Movies
Jennifer Connelly Playing the Villain in Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Alita: Battle Angel’
Filming is well underway on director Robert Rodriguez’s long-gestating, big-budget adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita manga series, titled Alita: Battle Angel, which has a tentative release date of July 20th, 2018. The 20th Century Fox film will reportedly be focused on the first four books in the series, and today brings some exciting casting news.
THR reports that Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly has just signed on to play one of the film’s villains. She joins an impressive cast that includes Rose Salazar as the title character, along with Jackie Earle Haley, Christoph Waltz, Ed Skrein, Keean Johnson, Mahershala Ali, Lana Condor, Eiza González, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Leonard Wu, and Marko Zaror.
Set in the 26th century, Alita tells of a female cyborg (Salazar) that is discovered in a scrapyard by a scientist. With no memory of her previous life except her deadly martial-arts training, the woman becomes a bounty hunter, tracking down criminals. The action-adventure story is meant to serve as a backdrop to themes of self-discovery and the search for love.
James Cameron is producing with his Lightstorm Entertainment partner Jon Landau.
Curry Barker’s Obsession has been on a generational run at the box office these last several weeks, with the incredible word-of-mouth driving the box office totals higher and higher and higher with each passing week. After a debut weekend of $17 million, Obsession made a whopping $23 million in its second weekend, and then scared up $26.4 million in its third weekend. In its fourth weekend, Obsession just scared up another $25.6 million in the U.S.!
Deadline notes in a report this morning, “Obsession reps the biggest fourth weekend ever for a horror movie ahead of 1999’s Blair Witch Project which did $24.3M.”
Worldwide, Obsession is now the highest grossing movie in history for Focus Features. The current worldwide total is $224.7 million, while the domestic total is $152.1 million.
That also makes Obsession the highest grossing horror movie of 2026, far exceeding the $207.9 million worldwide total ($121.9 million domestically) of Scream 7 earlier this year!
Yes, the highest grossing horror movie of 2026 is an ORIGINAL HORROR MOVIE!
The best part? The production budget for Obsession was just $750,000, with Focus Features acquiring the film for a reported $15 million. Even when you factor in the marketing spend and the fact that theaters get their own sizable cut, this one is a MASSIVE win for Focus.
From A24 and director Kane Parsons, Backrooms is already nipping at the heels of that record after just a couple weeks in release. The current domestic total of Backrooms is $135 million, while the worldwide total is now sitting at a very healthy $212.6 million. That means Backrooms has also already surpassed Scream 7, and may soon pass Obsession as well.
In Curry Barker’s theatrical debut Obsession, after breaking the mysterious One Wish Willow to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.
Inde Navarrette (“Superman & Lois”) and Michael Johnston (“Teen Wolf”) star.
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