Cruising For Big Grosses -- July 27-29

Three animated features decorate the Top Ten list; Mr. Cruise holds court at #1:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) M:I – Fallout -- 4,386 -- $61.5M -- $61.5M (1st week)

2) Mamma Mia 2 -- 3,514 (+197) -- $15M (-57%) -- $70.4M

3) Equalizer 2 -- 3,388 -- $14M (-61%) -- $64.2M

4) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 4,005 (-262) -- $12.3M (-48%) -- $119.2M

5) Teen Titans Go! -- 3,188 -- $10.5M -- $10.5M 1st weekend)

6) Ant-Man & The Wasp -- 3,013 (-765) -- $8.4M (-49%) -- $183.1M

7) Incredibles 2 -- 2,616 (-548) -- $7.1M (-40%) -- $572.7M

8) Jurassic World 2 -- 2,685(-696) -- $6.7M (-40%) -- $397.6M

9) Skyscraper -- 2,773 (-1,049) -- $5.4M (-52%) -- $59.1M

10) The First Purge Uni/Blumhouse --1,400 (-931) -- $2.2M (-56%) -- $65.4M

Incredibles 2, now at $996.5 million globally, breaks into the billion dollar club next week.

Hotel Transylvania 3 has earned $284.2 million worldwide.

Teen Titans Go! has made a million dollars in foreign markets and 10.5 million here. It won't be a major money-maker, but the WB should be in the black with this TV spinoff. (And the secondary and ancillary markets -- toys, TOYS, TOYS! should do quite well.

Mega Merger COMPLETE

Now part of the Disney entertainment empire...

So after a government review and a challenge from Comcast, Disney and Fox are now one:

Walt Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders on Friday voted in favor of a $71.3 billion deal, in which Disney will acquire large parts of Fox, including the 20th Century Fox film and TV studios, Fox's entertainment cable networks and its international assets. ...

Disney expects to pay about $35.7 billion in cash and issue about 343 million New Disney shares to Fox stockholders so that when the transaction closes after final regulatory approval Fox stockholders will own about 17-20 percent of New Disney. ...

Robert Iger has generously agreed to put off his retirement and remain as Top Dog at the House of Mouse to oversea the merger of Fox assets with the Walt Disney Company. (There will likely be additional compensation.)

Walt's old studio now owns multiple animation assets

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Walt Disney Television Animation

Pixar

Marvel Animation

Fox Animation

Blue Sky Studios

DisneyToon Studios, launched during the heyday of VHS tapes, has recently gone the way of the Tasmanian Tiger and is no more. How long Blue Sky Studios sticks around* is known but to Bob Iger and his working group of Merger Specialists.

* Disney-owned studios have come and gone over the years. Disney had two studios in Canada, both specializing in home entertainment product, that were launched and then closed within three years. There was a thriving studio in Sydney, Australia -- purchased from Hanna-Barbera -- that specialized in the production of direct-to-video features. Then there was Walt Disney Animation, Florida, that grew from an amusement park walk-through in the 1980s to a full-blown theatrical animation studio in the '90s with one of the prettiest facilities in the history of Disney animation. Walt Disney Animation Florida closed its doors in 2004.

There are, of course, other studios that sprang briefly to life and then vanished. (Image Movers Digital, anyone?)No need to list them all in a footnote.

Teen Titans, Moneymakers

From Deadline:

Warner Bros. previewed Teen Titans Go! To the Movies last night and made $1M. Teen Titans Go! cost around $10M for the studio and they’re hoping for mid teens this weekend. Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michail co-direct this feature take on the WBTV/Cartoon Network series. ...

Twenty-three years ago, Warner Brothers was spending huge sums on feature films that badly under-performed at the box office. (Quest For Camelot, anyone?) Two decades on it's had more success with approaches now different than Disney.

It takes TV properties and morphs the most popular of them into feature-length properties.

For original features, it uses its Southern California studios for pre-production, then sends the CG to offshore sub-contractors. (Animal Logic in Sydney is a favored destination).

It appears the company has resolved not to replicate its middle '90s missteps of sinking big money into L.A.-based studios and turning out a string of under-performers.

The IA and AMPTP Reach Agreement

Per Deadline (and some outside sources) the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have come to a deal for the industry-wide Basic Agreement:

IATSE and management’s AMPTP have reached an agreement on a new film and TV contract. The new three-year deal, which still has to be ratified by the 43,000 members of the union’s 13 Hollywood locals, averts a threatened strike that would have crippled film and TV production across the country.

[N]ot everyone is happy with it. Sources say that Cathy Repola, executive director of IATSE Editors Guild Local 700, is especially displeased with the deal. “It’s not a deal that Cathy would want,” said a Local 700 source. ...

So now it's ratification time and ballots will need to be sent out. And the campaigning for ratification (or not) will begin.

Update: Deadline has an update on the Editors Guild's unhappiness with the deal here.

Cartoon Creator Dodges A Bullet

Dan Harmon, the co-author of Rick and Morty, one of the most successful comedy shows on cable ... which was recently picked up for an addition 70 half-hours) ... was caught out by some of the Thought Police who inhabit the internet:

Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon and Adult Swim on Monday night issued statements about the disturbing video that surfaced over the weekend. It featured a skit from a 2009 Harmon pilot called Daryl, a spoof of Showtime’s serial killer drama Dexter, in which he simulates raping a baby doll. ...

The network stopped short of reprimanding Harmon, noting that he “recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized.” I hear Harmon is continuing on the show. ...

This is good news for animation artists in Los Angeles, where pre-production of Rick and Morty is done, and where the shows provide a lot of work for union-repped employees.

Note:A few years ago, the Animation Guild organized R & M and the drive to provide pension and health benefits, not to mention wage minimums, hit a few bumps before a contract was ultimately signed. But Mr. Harmon and his partner Justin Roiland have been exemplary guild employers since, so I'm glad that this weird spasm of Political Correctness -- designed to take down Dan Harmon -- has not disrupted wildly successful pillar of Cartoon Network's programming.

Happily, Cartoon Network declined to shoot itself in the foot over this.

Vox covers the politics of this particular internet "Gotchya!" here.

The mice! The mice! Tales of the House of Mickey. Available this very day!

American Box Office -- June 20-22

Two animated features remain in the Big Box Office Ten, but take sizable hits as sequels dominate mid-summer box office:

THREE DAYS OF GROSSES

1) Equalizer 2 -- 3,388 -- $35.8M -- $35.8M (1st week)

2) Mamma Mia 2 -- 3,317 -- $34.3M -- $34.3M (1st week)

3) Hotel Transylvania 3 -- 4,267 -- $23.1M (-48%) -- $91.1M

4) Ant-Man And The Wasp -- 3,778 (-428) -- $16.1M (-44%) -- $164.6M

5) Incredibles 2 -- 3,164 (-541) -- $11.5M (-29%) -- $557.3M

6) Jurassic World 2 -- 3,381 (-314) -- $11M (-32%) -- $383.9M

7) Skyscraper -- 3,822 (+40) -- $10.96M (-56%) -- $46.7M

8) The First Purge -- 2,331(-707) -- $4.98M (-47%) -- $60.1M

9) Unfriended: Dark Web -- 1,546 -- $3.5M -- $3.5M (1st week)

10) Sorry To Bother You -- 1,050 (+245) -- $2.8M (-33%) -- $10.2M

You will note that the first six positions in the box office list are sequels to earlier hits (and #7 is another formula action film from Dwayne Johnson, which is -- apparently -- garnering scanty public enthusiasm.)

HT3 grossed $37.7 million in overseas markets. Box office total are now $115.6M in foreign lands and $206.7M worldwide.

Brad Bird's Incredibles 2 is now close to being a billion dollar baby. It's made $383.1M in foreign lands and $940.4M worldwide. With several large foreign markets still to come, the pic will roll across the billion marker sooner rather than later.

The mice! The mice! Tales of the House of Mickey. Available this very day!

Send In The Clones

Star Wars fans got one of their longtime wishes granted when Disney announced a couple days back that they were restarting a well-loved TV series:

From 2008 to 2013, The Clone Wars ran on Cartoon Network, revealing the massive war that took place between the theatrical, live-action movies Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It featured existing characters such as Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi as well as a number of original fan-favorite characters. ...

[T]he show will return with a new season of 12 additional episodes via Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, which is expected to launch sometime next year. When the service was first announced, Disney CEO Bob Iger noted that it would launch with new stories from the Star Wars universe, including a new, live-action Star Wars show, which will be written by Jon Favreau. ...

Somewhere on the internet, somebody knows what studio the Walt Disney Company is using to create the new episodes, but it's unknown to me. (I get around not very much.) If this batch goes over in a large way, no doubt there will be more installments beyond the new dozen.