Movies
Completed ‘Kong: Skull Island’ is “Spectacular and Epic”!
My new favorite actor is Tom Hiddleston, who has series range. Never typecast, he’s been all over the spectrum having starred in everything from Thor to Only Lovers Left Alive, Crimson Peak, I Saw the Light and the upcoming High-Rise.
Next up for the thesp is Kong: Skull Island, the King Kong reboot that’s recently completed principal photography for release on March 10th, 2017.
Hiddleston spoke to EW about his role as a man who travels to the mythical island and home of the king of the apes. A team of explorers ventures inside what they find to be a treacherous island.
“We were in Hawaii, Australia, and Vietnam,” Hiddleston told EW. “And they were all completely different, and eventually they will all look like one homogenous island.”
Hiddleston is excited to work alongside a cast that includes Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, and Straight Outta Compton’s Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell — “We had maybe the most diverse and talented cast I think I’ve ever worked with as a whole” — but is extra pumped to also be sharing a screen with the titular gorilla. “He’s the biggest movie star in the history of movies,” says Hiddleston of Kong.
The actor also shed a little light on what to expect from the top-secret film. “Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who directed it, had this extraordinary idea,” says Hiddleston. “I don’t want to spoil too much… But it’s a whole new re-conception of the mythology. It essentially follows a group of disparate travelers and explorers and soldiers who travel to an undiscovered island in the South Pacific. And it’s set in a time period where you could conceive that there are still undiscovered places on the earth. What they find on the island is surprising, and then every character has a very different response to it. It’s going to be spectacular and epic, but also the human drama is kind of interesting as well.”
Once Kong: Skull Island is completed, Warner Bros. moves onto both Godzilla 2 and Godzilla vs Kong.
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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