Movies
Will We See A Director’s Cut Of the Critically-Acclaimed ‘Snowpiercer’?
Is sort of insane reading all of this nonsense between Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-Ho and distributor The Weinstein Company, mostly because it’s critically acclaimed, and being celebrated worldwide.
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Right?
That’s what I would think, which is why it’s so bizarre reading about the hell Joon-Ho is going through in an attempt to keep his vision on screen here in the States. Instead, The Weinstein Company wants to trim the film, add a voice-over explaining the situation to the “dummies”, and speed up the pace for the attention-deficient Americans.
Over the past few months we’ve been watching from the sidelines, praying that Joon-Ho gets to release his version, while also crossing our fingers and toes that the movie actually gets released. Some good news arrives out of the Mar del Plata Film Fest, where Joon-Ho tells THR that he may have won the war…
“I stayed in New York for two weeks before coming here to Mar del Plata, mostly because of this matter,” said the director. “And the good news is that after all the speculation and comments about that 20 minutes cut, and considering the original version that was released in Korea and France will also be released in Japan and Hong Kong, we now have been talking a lot about keeping the original cut for the U.S. release, so what I can say is … have faith.”
Starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer, Alison Pill, Song Kang-ho, Ewen Bremner, Kenny Doughty, the film takes place in a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, and a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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