What's news: Parasite cruising to a $50 million U.S. box office haul following its Oscars win, Sonic gives Paramount a much-needed boost, The White House Correspondents' Dinner will bring back a comedian host this year, jury deliberations set to begin in Harvey Weinstein trial, The Berlin Film Festival grapples with its founder's Nazi past. Plus: Reviews of Harrison Ford's The Call of the Wild and Al Pacino's Hunted. --Alex Weprin

 'Parasite' Post-Oscars Bump

►Parasite heads for huge $50M-plus in U.S. after historic Oscar win. Over the long Presidents Day holiday, the South Korean dark comedy-thriller made its biggest push yet in the U.S., expanding from 1,060 locations to 2,001. The move paid off as Parasite raced up the chart to No. 7 with $6.8 million — the film's top weekend gross to date (indie distributor Neon first opened the film in select arthouse cinemas in early October).

--Its worldwide gross of $205 million includes $44.49 million in the U.S. ticket sales, where it now ranks No. 4 on the list of the top-grossing foreign-language films of all time after passing Instructions Not Included ($44.47 million), not adjusted for inflation. Box office analysts put Parasite's final U.S. gross at $50 million or more, the top showing for a non-English-language film since Zhang Yimou's Hero 18 years ago. The story.

►Holiday weekend box office: Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog made a loud boom at the Presidents Day box office with a three-day domestic opening of $58 million, a record for a video game adaptation. The film's projected four-day gross of $70 million is among the best showings ever for the long holiday weekend, which coincided this year with Valentine's Day.

--Elsewhere: Sonic quashed its next closest rival, Warner Bros.' Birds of Prey, which fell to No. 2 in its second weekend with an estimated $17 million over the three days and $19.9 million for the four-day frame. Sony's Blumhouse-produced Fantasy Island, a horror reimagining of the classic TV series of the same name, bowed in third place with an estimated $12.4 million for the three days and $14 million for the four. And then there was Parasite (more below). The full box office chart.

+Analysis: Sonic the Hedgehog wakes Paramount from hibernation. Every Hollywood studio has its ups and downs at the box office, but Paramount has endured a dismal run, topped by big-budget misses such as Gemini Man and Terminator: Dark Fate in late 2019. Sonic marks an important victory for Paramount and studio chairman Jim Gianopulos after scoring the top opening of all time for a video game adaptation. Gianopulos picked up the project out of turnaround from Sony in fall of 2017, not long after he took the job and was tasked with righting the ailing studio.

--"Sonic was the right film at the right time. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for Paramount, a studio that desperately needs franchises. God forbid the industry loses another major studio to a rival," says box office analyst Jeff Bock. The story.



^The Call of The Wild review: Frank Scheck reviews the adaptation of Jack London's classic 1903 adventure novel, which stars Harrison Ford and a CGI-generated dog. 

Quote: "There have been movie adaptations of Jack London's novel dating as far back as a silent 1923 version. Cinematic treatments continued in the 1930s with an adaptation starring Clark Gable and Loretta Young, and subsequent versions had lead actors that included Charlton Heston and Rutger Hauer. All of these films had at least one thing in common: They starred a real damn dog." The review.

Elsewhere in film...

--The 2020 Tribeca Film Festival will open with the world premiere of the documentary Jimmy Carter Rock & Roll President, it was announced today.

--Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri director MIchael McDonagh has set up his next movie with Fox Searchlight. The buddy drama, to be written and directed by McDonagh, portrays two lifelong friends on a remote Irish isle suddenly finding themselves at an impasse when one ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for the both of them.

--Oliver Stone will serve as jury president of the international competition at the inaugural Red Sea Film Festival, set to take place in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah next month.

--Netflix has acquired global rights to The Life Ahead, starring Sophia Loren.

--European theatrical film admissions hit a 15-year high on Disney, local titles.

 Berlin rebooted: Festival shuffles lineup, aims for recharged market. Arriving at the end of awards season and just after Sundance, the Berlinale has always struggled for relevance, but new leadership looks to hit the reset button with a date change and more tweaks to maintain its spot as one of the "Big Five" fests, Scott Roxborough reports. The story.

+Berlin Film Festival founder's Nazi past casts shadow over 2020 edition. Revelations about Alfred  Bauer, who ran the Berlinale from 1951 to '76, indicate he was an enthusiastic follower of Adolf Hitler's — putting the event's egalitarian origins in a new light. On Tuesday, the Berlin Festival announced there were cancelling the Alfred Bauer Prize and would replace it this year with a special Silver Bear - 70th Berlinale award in honor of the festival's 70th anniversary. The Berlinale said after talks with various research institutions it has commissioned the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) to carry out an independent investigation into Bauer's past. The story.

+Also: Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Todd Phillips' Joker, Peter Farrelly's Green Book, Bong Joon Ho's Parasite and Roman Polanski's J'accuse are the nominees in the best foreign film category of Italy's David di Donatello Awards. The full list of nominees.

+And up north: Eugene and Dan Levy's Schitt's Creek on Tuesday nabbed a field-leading 26 nominations for the 2020 Canadian Screen Awards, the national film and TV awards.

 Kenan Thompson To Host WHCD

►Comedy returns to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson will host this year's dinner, set for April 25. Hasan Minhaj, the host of Netflix’s Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj, will return to the dinner as featured entertainer. Last year's dinner went without a comedian as host, instead having historian Ron Chernow anchor the evening. The selection of Chernow came after Michelle Wolf delivered a scathing routine in 2018. Minhaj performed in 2017.

--The WHCA will be presenting two new awards at the 2020 dinner: The Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability and the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage by Visual Journalists. These are in addition to the longstanding Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage and Merriman Smith Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure. Here's the story.

►Video: For the first time, Warner Bros.' Toby Emmerich, Paramount's Jim Gianopulos, Disney's Alan Horn, Universal's Donna Langley, Sony's Tom Rothman, Amazon's Jennifer Salke and Netflix's Scott Stuber gather to debate streaming service ratings, movie star value, China censorship, onscreen violence and the future of a fraught movie business, in THR's studio executive roundtable, which you can watch in full now.

Elsewhere in TV...

--Robyn Bahr reviews Fox's latest animated comedy Duncanville... Daniel Fienberg reviews Amazon's Hunted, which stars Al Pacino as a Nazi hunter in his first TV series role.

--The real estate empire of President Trump's son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner is set to go under the microscope in the second season of Netflix's documentary series Dirty Money.

--Ratings: American Idol opened its third ABC season Sunday with slightly lower ratings than its 2019 premiere, but it easily led the night's broadcast ratings... Ratings for the NBA's All-Star Game on TNT and TBS and associated events improved over 2019, bucking a downward trend in the league's regular-season TV package...

--High Fidelity creators on making a "superhero universe" for the franchise.

--Apple has released a trailer for its anthology series Amazing Stories, which updates Steven Spielberg's 1980s series while keeping a few elements from the original.

A trio of shocking deaths reverberated across the worldwide entertainment landscape over the weekend...

►Caroline Flack, the former host of U.K.'s Love Island, died at age 40. Her death was confirmed by her family in a statement via the Press Association on Saturday. While no cause of death was given, multiple reports in British news outlets noted that Flack was found unresponsive at her apartment in London. ITV postponed new episodes of the reality show in response to Flack's death. The obituary.

►Nikita Pearl Waligwa, the young actress who starred in the 2016 Disney film Queen of Katwe, has died at the age of 15. She had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016. The obituary.

►Dr. Amie Harwick, a family and sex therapist, was killed early Saturday at her home in the Hollywood Hills. Los Angeles police arrested 41-year-old Gareth Pursehouse, a former boyfriend of Harwick's, on suspicion of murder Saturday afternoon, with bail set at $2 million. Harwick was the former fiancée of Drew Carey, spurring CBS to cancel tapings of The Price Is Right for the week following her death. More.

Obituaries: Lynn Cohen, best known for her role as Magda on HBO's Sex and the City, died Friday morning. She was 86... A.E. Hotchner, a well-traveled author, playwright and gadabout whose street smarts and famous pals led to a loving but litigated memoir of Ernest Hemingway, business adventures with Paul Newman and a book about his Depression-era childhood that became a Steven Soderbergh film, died Saturday. He was 102... Jason Davis, the grandson of philanthropist Barbara Davis and late studio chief Marvin Davis, died Sunday at age 35...

--Ann E. Todd, a child actress in the 1930s and '40s who appeared in such films as Intermezzo, All This, and Heaven Too and Three Daring Daughters, died Feb. 7 of complications from dementia, her family announced. She was 88... Novelist Charles Portis, a favorite among critics and writers for such shaggy dog stories as Norwood and Gringos and a bounty for Hollywood whose droll, bloody Western True Grit was a best-seller twice adapted into Oscar-nominated films, died Monday. He was 86... Kellye Nakahara Wallett, a film and television actress best known for playing Lt. Nurse Kellye Yamato on M*A*S*H, has died. She was 72...

 Facebook's Regulatory Strategy

►Facebook tries to get ahead of the regulatory tide. Facebook knows that regulation is coming, in both the U.S. and E.U. With the Justice Department set to hold a workshop on Section 230 tomorrow, the company's vp of content policy Monika Bickert published a blog post Monday outlining what the company thinks that regulatory framework should look like. You can read it for yourself here.

+Mark Zuckerberg himself outlined the plan in an op-ed in today's Financial Times. Read it here. The E.U., however, has rejected Facebook's initial suggestions. More.

The week ahead...

--The Harvey Weinstein trial: Jury deliberations are expected to begin as soon as today, meaning a verdict is possible this week. Stay tuned...

--Another Democratic primary debate will air on NBC and MSNBC Wednesday: But this one has a twist, former New York City Mayor and Bloomberg LP founder Mike Bloomberg has qualified and will participate.

--Meanwhile in Berlin: The Berlin Film Festival and the European Film Market kick off on Thursday.

--In TV: Hunters premieres on Amazon Friday. Also Friday: Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns to Disney+. The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul return to AMC Sunday. CBS' Criminal Minds will air its final episode Wednesday, while ABC's Fresh Off The Boat airs its final episode Friday. More...

--In film: The big debut this week is The Call of the Wild. Will Sonic be able to blast past Harrison Ford in level two, er, week two?

►Bezos' billions: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Monday that he plans to spend $10 billion of his own fortune to help fight climate change. Bezos, the world's richest man, said in an Instagram post that he will start giving grants this summer to scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect the earth. More.

+Context: Earlier this month I reported that Bezos had sold a staggering $4 billion in Amazon stock in just one week, and nearly $7 billion over the last year. Now we know where that money is going.

►Cirque du Soleil founder sells stake to pension fund giant. A Quebec pension fund giant has bought out a 10 percent stake in Cirque du Soleil, known for its live shows in Las Vegas, from billionaire founder Guy Laliberte. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Caisse de depot et placement has raised its holding in the Montreal-based entertainment group to 20 percent after Cirque du Soleil was sold to American and Chinese investors in 2015. The story.

►David Byrne's American Utopia sets return Broadway engagement. The former Talking Heads frontman's critically lauded theatrical concert, which will be released as a feature film directed by Spike Lee, is coming back to New York's Hudson Theatre in the fall. More.

►Jeff Bridges to illustrate children's book written by his daughter. Daddy Daughter Day, a new children’s book due in October from Dark Horse Comics, introduces a new writer/artist team to publishing — even if one of them is a very familiar face elsewhere. The book is written by Isabelle Bridges-Boesch and illustrated by her father, actor Jeff Bridges. More.

What else we're reading...

--"Bloomberg News' dilemma: How to cover a boss seeking the presidency" [NY Times]

--"Friends is the gift that keeps on giving for WarnerMedia" [LA Times]

--"Tax breaks for reality TV? In a first, live crime show gets $6 million from NJ" [NorthJersey.com]

--"All about Ana: Reinventing the Bond girl. Going blonde as Marilyn Monroe. How Knives Out star Ana de Armas is conquering Hollywood." [Vanity Fair]

--"AT&T’s auction to sell four regional sports channels falls short" [NY Post]

Today's birthdays: Molly Ringwald, 52, John Travolta, 66, Dr Dre, 55, Cybill Shepherd, 70, Yoko Ono, 87.