Deadpool and Wolverine ($54 million) continues to rule the box office.
But you know what almost took it down?
It Ends With Us.
It Ends With Us???
What the hell is that, Carson?
It’s a movie about an abusive marriage love triangle! Where have you been?? The movie starred Ryan Reynold’s wife (Blake Lively) and, ironically, is a title that could’ve been used as a subtitle for Deadpool and Wolverine.
The movie has a lot of drama going on behind the scenes. Justin Baldoni, who’d directed a couple of tiny drama movies, secured the rights to the book back in 2019, when nobody thought these drama romances would ever make money again.
It’s a great reminder to all screenwriters: Don’t follow the trend. Write about that thing that nobody else is focusing on. Cause that’s the thing that’s going to be hot in a few years.
Baldoni, who also stars in the movie, seems to have had a falling out with co-star Blake Lively, throwing out this dart during the press tour when asked if he was going to direct the sequel: “I think Blake should direct the sequel.” No doubt that was a shot at Blake taking control of the movie and, likely, backseat directing everything.
If you need more evidence that Mrs. Reynolds was a megalomaniac control freak, she proudly announced during an interview that she and her husband wrote one of the more talked-about scenes in the movie (the rooftop scene), not screenwriter Christy Hall.
Hall was clearly rattled after seeing the scene during the premiere. When she was later told that Lively and Reynolds wrote it, she stumbled through the most professional response she could muster. “When I saw a cut I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cute. That must have been a cute improvised thing.’ So if I’m being told that Ryan wrote that, then great, how wonderful.”
Why is this relevant? Because in a movie, the star already gets most of the press. The screenwriter rarely gets credit. To steal the only thunder the screenwriter has by saying, “Oh, she didn’t even write that good scene. I did!” It’s unprofessional behavior. Especially since adapting bad romance books into movie scripts is one of harder jobs for a screenwriter.
An interesting side note to this movie is just how little Hollywood understands the female audience. They continue to live in this world of “give them what we want them to want,” as opposed to “give them what they want.”
This book features a masculine man with toxic tendencies. He’s positioned, in many ways, as a female fantasy. Yet because he’s abusive and the wife doesn’t kick him to the curb immediately, the progressive lens through which Hollywood sees him says, “Women don’t want that.” Which is why they overlooked the book. And then the demographic breakdown of this weekend’s box office came out and 82% of the audience at It Ends With Us were women. So, obviously, Hollywood doesn’t understand what women want.
Masculine beefcakes who live by their own rules still sell tickets. Hollywood hates this reality but the longer they don’t embrace it, the more money they’re going to lose.
Let’s talk Star Wars.
This weekend, Disney had their annual D23 fair where they released a bunch of trailers, finally giving us a Star Wars: Skeleton Crew trailer. This is the next Star Wars TV series.
It’s just that… I don’t feel like these two worlds go together. Star Wars and Goonies are two distinctly different properties. Even that Spielberg 35mm blowout lighting looks weird in the Star Wars world.
With that said, it AT LEAST makes this look different. All these other Star Wars shows have looked the same (they all have that same shot of that singular “main street” with aliens and humans selling wares).
And you know what it also has? Someone who knew how to use a budget. The scope looks much larger than the last three Star Wars shows. I still can’t believe The Acolyte cost 180 million dollars and 90% of it was characters walking in a forest. At least we’re in, you know, space here. With big set pieces.
Oh, and it actually has aliens! I was getting annoyed that all these Star Wars shows were packed with humans. Finally, we have a bunch of freaking aliens. That’s cool.
So it’s got some things going for it. But how can we not be skeptical after what you’ve given us lately? I’ll reserve judgment but I will, for sure, watch the pilot.
Okay, onto the other big Star Wars trailer of the day, Mandalorian and Grogu. Yes, this is the next Star Wars movie. And it’s coming out in 2026! They’ve only been shooting for 2 weeks yet, somehow, they already have enough footage for a trailer.
I would be more confident if there was a clearer character journey for Baby Yoda. They kinda screwed the pooch when they brought Baby Yoda back after perfectly completing his arc in Season 2 then proved they had no idea what to do with him in the messiest Star Wars TV show season yet, Mandalorian, Season 3.
I want to root for it but we need more than cuteness. It looks like they’re using the old “Divide and Reunite” plot here, which is what they did with The Empire Strikes Back. Split the main characters up then we eagerly keep watching to see them come back together. Din and Grogu get split up and now they have to reunite. It’ll be the cutest adventure ever!
If you want to watch a trailer that personifies where we’re at in the movie business, check out Snow White, which, outside of Blade, has been the most trouble-laden production in Hollywood.
“Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to CGI we go…”
Oh wait, they at least have one dwarf in there. Needless to say, that take didn’t go over well. So they’ve gone back and replaced all the diverse adults with… CGI dwarfs! The amount of money being spent in studios to wiggle around nonsense these days is outright astounding. If you would’ve just stood strong in the first place and not bent the knee to the Twitter police, you would’ve saved 50 million dollars.
The rest of the movie doesn’t look bad but it’s very hard, once a production is cursed, for it to rebound. We’ll see if Snow White can be one of the few.
I leave you, once again, with the true winner of the box office this weekend: the Australian breakdancer who proved that confidence is always more important than talent…
