Page 287 – NYFA

Hugh Jackman’s Mullet Tops Weak Weekend Box Office

Chappie led the way at the box office this weekend, but it didn’t take much. A film lineup over-packed with R-rated movies didn’t seem to impress movie-goers, leading to weak earnings.

The sci-fi robot flick starring Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel, and Sigourney Weaver brought in just $13.3 million to top the list. Members of Die Antwoord, who are more used to starring in music videos than feature films, also made appearances in Chappie. Neill Blomkamp, who wrote and directed the movie, is a huge fan of the musicians and reportedly got inspiration for the film while listening to their music and working on Elysium.

During a weak box office weekend, perhaps the true battle for supremacy was who had the better mullet: Hugh Jackman or Yolandi Visser.

Will Smith’s Focus, which previously topped the charts, dropped into second place.

Also premiering this weekend was Vince Vaughn’s new comedy, Unfinished Business, which didn’t fare very well, earning $4.8 million and barely managed to squeak into the top 10.

Overall, the weekend came in 40% under the same time last year. It’s likely that a big part of the problem is that 6 of the top 11 movies were R-rated. This limits the audience by the very nature of the restrictive rating.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, and Fifty Shades of Grey all stayed in the top 10 this weekend. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Duff both had pleasantly strong showings as well.

The top 10 films for the weekend were:

1. Chappie	$13,300,000
2. Focus	$10,020,000
3. The Second Best Exotic Merigold Hotel	$8,600,000
4. Kingsman: The Secret Service	$8,300,000
5. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water	$7,000,000
6. Fifty Shades of Grey	$5,604,000
7. McFarland, USA	$5,318,000
8. The Lazarus Effect	$5,100,000
9. The Duff	$4,850,000
10. Unfinished Business	$4,800,000

Sony’s Morpheus Encourages You To Take The Blue Pill

Sony Morpheus VR Headset — Credit: Signe Brewster

Red pill or blue pill? In The Matrix, Morpheus convinced Neo to take the red pill and escape a virtual reality to see the real world. Sony’s Morpheus intends to do the opposite.

Virtual reality is picking up steam. Oculus Rift brought VR technology back into the mainstream, and companies are seeing a potential new channels for providing content. For example, the NBA is already experimenting with providing virtual reality streams through the Samsung Gear (powered by Oculus). Google has also entered the game with “low tech” option for android devices with its Cardboard.

Sony, being the proprietor of one of the biggest game consoles on the market, decided to jump on the opportunity as well.

Sony Studios’ Shuhei Yoshida confirmed at the Game Developers Conference that Sony’s new virtual reality hardware is pretty much done.

The Morpheus VR headset will be compatible with the new PS4 and will provide a 1080p virtual reality experience. There will be no wireless headset, however, because Sony wants to keep its high quality for the headset visuals.

This will provide those involved with game design and development for the PS4 a new opportunity, but also a new challenge.

While we’ve only been shown prototypes for both the Oculus, Morpheus, and other VR headsets, it seems like we are on the brink of seeing releases of consumer-ready versions. While nothing has been confirmed, there are indications that Oculus will be ready for mass market later this year. Morpheus, on the other hand, won’t be ready until 2016.

Although virtual reality is not a new topic, and we see the topic spike in popularity every so often, perhaps the technology is getting to a point where it will stick around. Seems like we’ll just have to wait and see.

The Expendables Plot Move to Small Screen

After three films and tapping seemingly every action movie star in the universe, one could be forgiven for thinking that The Expendables had finally run out of steam. But alas, there are still plenty of aging TV action stars out there and today they can be heard thanking their patron saint Sylvester Stallone, who will be bringing the franchise to the small screen for Fox, which he’ll also be executive producing.

While no cast has yet to be announced, entertainment news outlets have already begun speculating about potential candidates, such as 24‘s Kiefer Sutherland, Walker Texas Ranger‘s Chuck Norris (who has already starred in the films), Magnum P.I.‘s Tom Selleck, and Xena‘s Lucy Lawless.

The show will be written and executive produced by writing duo Greg Coolidge, who penned last year’s hit Ride Along, and Kirk Ward, along with Shane Brennan of NCIS who will also be serving as showrunner.

The project comes from Lionsgate TV, the small screen sibling of the powerhouse feature film studio. Analysts are speculating that adapting The Expendables for the small screen will be the first of many Lionsgate properties that will get the TV treatment, as the studio has reportedly been eying the many blockbusters in its libraries for television, having first floated the idea for an Expendables television show back in 2012.

Bruce Willis Making Broadway Debut in Misery Adaptation

Continuing the adaptation trend of bringing big movies to Broadway, Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures has announced plans to bring Stephen King’s famous book and film, Misery, to Broadway this fall, with Bruce Willis making his Broadway debut.

The play is an adaptation of Stephen King’s popular novel, which was turned into a successful film in 1990 for which Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her turn as Annie Wilkes.

King’s novel chronicles the travails of romance novelist Paul Sheldon who is imprisoned by his number one fan, Wilkes, following a car accident when she learns that he intends to kill off her favorite character from his books. Wilkes will be played by theatre veteran Elizabeth Marvel who recently had a major role in the third season of Netflix‘s House of Cards playing the character of Heather Dunbar.

Will Frears, who directed Omnium Gatherum, has been hired to direct the play when it makes its limited run later this year.

While this will be Willis’ official Broadway debut, he was Ed Harris’ understudy in the off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love in 1983. For students enrolling in our Two-Year Musical Theatre Conservatory, this will certainly be a staging worth checking out.

HBO Will “Now” Be Available Without Cable Service

Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have been growing rapidly over the past few years. With such demand for streaming content, HBO doesn’t want Netflix to have all the fun.

The International Business Times reports that HBO will be launching their own standalone streaming service. The service now has a name, a prospective launch date, and a price.

The service will go by the name HBO Now. Scheduled to be available in April, just in time for the new season of the wildly popular Game of Thrones, the service will cost $15/month.

HBO has had a long-standing relationship with paid content, so it is no stranger to the business model. It also already has a streaming service in HBO Go. However, up until now, viewers had to have a bundled cable package to access the content. What sets HBO Now apart is the ability to access HBO media without having to sign up for any other channels you don’t want.

The company hopes to gain exposure with demographics that have no desire (or ability) to buy expensive cable packages, and those that just prefer to stream content on demand.

There are also talks that HBO will partner with Apple to provide access on Apple TV. This should not come as a shocker, as HBO Go is already an option for Apple’s streaming device.

With HBO’s extensive current lineup and history of in-demand series and films, this should prove to be a successful venture. And if nothing else, this yet again points to the change in how people consume their entertainment and media.

Award Winning Journalist Kimberly Wallace to Speak at NYFA

kimberly wallace Friday morning Kimberly Wallace, a field reporter and in-studio anchor with ViOS 1 News, will be visiting New York Film Academy. An award-winning and Emmy nominated journalist, during a two hour Q&A session with Broadcast Journalism students she will discuss the challenges of reporting from the field, as well as the skills necessary to be a successful studio anchor.

ViOS 1 News is an example of how content distributors (in this case, Verizon) are becoming content creators. ViOS 1 News is also the kind of production unit where being a multimedia journalist (MMJ) is an absolute necessity.

The Q&A session will take place 9:00 am this Friday March 6, at NYFA’s 17 Battery Place campus. Current students, as well as potential Broadcast Journalism students, are invited.

‘The Simpsons’ Predicted One of Science’s Greatest Discoveries

The Simpsons has been ahead of its time since its inception, a forerunner of modern and post-modern television comedy from the moment Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and Maggie became the yellow faces of primetime. What’s surprising the Internet this week is that the Matt Groening animated series, now in its 26^th season, was also ahead of its time in advanced particle physics.

In 2012, with help from the multi-billion dollar miles-wide Large Hadron Collider, scientists finally discovered the Higgs boson, the so-called “God-particle” that defines mass for all known matter. But apparently, Homer came very very close to figuring it out on his own in 1998’s episode The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace. The screenwriter of that season nine episode was David X. Cohen, a self-proclaimed math nerd known to sneak in obscure scientific and mathematic equations into The Simpsons and his own series, Futurama. The equation on the board came from a friend of Cohen’s and turned out to be an eerily accurate prediction of the particle’s long-sought after mass.

Since being reported in The Independent, Homer’s prophecy has gone viral, another step in The Simpsons sudden return to cultural relevance since launching its own streaming service with FXX last summer. Since then, fans have made trending topics of canon-breaking episodes, started popular podcasts reviewing each episode, and—just last month—formed theories that Homer has been in a coma since 1993. It just goes to show that the series is still as talked about as it was when it first aired in 1989—a true testament to its cultural legacy.

Yahoo! TV Debuts Trailer for Community’s Resurrected Season Six

This week Yahoo premiered a trailer for the sixth season of the cult comedy sitcom, Community, the absurdist, pop-culture referencing show about a local college starring Joel McHale. Originally part of Must See TV with The Office, Parks & Recreation and 30 Rock, NBC cancelled Community (several times) and its hardcore fans thought they’d never get the “six seasons and a movie” they hoped for every year the show lived on the ratings bubble.

While many hoped Netflix, Amazon or another network would come to Community’s rescue, few predicted its savior would be Yahoo, which had yet to start its own streaming service. While the show has lost some cast members, including Chevy Chase, Donald Glover, Jonathan Banks and John Oliver, season six will have new characters played by Keith David and Paget Brewster.

While the show’s surprising resurrection and trailer is great news to its fanbase, it also highlights some major evolutions for the television industry. For one, it is the coming out party for Yahoo! Screen, which is using Community’s beloved cult status as a foothold to break into the increasingly-crowded streaming mediascape, much like Netflix did with Arrested Development in 2013. With its capital and buzzworthy CEO, Yahoo is poised to become a major player.

For another, it shows that Amazon’s strategy was most likely not a fluke. Yahoo is joining other large companies not originally based in filmmaking and TV in providing original content online. It won’t be long before these corporate names are as synonymous with Emmys and ratings as the broadcast and cable networks.

Finally, it’s another feather in the cap for vocal fanbases, who are succeeding more and more with bringing back their favorite shows with their passionate outcries. With more and more companies entering the TV game and having a lot more to prove, suddenly these TV viewers are finding themselves with more power than they ever expected. Now that’s community.

Netflix Sets Sights on Oscars with “Beasts of No Nation”

Idris Elba in a scene from Beasts of No Nation.

A month after Netflix declared it was aiming to raise $1.5 billion worth of corporate debt, industry analysts got a better idea of where some of this money might be channeled after it was announced that the company had put down a competitive $12 million to acquire the global distribution rights to buzzed-about Beasts of No Nation, which it will premiere simultaneously both on the streaming service’s site and in theatres later this year.

Following its Emmy Award-winning successes in original programming like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black and releasing critically acclaimed documentaries—including the Oscar-nominated docs Virunga and The Square, which was DP’d by Documentary grad Muhammad Hamdy—this most recent purchase has many analysts speculating that Netflix is gunning for an Oscar. The film, which was helmed by Emmy Award-winning True Detective director Cary Fukunaga and stars acclaimed British actor Idris Elba, boasts an awards season-friendly plot that focuses on the plight of an African child soldier.

The fact that the company is seeking to show the film in theaters is indicative of its Academy Awards ambitions as a theatrical run is a requirement to be considered for an Oscar nomination. However, how wide of a release the film will receive remains to be seen as most major theater chains will not show films that do not honor the 90-day wait period between theatrical and home entertainment premieres. Furthermore, after the company announced plans to release a sequel to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in partnership with Imax, it was met with a planned boycott by the major theater chains as that film will also not adhere to the traditional 90-day waiting period.

Beasts of No Nation was also written by Fukunaga and produced for $6 million by Participant Media and Red Crown and filmed last year on location in Ghana. The fact that Netflix was willing to pay double to secure the global rights to the film further indicates that the company believes that this is a film that will be well-received by both critics and audiences as Elba’s performance is already being buzzed about for a potential Best Actor Oscar nomination.