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'Strange,' 'Trolls' Lead Big Weekend; 'SNL' Holds Strong; AFM Dealmaking Sags as Market Shifts

November 07, 2016

What's news: Doctor Strange and Trolls are both outpacing expectations at the U.S. box office. Plus: SNL rides the campaign wave to highs, dealmaking sags at the American Film Market and Robert De Niro makes a Hollywood Film Awards plea for sanity on Election Day. — Erik Hayden.

Box Office: 'Strange' Leads Big Weekend

Marvel's new winning combo: Scott Derrickson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. The Doctor Strange team is celebrating after an $85M U.S. opening, Pamela McClintock writes in the weekend wrap:

Not only did Doctor Strange beat expectations stateside, overseas, the pic earned another $118.7M this weekend — including $44.3M in China, the top debut for the first installment in any superhero series — for a foreign cume of $240.4M after debuting in select markets a week ahead of its U.S. debut.

Males fueled the film (58 percent), while 57 percent of moviegoers were between the ages of 13 and 34. Strange, budgeted at $165M, nabbed an A CinemaScore from audiences and earned 47 percent of its gross from 3D screens.

Meanwhile, DreamWorks Animation and Fox's Trolls took second place with a better-than-expected $45.6M from 4,060 theaters. And Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge followed in third place with $14.8M from 2,886 theaters, a solid start for a tough, R-rated war film.

For awards-season watchers, Jeff Nichols' interracial drama Loving opened in four theaters in Los Angeles and New York. The movie posted the top theater average of the weekend, an estimated $48,750.

► Full U.S. top 10 chart I China weekend wrap I About that post-credits scene...

Elsewhere in film...

↱ Stephen Galloway's timely new column: "Increasingly, the satires of the past have been taken over by the Punch and Judy shows of the present. Pictures like The Candidate (or 1976’s Network, for that matter), once seemingly too outrageous to be true, now aren’t nearly outrageous enough." ↲

► Gerard Depardieu joins Bach. The actor has joined an upcoming biopic on the 17th century classic composer Johann Sebastian Bach (the title role hasn't yet been cast). Max Von Sydow and Axel Milbergwill co-star in the feature from That Good Night director Eric Styles.

► Frankie Muniz finds adventure role. The actor is set to star in Christopher Hope and the Secret of Napoleon alongside Ashley Rickards. Thomas Lemonine, who came up with the idea for the mystery thriller, also will star in the $10M production.

► John Cleese joins Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer. The Monty Python legend is adding his voice to the family animated pic that already includes Samantha Bee and Martin Short. DDI is selling the festive film.

↱ AFM: Indie director roundtable arrives. John Michael McDonagh, Lone Scherfig, Maha Haj, Ewan McGregor, Steven Cantor and Joshua Kriegman talk fears and fantasy projects in a frank and free-ranging discussion. Download the THR day 5 daily. ↲

► AFM dealmaking sags as market shifts. Scott Roxborough's somber fest wrap: International buyers, hit by the decline, or demise, of DVD sales, are increasingly focusing on movies that can play in theaters, a shift that means they want fewer, but better, films. AFM, however, is long dominated by the volume business.

► Robert Pattinson's High Life gets financing. The sci-fi thriller written by Zadie Smith now has multiple partners set to produce and finance the English-language debut of acclaimed French filmmaker Claire Denis.

► Spider-Man: Homecoming finds composer. Doctor Strange and Rogue One composer Michael Giacchino confirmed that he will be scoring next summer's Sony tentpole film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

► Ryuhei Kitamura to direct Doorman. The cult Versus helmer has signed on to the action-thriller, which is written by Lior Chefetz and Joe Swanson. Double Dutch International (DDI) is handling foreign sales and is introducing the project to buyers at AFM.

Hollywood Film Awards: De Niro gets political. While accepting an honor for his performance in The Comedian, Robert De Niro compared Trump to the fictional, ill-suited leaders in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: "We have the opportunity to keep a comedy from turning into a tragedy."

Ratings: 'SNL' Holds Strong

Powered by election fever, SNL ratings hovered near season highs during the last outing before Tuesday's vote, Michael O'Connell writes:

Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon reprised their Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton personas for one more cold open, and the installment averaged a 5.8 rating among households. In the key demo, the NBC show averaged a 2.8 rating among adults 18-49.

For a live-plus-same-day score, that was only exceeded by the Oct. 22 episode. Season-to-date, SNL is pulling its biggest audience in 24 years. An average 11.4 million viewers have watched the first four episodes of the season, per live-plus-seven-day tallies.

In the key demo, Nielsen gives the show a 3.6 rating among adults 18-49 during the same period. That's a high since 2008, the last time an election really catapulted the show's ratings.

► ICYMI: Watch Clinton-Trump cold open I Bill Murray and the Cubs I Dana Carvey as Church Lady.

Elsewhere in TV...

↱ Cable news confronts sober post-election reality. From Jim Rutenberg's N.Y. Times column: "How well the news media gets through its postelection hangover will have a lot to do with how the next chapter in the American political story is told. That’s why the dire financial reports from American newsrooms are so troubling." ↲

► Netflix's The Crown series budgeted at $156M? Nope, said creator Peter Morgan when asked over the weekend about the "most expensive series ever made" rumor bandied about: "It's not. There's sums of money that people talk about. I don't know. It was $100 million for two seasons."

► FYI, Netflix to skip January TCA press tour. The TCA had planned to schedule the streamer for a day of presentations during the tour, but that will have to be revised. This will be the first tour that Netflix has sat out since its first appearance in January 2013.

↱ Last night on TV... Westworld: Decoding Thandie Newton and Anthony Hopkins' journeys (so far) in "The Adversary" ... Walking Dead: Daryl has "lost the will to fight" in "The Cell" ↲

► ABC orders more American Housewife and Real O'Neals. The network has handed out a full-season order to the single-camera comedy starring Katy Mixon, and it has added three more episodes of the sophomore half-hour.

► CBS buys sports assistant comedy from LeBron James. The NBA superstar and his SpringHill Entertainment banner have set up comedy Thankless at the network. Duo Craig Gerard and Matt Zinman will pen the script and executive produce.

► Amy Poehler has sold a third comedy this season. The actress and her Paper Kite banner are teaming with Claudia Lonow for the Odd Couple-themed Family Style, which has landed at ABC with a script (with penalty) commitment.

Chappelle: No, I didn't vote Trump. After making a series of election jokes at a New York show that, when transcribed, confused some about which candidate he was favoring, the comedian's rep had to clarify that, nope, he voted for Clinton. Chappelle's statement.

L.A. Papered With Pro-Trump Street Art

A controversial conservative L.A. street artist is taking aim at celebrities who say they'll move to Canada if Trump wins, Paul Bond finds:

Cher, Jon Stewart, Lena Dunham and other celebrities who have promised to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected president were lampooned Sunday on fake billboards that are sure to get a rise out of a real estate agency that is very popular with the rich and famous.

The faux advertisements were plastered all over bus-stop benches in Pacific Palisades, Brentwood and Beverly Hills.

Some of the ads feature an image of Trump as a realtor on one side while on the other side is a picture of one of the offending celebrities. "Moving to Canada election day sale: For sales information contact Sotheby's agent Donald Trump," reads the text.