Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Monday, October twenty seventh, twenty twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in La He's in New York, and Variety has reporters
around the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode, in our box Office segment, Variety's Rebecca Rubin hacks through the receipts generated by chainsaw Man this weekend, it's an anime world, people, and we'll hear from Nick Vivarelli in Rome. He's about to go cover a comic fan convention that's bigger than San Diego Comic Con and it's held in a medieval Italian town about fifty miles west of Florence.
But before we get to that, here are a few headlines just in this morning that you need to know. The prolific Taylor Sheridan is sad up to make a move to NBC Universal with a big new film and TV deal. Sheridan has been based at Paramount ever since the Yellowstone phenomenon took off his TV deal will have to wait nearly three years until his obligations to Paramount are over. His movie deal with NBC Universal starts next year.
Owen Gleiberman is raving about Song Sung Blue. Variety's chief film critic, loves the performances by Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman in the film about two performers in a Neil Diamond tribute act. Song Sung Blue comes from director Craig Brewer and Focus Features. Hudson, of course, is one of Variety's Power of Women honorees this year. We will shower her with kudos at our event on the evening of October twenty ninth. John Dickerson will leave CBS News at
the end of this year. Dickerson is high on the list of the best journalists in this country. I can't wait to see what he does next. All of these stories and so much more can be found on Variety dot com. Right now. Now we turn to conversations with Variety journalists about news and trends in show business. If it's Monday, we're talking box office with Rebecca Rubin, our senior film and media reporter. Rebecca gives us the lowdown on what has been an unpredictable October for the box office.
Rebecca Rubin, thanks for joining me, Thank you for having me. Well, another interesting weekend at the box office, a couple of sleepers, a couple of disappointments. Let me start by asking you, when you sat down to prepare for this box office weekend, did you think that the anime movie Chainsaw Man would be number one?
Heading into the weekend? There was a sense that if anything was able to break out, it was going to be Chainsaw Man. And that is because anime has been enjoying a theatrical hot streak with another movie Sony Crunchy row Banner released called Demonslayer. That movie became a huge hit and is now the highest grossing anime film ever. And so this is the second consecutive number one hit
for Sony's Crunchy role. And so just given the appeal right now of anime, there was a sense that this had potential to become a sleeper hit, not quite on the scale of Demons Layer, but at least a solid number one.
Do you think that, like every major studio is going to now scramble and try to develop an anime strategy, or do you think that this is Sony's investment. Sony has for a decade now really been investing in this area in the US and Asia, and this is bearing fruit. How do you think this will be read by Hollywood?
I would be surprised if there weren't some other studios who were trained to cash in on this. But as you said, Sony has really been cultivating this with crunchy Roll for a while now. And there's a lot of pedigree here because this movie, and particular chainsaw Man was produced by a Japanese animation studio, so it's made by people who are very intimately familiar with what resonates about
these properties. Chainsawmn and Demonslayer were extensions of popular anime TV series and so there are deep roots here and part of why there's fandoms that already exist.
I did, in fact, take in the Anime Expo in July in downtown LA and it was mind blowing in terms of opening my eyes to the depth of this audience and the absolute passionate rabid fandom. I met people that had flown in from out of the country, flown in from Chicago, Atlanta, and downtown LA was just alive with cosplay Rebecca. From that experience, I can guess who the audience for Chainsaw Man was, but I never want to assume who was the audience for this movie.
So nearly seventy five percent of crowds were male, and about fifty percent were under the age of twenty five, so it was definitely skewing a younger male demographic. But what's notable about chainsaw Man being number one is that
it outpaced two movies from major studios. There's was Disney in twentieth centuries, Springsteen biopic Delivered Me from Nowhere, and Paramount's adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel Regretting You, And So I think that really just underscores how much tastes are changing at the box office.
Clearly there's an event around these anime releases, Rebecca, are you getting anecdotal info about is there a lot of coseplay at these screenings or is there people bringing like fun props and stuff.
I think what is really resonating here is similar to superhero movies, where they and horror movies that are very front loaded. All the fans want to come out on opening weekend and watch something like this with communal experience. That's what we're seeing with these anime features, and so as a result, they are usually front loaded, they have really big debuts, and then in subsequent weekends they'll have
steep drop offs. And I think that is speaking to the fact that they all are agreing to go out opening weekend, watch it together, and then maybe from there rewatches they'll settle for a streaming day.
And of course, the other continuing trend that we've been talking a lot about is imax. The large format screens were a big component of the box office that Chainsaw Man hacked off. So let's talk about the other big story of the weekend of the movie that didn't exactly
open to impressive numbers. Deliver Me from Nowhere on Paper Bruce Springsteen a critically beloved album, Jeremy Allen White super red hot talent, but it did not bring in huge crowds to begin with, What do you think's going on with this movie?
I think the film is struggling because unlike some big crowd pleasing musical biopics of recent years, like Bohemian Rhapsody, which was about Queen, Rocketman which is about Elton John, those were expansive looks at the entire career of these musical acts, and that's not really what this movie is. It doesn't play like the greatest hits of his career. It's actually a more intimate look at the making of
his beloved but less commercial solo album Nebraska. I think the result here is it's not the all audience film that audiences have become used to expecting in the musical biopick genre. It's gotten pretty decent reviews. It has a B plus on Cinema score that signals that it could stick around.
Curious to see if there's any regional trends here. I would imagine that New Jersey would probably be the home of probably the highest grossing theaters for this one, but you never know.
I think that the comparison to A Complete Unknown is actually a good one, because it was tracking a similar start to that film, but a few differences, I would say, actually, One is that Timothy Shalom has proven himself before that to be a bankable draw in the Dune franchise in Wonka. He really can get audiences to go to theaters. And another thing is that Bob Dylan was a little more elusive. He wasn't out there promoting the film. I think he said he gave it a thumbs up and said he
liked the script. But nobody saw him during this period. And a big difference here is that Bruce Springsteen has really been out promoting this film. He's been at every premiere alongside Jeremy Allen White, and if anything, it's making the comparisons pretty tough because it's putting the real guy right in your face. Something Just to note, A complete unknown opened around December or on the holidays, and that's a period of time where films can really out and that's what happened with that.
Film, Rebecca. What else do anything else stand out to you? Is significant about the box office this weekend.
The other major release is Regretting You, which is the adaptation of Colleen Hoover's novel, and that opened above expectations to twelve point eight million dollars. And if this film manages to stick around, it's going to cement Colleen Hoover as a major cinematic force. Of course, her novel It Ends with Us was adapted last year by Sony and that film stirred up a lot of drama with Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, but to his credit, it was a huge winner at the box office, with nearly three
hundred and fifty million dollars worldwide. I don't see Regretting You getting to those numbers, but it only cost a modest thirty million, so it doesn't really need to get anywhere near the three hundred to fifty million dollar mark to count a six success. Hollywood is definitely leaning into Colleen Hoover. Two of her other books, Verity and Reminders of Him, are in the works at Amazon MGM and Universal.
They're both set to release next year, and so we will see if the Colleen Hoover cinematic Universe is a thing.
I cannot physically resist the opportunity to point out that, as impressive as it Ends with Us was at the box office, I have to believe that the legal fees this movie has now generated have probably approached that and probably will eclipse it by the time it is all over. Let's just hope that the folks on Regretting You all got along a whole lot better. Rebecca, what are you looking forward? At the November box office?
So Thanksgiving should be pretty robust this year because Universal has wicked for Good, which is the second half, of course, of Wicked, and that is expected to be another huge blockbuster. Zoo Topia to the first Utopia actually gross to billion dollars. But since the beginning of this year, every theater owner I have spoken to has said that is the movie they are most excited for, and audiences just absolutely love
this property. I think it's been really big on Disney Plus as well, and so I think that will probably be another billion dollar winner for Disney. And then of course Disney has Avatar three in December ahead of Christmas. And look, the first two movies gross two billion dollars. So I'm not going to be somebody who bets against James Cameron.
Well, always so much to discuss and so much to watch, Rebecca, thank you as ever, thanks for having me. Now we'll hear from Nick Vivarelli, Variety's longtime correspondent and wrong he talks about the colorful scene he's about to take in at the Luca Comics and Games Invention in Luca, Italy. Luca draws an annual crowd of about two hundred thousand attendees. That's about sixty five thousand more Cause players than gathered
in San Diego this summer for comic Con. Nick Vivarelli, our man in Rome, thanks for joining me.
Thank you, Cynthia.
Nick. You are off soon on one of the many trips that you take for Forridy every year. You are off to Luca, about a three hour train ride from Rome. Nick, tell us what you're going to cover in Luca.
Yeah, Cynthia, I'm going to cover this event called Luca Comics and Games, which is a comic con type event that spans the gamut from comic books to video games to movies and TV series. And it's a rather old event. It's been around since nineteen sixty six, but they've evolved from being a print comics convention into video games and then fifteen years ago they launched a new section called the Movie Area, and they developed close relationships with the
studios and the streamers. And this year one of the highlights is going to be a special fandom event where they're gonna talk about the upcoming fifth season of Stranger Things. So the Duffer Brothers are going to be there and not represents a coup for Luca.
It's a big deal. The Duffer Brothers started on the cover of Variety earlier this month, and now the pr campaign switches to Luca, Italy. Nick set the scene for us, what is the environment in Luca.
Luca is sort of like a miniature Florence. So in other words, it's a Renaissance gem. It's a medieval town. It has beautiful ramparts, it has beautiful churches, it has towers, it has cobble stone lined streets, so it's a very picturesque of medieval type of environment. I think they have actual dungeons that they use for immersive experiences connected to
dungeons and dragons. What you see when you go there during this event is just thousands of cos players sort of lining the streets, and they held parades and they mingle, and they the line up for all kinds of gadgets that are given out and for premieres. It's a very vibrant experience within a medieval setting.
The juxtaposition sounds at Taylor made for cosplay and imagination and fantasy, and is Luca of a destination in that way. The organizers picked Luca for a reason.
Cities in Tuscany like to create events. Comics have always been really big in Italy. Italy has always been a big consumer of comic books, but also producer of comic books, so it was a very smart choice to go that route. They were immediately aware of the importance of being international, so over the years they forged close rapport with especially with Japan and the whole manga world.
Talk about fandom upon fandom upon fandom, and they.
Like to develop the idea of community. Community is a buzzword for them, a sort of mantra. So they basically went from the print comic books into the video game world, and then they veered into the scripted content of different types. You know, obviously movies, but TV shows and horror films, and so they were able to ride this wave of the cosplayers. I think the cosplayers played a really big role in how they've evolved.
How many people are attending this typically in recent years.
So they've reached an average attendance they cite at two hundred thousand. The bulk of it are Italians, but it does drop people from other parts of the world. And they also have a huge online a community, especially in the video game realm, so they organize big video game tournaments that I know are participated by people from all over the world.
Nick is there anything else you'll be looking for.
The fact that venerated video game Japanese master Hideo Kjima is going to be in Luca for the final stop of his desk stranding too on the beach tour. That's one of the exemplifications of the fact that Luca has really become a prominent stop on the map when it comes to launching ips or fandom related events.
That's a big name in video gaming for sure. Well, Nick, make sure you take lots of pictures and give us a real sense of the color as cause players stream into this medieval town. Well forward to your reporting.
Chao Chao. Thank you, Cynthia.
As we close out today's episode, here's a few things we're watching for. Comcast will report third quarter earnings on Thursday. Variety Today is producing the first of three digital dailies out of the Tokyo Film Festival, and later in the week we'll be at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece. Do not miss Chris Willman's coverage of the Warren Zevon tribute held in La on October twenty fourth. Ah it sounds like it was a foot stomper, and of course,
in the hands of Chris Willman. It's a fantastic read, even if you weren't there. Don't forget to buy your tickets for Io Adebris and Don Chiedel headlining in a Broadway revival of Proof directed by Thomas Cale. It opens April sixteenth at the Booth Theater. Before we Go, Congrats to Rebecca Glashow. She's been named CEO of Tribeca Enterprises, succeeding the great Jane Rosenthal. Glashaw joins them from BBC Global Media and Streaming. Rosenthal will shift to co chair
of Tribecca Enterprises alongside majority owner James Murdoch. Thanks for listening. This episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with contributions from Rebecca Rubin and Nick Viverrelli sticks Nick's hick Picks. Please leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice, and please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily Variety and Go Dodgers