It’s rare to see three Hollywood films open wide and belly-flop on the same weekend at Australian cinemas but it was a near-disaster for 'Geostorm' and a total wipe-out for 'The Snowman' and 'Home Again'.
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FremantleMedia Australia’s re-imagining of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' has landed another key sale, this time to France, after Amazon Prime Video bought the US rights.
It was a grim weekend for Australian cinemas despite the launches of 'The Mountain Between Us', 'Happy Death Day' and several local films.
The cinemagoing behaviour by kids aged 12-14, 15-17 and the 18-25 demographic is fundamentally different, posing challenges for distributors and exhibitors.
Dispelling suggestions that cinema is ailing, Fox executive Andrew Cripps has delivered an upbeat assessment of the global film industry, pointing to a healthy upswing after a big slump in the US summer.
The 'Blade Runner' reboot posed two questions: Can Harrison Ford still open a movie at the at age of 75? And will Alcon Entertainment/Sony Pictures’ investment in the sci-fi– reportedly budgeted at $US155 million – pay off?
If a studio contemplates remaking a classic or cult movie of decades ago, by and large the reboot has to be superior and more compelling than the original. That truism evidently did not occur to the top brass at Columbia Pictures when they greenlit a reboot of 'Flatliners', Joel Schumacher’s 1990 horror movie which starred Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt and Billy Baldwin.
Critics the world over, including Australia, did not much like Matthew Vaughn’s 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle', objecting to the cartoonish violence and juvenile jokes, but what do they know?