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'Inferno' Doused; World Series Ratings Surge; 'Westworld' Orgy; Hollywood Existentialism

October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween: No one was cheering more for the Cubs last night than Fox Sports execs, and they got their wish: a Game 6 in Cleveland on Tuesday and great early ratings for Sunday's nailbiter 3-2 game. Plus: Doctor Strange opens big overseas, Deadpool 2 may have found a director and short speeches rule at LACMA's Art + Film gala. — Matthew Belloni, Erik Hayden and Jennifer Konerman.

Box Office: 'Strange' Magic Overseas

It looks like Disney has another hit: Doctor Strange opened to $86M overseas this weekend, Pamela McClintock writes:

Doctor Strange unfurled in its first 33 territories — or 45 percent of the marketplace — a week before landing in the U.S. and additional major markets, including China, on Nov. 4. The film topped Marvel titles Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy and even Captain America: Winter Soldier in comparable markets.

The superhero film also easily topped the foreign chart ahead of Inferno, which took in another $29M in its third weekend for an international total of $132M. (Inferno, which began rolling out offshore in mid-October, bombed in its U.S. debut over Halloween weekend with $15M).

► Matt emails: Ponder these opening numbers: The Da Vinci Code: $77M, Angels and Demons: $46M, Inferno: $15M. Ouch. The Dan Brown franchise didn't just die in the U.S. this weekend, it went up in flames. Also, this was supposed to be the sure-fire hit that broke director Rob Howard out of his recent slump. Instead, it's his fourth domestic flop in a row after The Dilemma, Rush and In the Heart of the Sea.

► Full U.S. chart I Overseas breakouts I Inferno bombs stateside.

Elsewhere in film...

► James Cameron pledges new Avatar tech in sequels. At an engineers event, the director outlined goals for the sequels: “I'm going to push ... I’m still very bullish on 3D, but we need brighter projection, and ultimately I think it can happen — with no glasses."

► At LACMA's Art + Film gala. Leonardo DiCaprio and Eva Chow co-chaired the A-list event on Saturday where Kathryn Bigelow took to the stage and praised her mentor, artist Lawrence Weiner, and Trump didn't get mentioned by name. The short speeches.

► Chris Rock highlights Produced By. His talked about quote: "Some people aren't making comedy for me, like Samantha Bee ... This is not for me, this is for a certain group of women, and I gotta kinda defer. I think everyone should be funny to the people that look like you first."

↱ R.I.P., Norman Brokaw. The talent agent who ran William Morris and also maintained a decades-long association with the now-embattled Bill Cosby (while also representing the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Stanwyck and Clint Eastwood) died Saturday after a long illness. Full obit. ↲

► Gerard Butler joins psychological thriller. The actor is heading to the seas of Scotland for Keepers alongside Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk breakout Joe Alwyn. The thriller is to be directed by Kristoffer Nyholm and to be shopped at AFM.

► Tom Hardy to portray Al Capone. The Oscar nominee is set to star as the mobster in Fonzo, the upcoming project from writer-director Josh Trank. The film will be produced by Russell Ackerman and John Schoenfelder and shopped at AFM.

► Rambo reboot planned. The franchise that starred Sylvester Stallone is returning with Rambo: New Blood, with a younger actor inhabiting the role and Ariel Vromen directing. Nu Image/Millennium Films is looking at Rambo as a character akin to James Bond.

↱ Trailer watch: Life. Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds find that there is alien life out there in other parts of our solar system — but it might not be so friendly to humans in this Columbia/Skydance thriller. ↲

► Casey Affleck reteams with David Lowery for crime drama. In The Old Man and the Gun, Affleck plays a detective fascinated with robber Forrest Tucker, portrayed by Robert Redford. Principal photography is scheduled to begin in spring 2017 in Ohio.

► Deadpool 2 eyes John Wick helmer. David Leitch has emerged as the frontrunner to direct the Fox sequel. The move happens about a week after the sequel to the surprise Ryan Reynolds hit lost its director, Tim Miller, over “creative differences.”

Oscar hopefuls honored at Britannia Awards. Felicity Jones, Ang Lee, Jodie Foster, Ricky Gervais and Samuel L. Jackson collected awards at the annual gathering hosted by BAFTA-LA. Foster closed her remarks with an assurance that she's "not done yet."

TV Ratings: World Series Surges

Fox Sports execs got their wish on Sunday night with World Series ratings rebounding in a big way, Michael O'Connell writes about the early numbers:

Overnight returns in Nielsen's metered markets give Fox coverage of the game a 15.3 rating household rating, topping all previous showings this World Series. That's also a 46 percent surge from the prior night's (still formidable) series low.

Sunday's outing was the best Game 5 in over a decade. Compared to last year's Game 5, the series-ender that clinched a win for the Kansas City Royals, the overnight ratings were up 30 percent. (That game ultimately averaged 17.2 million viewers.)

It's a huge showing for baseball, one that all-but-ensures a massive audience for the next one or two games. The World Series also topped Sunday Night Football by quite a handsome margin. Head-to-head, Game 5 bested NBC's NFL showing (11.6 household rating) by 32 percent.

Elsewhere in TV...

► About that Westworld orgy last night. No spoilers, but: "I think all of us have a modicum of taste that keeps us from taking it too far into the pornographic world," co-exec producer and supervising director Richard J. Lewis says of the events shown.

► Jon Hamm, Jake Gyllenhaal perform Sinclair Lewis. The stars acted out a piece of It Can't Happen Here, which imagined a demogogue getting elected president and making himself a dictator, at the Broadway for Hillary fundraiser. Watch here.

► The Americans writers tease end of FX series. Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and co-showrunners Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg revealed the story behind a vein-popping scene during a chat with Tim Goodman at a THR TV Talks panel at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

↱ Pundit primer: Bakari Sellers. The attorney and CNN political commentator, formerly of the South Carolina House of Representatives, is becoming a rising progressive star: "If I'm not in a courtroom, I'm on CNN." ↲

► Stuntman sues Tom Sizemore for running him over. Steve De Castro says Sizemore was drunk when he hit him with a vehicle on set of USA's series Shooter. He's suing the actor — along with Viacom, Paramount and others — over the incident.

► Marti Noxon's Dietland adaptation lands at AMC. Noxon's TV adaptation of Sarai Walker's novel will land at the network with an eye toward picking it up to series in 2017. The project, sources say, has a hefty penalty attached should it not move to series.

► Fresh Off the Boat showrunner teams with Son of Zorn boss. Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna are teaming for a high-concept comedy for Fox. The project landed at Fox with a script plus significant penalty attached.

Rep Sheet Roundup: Johnny Depp signs with CAA after more than 25 years with UTA’s Tracey Jacobs … Chelsea Handler signs with 42West for publicity ... A Wrinkle in Time star Storm Reid signs with BWR Public Relations … The Night Of’s Amara Karan signs with UTA. More here.

Hollywood Exec Existentialism

A spooky Monday read: Throughout the industry, whole superstructures have been created to convince us of we’re in charge of our lives, when we patently aren’t, Stephen Galloway writes in his latest column. An excerpt:

Titles are a case in point. Once upon a time, there were merely presidents and vps; now there are senior vps and executive vps and senior executive vps and chairmen and co-chairmen and co-CEOs. Each of these ranks is minutely graded, there to remind us of the place we hold in the Hollywood constellation.

Other things convey the notion of control in an environment where there is none. Top directors are promised final cut, when everyone knows they’ll need full studio approval if their films are ever to get a proper release.

Power lists celebrate those who’ve made it to the upper-most echelon, carefully avoiding how perilously easy it is to fall off it altogether. Restaurants give A-listers the best tables, until they’re no longer on the A list, when they’re lucky to get a table at all.

Those few who are truly in control don’t need to worry about tables. I’ve never seen any of the genuine moguls — the Rupert Murdochs, the Sumner Redstones and the Ted Turners — focus on where they were sitting. They didn’t need to fuss about illusion, because they knew they possessed the real thing.