone at Night." Even "Nosferatu" most recently had a visual conversation about its shared legacy between F.W. Murnau and Robert Eggers.

It's safe to say that any conversation about the most prolific vampire movies of the 2020s would be nigh impossible without the inclusion of Ryan Coogler's "Sinners.

Ludwig Göransson never imagined scoring a film about a blues guitar player, let alone with a vintage resonator guitar. But that’s what happened when the Oscar-winning Swedish composer got to stir up the blues for Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” the genre-bending vampire film set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932.

“I grew up with blues around me,” Göransson told IndieWire. ”My dad is a blues guitar player who put a guitar in my hands when I was six and actually wanted to name me Albert after the great Albert King. So this hit close to home.”

It hit close to home for Coogler, too, who has family roots in Mississippi and who wanted to explore the cultural importance of the blues and its supernatural mythology. Taking inspiration from the legend of blues guitarist Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil for musical genius, Coogler offers a fresh spin with...

"Avengers: Doomsday" and "Avengers: Secret Wars" are on the way, and their collective cast will be even bigger than we thought (even though they won't be including every single Phase 4 character). The Russo Brothers are also returning to their directors' chairs to bring this next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a climactic ending. Oh yeah, and Robert Downey Jr. is back, this time as supervillain Doctor Doom.

As we gear up for a fresh era of MCU cross-over mayhem, it's fun to look back on the legacy that built the foundation for these monumental cinematic projects. There have been four live-action Avengers movies, in particular, in the MCU to date. The first one kicked off the eponymous group's run on the big screen way back in 2012, with the last one bringing Thanos to his knees seven years later.

Each "Avengers" flick is special in its own way. But...

In the "Gunsmoke" episode "The Jailer", Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake) and Matt Dillon (James Arness) are kidnapped by a bitter old woman in a black dress. Her name is Etta Stone, and she was played by the legendary Bette Davis (who was credited as "Miss Bette Davis"). Etta aims to hang Matt, as he killed her husband — a criminal — several years before. The old woman feels as if Matt himself committed a crime with his murder, however, and needed to face her own frontier justice. The episode also starred "Gunsmoke" regular-guest Bruce Dern (star of "Nebraska") as Etta Stone's son.

Working with a star of Davis' stature was, according to the trivia section on IMDb, intimidating for the "Gunsmoke" cast. Even though the show had been a hit for 12 seasons by the time "The Jailer" aired, there were still levels of fame that Arness and especially Blake weren't used to dealing with.

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Many consider Batman the greatest superhero because he has no fantastic powers, even though he's also far from an everyman. It's not just his resources and wealth that make Bruce Wayne an exceptional individual, it's his determination. But just as Batman's all-too human body can be broken, his will is only mostly invincible. Before Bane broke the Bat's back in "Batman: Knightfall," Deacon Joseph Blackfire broke his spirit in "Batman: The Cult."

The Deacon is the villain of that 1988 four-issue comic, written by Jim Starlin and drawn by artist Bernie Wrightson, and leader of the eponymous cult. Religion is not a frequent theme in Batman stories. This makes Blackfire, who dresses and speaks like a priest, stand out all the more compared to Batman's usual eccentric foes.

"The Cult" begins in media res, with Batman chained up inside the Cult's underground lair.

Movie characters are just like us, and sometimes, that involves showing them playing video games. To make a film more immersive, this can entail showing off an actual game that exists in the real world, like Thor (Chris Hemsworth) getting all worked up about "Fortnite" in "Avengers: Endgame" or Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) playing "Rage" in "Breaking Bad." These can be fun nods to the gamers in the audience, but for a more immersive experience, some films decide to create an entire new game from scratch.

In many instances, the game featured is a one-off joke but nonetheless looks enticing from what we can see. In other cases, the fake video game is pivotal to the plot. We learn more about the game's mechanics even if they have real-world consequences. We wouldn't want to actually play something that sets the world up for nuclear annihilation, but as a game to play with friends,...

If you're tuning into an episode of "Seinfeld," you can generally expect its agents of chaos to get into all manner of bad behavior. They don't really care what they do to other people unless it somehow involves implicating themselves, which goes against the traditional sitcom formula. It's not exactly like "Seinfeld" to take a moral stance by the end of an episode, as most of them conclude with no one learning a lesson from the mess they made.

In the season 3 episode "The Red Dot," for example, the central conflict centers around George looking to get a gift for Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) as a thank you for getting him a job at the publishing company she works at. Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) joins his double chip dipper friend to the store, where they find a beautiful cashmere sweater. The catch is that it's heavily discounted because of a small red dot.

After season 10 of "The Big Bang Theory," when the show was raking in almost 19 million viewers a week, showrunner Steve Molaro left. He was replaced by executive producer Steve Holland, who would continue running the series until it gracefully ended on its own terms in season 12. Molaro's reason for departing the show was pretty simple: he wanted to make "Young Sheldon," the spinoff prequel series that also turned out to be a huge success in its own right. It wasn't practical for Molaro to run two shows at once, so he prioritized "Young Sheldon" while still keeping an eye on "Tbbt" in his spare time.

It's worth noting that Molaro wasn't the showrunner for the first five seasons, either. Before season 6, the show was mainly run by co-creator Bill Prady. He stepped down around 2012 but continued to oversee the series as a producer, just as Molaro would do in seasons...

"Inside Out" is an emotional movie. Disney Pixar's internal gut-check of a film hit audiences of all ages in all the feels, leaving them wet-eyed as they processed through pre-teen Riley Anderson's internal struggles — a journey that is relatable on some level to anyone who calls themselves human. While the movie doesn't leave a dry eye in the room, it turns out that it could have cranked the waterworks up even higher if one death scene had been allowed to play out as originally planned.

We're talking about the tragic ending of one Bing Bong, the fantastical made-up friend from Riley's childhood, voiced by Richard Kind. In the final version of the movie, Bing Bong realizes that his weight (despite being mostly made of cotton candy) is preventing Joy (Amy Poehler) from escaping the gloomy Memory Dump on his rainbow-powered rocket-wagon. He encourages her to try one more time...

It stands to reason that with the sprawling cast of big personalities on the HBO series "A Game of Thrones," someone was going to clash with the show's directors. There are dozens of talented performers in major roles and even more in the surrounding cast, and with the difficulties of filming complicated scenes with tons of extras and uncomfortable period costumes, it's honestly shocking there wasn't more conflict on set. One actor took exactly zero guff from anyone, however, and not only beefed with directors but stopped filming when she stormed off of the set: the late Dame Diana Rigg, who portrayed the steely and smart Lady Olenna Tyrell, matriarch of the Tyrell family. While such behavior would be unseemly and frustrating from most actors, when it's an absolute living legend like Rigg, things are a little different. Some of the crew, especially directors, found her intimidating, while some of...

The setup of Samuel Bodin's 2019 horror TV series "Marianne" is deliciously fun. A horror author named Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois) has just killed off the main character of her series of witch-based horror novels, happy to retire the series. Weirdly, one of Emma's friends, Caroline, calls her up and explains that her elderly mother has come to believe that she is possessed by Marianne, the witch from Emma's books. Indeed, Caroline takes her own life (in public) after talking about how Emma's parents are going to be taken by Marianne as well. When Emma returns to her home town, her parents soon attack her assistant Camille (Lucie Boujenah) before wandering into the woods naked, bloody runes carved in their faces.

And that's just in the first episode. The rest of the eight-episode series takes place mostly in Emma's hometown as she returns to suss out her youth and solve her personal witchy mysteries.

It may have taken nearly a decade, but Ben Affleck is finally returning as Christian Wolff in "The Accountant 2." Despite the long gap between films, the sheer existence of this sequel suggests that there is money to be made here. This time around, it will be Amazon making that money, though, as the sequel shifted hands from Warner Bros. to the tech giant. In any event, the question we're left with is just how much money is there to be made? In a best-case scenario, quite a bit. But whether or not we're looking at a best-case scenario is still something of a coin toss.

As of this writing, "The Accountant 2" is expected to earn somewhere between $17 and $28 million when it opens domestically next weekend, per Box Office Theory. For comparison's sake, the first movie opened to $24.7 million in 2016 en route to $155.5 million globally against a $44 million budget.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Janet Yang used her keynote at the Beijing International Film Festival to emphasize the importance of cultural exchange between the world’s two largest film markets, sharing her unique perspective as an American-born Chinese film producer who has worked extensively in both industries and spent decades connecting them.

“My personal and professional experiences tell me that film has a unique power to bring people together, and that is why I remain perpetually optimistic about cultural exchange between not only our two nations, but amongst everyone, everywhere in the world,” Yang told attendees. She was speaking at the festival‘s industry forum titled “How High is the Ceiling for China’s Film Market?”

Yang, whose term as Academy president ends in “a few months,” reflected on her pioneering career bringing Chinese cinema to Western audiences and facilitating major Hollywood productions in China, including...