Movies
Paramount Stands by ‘mother!’ With Beautiful Statement After Rough Weekend
While Andy Muschietti’s IT continued its dominance at the box office over the weekend, Darren Aronofsky’s mother! didn’t quite fare as well. Backed by a marketing campaign that mostly shrouded *everything* about the movie in secrecy, Aronofsky’s latest made just $7.5 million in its opening weekend.
Furthermore, mother! received a dreaded “F” as its CinemaScore, suggesting that most people who actually did pay to see the film just didn’t like it very much.
What does Paramount think about all this? In a commendable statement made to THR over the weekend, the studio stood by Aronofsky and his bold vision.
“This movie is very audacious and brave. You are talking about a director at the top of his game, and an actress at the top her game. They made a movie that was intended to be bold,” said Paramount worldwide president of marketing and distribution, Megan Colligan. “Everyone wants original filmmaking, and everyone celebrates Netflix when they tell a story no one else wants to tell. This is our version. We don’t want all movies to be safe. And it’s okay if some people don’t like it.”
Boom. Whether you loved mother! or you hated it, you have to respect a studio (and a filmmaker) that’s unafraid to be bold and sacrifice mass appeal for the sake of making a film they can be proud of. We never really expected mother! to do well with general audiences or make much at the box office (especially with IT drowning out everything else right now), and it seems like Paramount didn’t either. But they had faith in Aronofsky’s vision nonetheless, and we damn sure respect them for that.
Read our review of mother!, where we called it a “bold and fascinating experience.”
Movies
‘Ebenezer’ Official Trailer – Ti West Turns Johnny Depp into ‘A Christmas Carol’ Icon Scrooge
Ti West (X, Pearl, MaXXXine) is back with the upcoming Ebenezer starring Johnny Depp, a fresh new take on the classic tale of A Christmas Carol from Charles Dickens.
Johnny Depp will play Ebenezer Scrooge in Ti West’s Ebenezer, and Paramount is bringing the film to theaters on November 13, 2026. Watch the official trailer down below.
The tagline? “The name you know. The story you don’t.”
Andrea Riseborough (Possessor), Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings), Tramell Tillman (“Severance”), Rupert Grint (Harry Potter franchise), Daisy Ridley (Star Wars franchise), Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games franchise), Charlie Murphy (“Peaky Blinders”), Arthur Conti (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), and Ellie Bamber (“Willow”) also star.
Deadline had detailed in a recent report, “This version, a thrilling ghost story set in Dickens’ London, follows one man’s supernatural journey to face his past, present and future and fight for a second chance. Stephen Deuters and Jason Forman to executive produce.”
Nathaniel Halpern wrote the adaptation for Ti West to direct.
Written by Charles Dickens, the classic tale of A Christmas Carol has been adapted for the screen countless times over the years, with notable film adaptations including Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim, Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney, A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott, Scrooged (1988) starring Bill Murray, The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine, and A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey.
A Christmas Carol is classically a period piece ghost story. As Luiz H.C. wrote here on Bloody Disgusting, “Isn’t it weird how the single most influential piece of Christmas-related media is technically a horror story? One can even make the argument that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol paved the way for the rise of Victorian Spiritualism during the following decade.”
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