Her concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour scooped up an estimated $96 million weekend at the domestic box office and another $32 million overseas, for a global haul of $128 million — breaking the record for a concert film set by Michael Jackson‘s This Is It, which opened with $74.3 million in 2009.
The Eras Tour also had the second-biggest opening day at the North American box office, pulling in $39 million — just shy of 2019’s Joker with $39.3 million and beating the likes of Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Halloween, which grossed $37.4 million and $33 million, respectively.
Taylor also recorded the seventh-biggest opening day of 2023, landing in between Oppenheimer and The Little Mermaid‘s respective $43 million and $38 million.
The Exorcist: Believer took second place with an estimated $11 million domestic haul, bringing its two-week tally to $44.9 million in North America and $85 million globally.
Third place went to Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, which grabbed an estimated $7 million, for a total of $49.9 million domestically and $126.4 million worldwide after three weeks.
Saw X pulled up in fourth place with an estimated $5.7 million, bringing its three-week North American tally to $41.4 million and $71.3 million globally.
Rounding out the top five was The Creator with an estimated $4.3 million weekend. Its three-week total now stands at $32.4 million domestically and $79.1 million globally.
Suzanne Somers, the actress best known for her roles in TV comedies including Three’s Company and Step by Step, has died, her longtime publicist announced Sunday. She was 76 years old.
“Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15th,” R. Couri Hay said in a statement. “She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for over 23 years. Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce, and her immediate family. Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th. Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”
A private family burial will take place this week, Hay said, and a memorial will be held next month.
Born Suzanne Marie Mahoney in San Bruno, California, Somers got her acting start in the late ’60s with small roles in films like the 1968 Steve McQueen action classic Bullitt, and Clint Eastwood‘s Magnum Force in 1973. That same year, she also had a brief but memorable appearance in the George Lucas-directed American Graffiti, credited as “Blonde in T-Bird.”
Somers appeared throughout the 1970s on hit TV shows including The Rockford Files and The Love Boat, but her big break came when she was cast as the ditzy Chrissy Snow on the ABC sitcom Three’s Company,opposite Joyce DeWitt and the late John Ritter.
Three’s Company was a hit, running for eight seasons between 1977 and 1984 and making Somers a sex symbol and household name. Before the show’s fifth season, she demanded equal pay to Ritter but producers refused, ultimately firing her when the season ended in 1981.
Somers sued the show’s producers for $2 million in response but received only a small fraction of what she asked. Widely criticized in the popular press for her Three’s Company demands, Somers found it difficult for several years to secure acting roles. To help make ends meet, in 1990, Somers became the commercial spokesperson for the Thighmaster, a piece of personal exercise equipment meant to be squeezed between one’s thighs to develop leg and hip strength.
While the ubiquitous infomercials, featuring Somers in heels and a leotard, were widely lampooned, the product was a success, selling millions of units and earning Somers induction into the Direct Marketing Response Alliance Hall of Fame. She ultimately began selling her own successful lines of personal products, including skin care, makeup, hair care and health products.
Ten years after she was fired from Three’s Company, Somers scored her next big television role, on ABC’s Step by Step alongside Dallas alum Patrick Duffy. Somers remained on the show until it ended in 1998.
Somers worked sporadically in television afterwards and competed on season 20 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars in 2015, placing ninth. She also wrote multiple books, including memoirs, health and wellness guides, cookbooks and a poetry collection.
Somers battled breast cancer multiple times throughout her life: She was first diagnosed in 2000.
She was married twice: Her first marriage, to Bruce Somers, produced her only child, Bruce Jr., and ended in divorce in 1968 after three years. She met her future husband, Alan Hamel, in 1969 when she was a prize model on Anniversary Game, the short-lived game show he was hosting. The two married in 1977 and remained together until her death.
Director Michael Mann’s Ferrari biopic makes its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival on Friday, October 13.
Prior to the premiere, stars Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz, who portray Enzo Ferrari and his wife, Laura,spoke at apress conference about the preparation that went into crafting their performances.
Driver did as much research as he could, finding even the smallest of details useful. He learned that Enzo “would sign things with purple pens, for example, because he didn’t want anyone to duplicate his signature.”
“Which, to me, was really helpful. It just spoke to someone who was really paranoid,” Driver continued. “This image of him being – after his brother had died and his father had died – being alone, really having to forge his own path, and it being a catalyst for how he lived the rest of his life, was an internal thing that we talked about all the time.”
Underneath all his armor, Driver said Enzo is “someone who is very much a duck.”
“Calm on the surface, and then furiously paddling underneath,” he explained.
Cruz had the opportunity to speak with Enzo and Laura’s doctor, whom Enzo considered a close friend. That doctor provided her with copies of love letters shared between Enzo and Laura, some even written after Enzo was romantically involved with Lina Lardi.
“He really valued [Laura’s] ideas and the eagle eye that she had to know when people were lying,” Cruz said. “I’m not saying that was the only reason why they stayed together. But there was also a big real love and huge amount of pain. And those letters were very important for me to understand who this woman was, and also who he was.”
Director Francis Lawrence regrets splitting his adaptation of the final Hunger Games book, Mockingjay, into two movies.
In an interview with People ahead of the November 17 release of his newest film, The Hunger Games’ President Snow origin story The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Lawrence says he wouldn’t split Mockingjay into two parts if given the chance to do it over.
“I totally regret it. I totally do. I’m not sure everybody does, but I totally do,” Lawrence says.
While Lawrence thinks both Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2 tell complete stories of their own, he understands why some fans didn’t appreciate the choice to split it up.
“What I realized in retrospect — and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics and people at the split — is that I realized it was frustrating,” Lawrence says. “And I can understand it.”
He believes some of the frustration came from leaving his audience on a cliffhanger at the end of Mockingjay – Part 1.
“In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode. But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn’t,” Lawrence explains.
This led to Lawrence’s choice to make only one movie when adapting The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
“I would never let them split the book in two,” Lawrence says. “There was never a real conversation about it. It’s a long book, but we got so much s*** for splitting Mockingjay into two — from fans, from critics, from everybody — that I was like, ‘No way. I’ll just make a longer movie.'”
Legendary’s Monsterverse expands in the new trailer for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
From Apple TV+, the new series is the first TV show set inside the universe of four films that began with 2014’s Godzilla and extends through 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong.
The trailer debuted Friday at New York Comic Con along with a preview of the new series.
According to its official description, the series follows the “thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco” in Godzilla vs. Kong, and picks up after the revelation that monsters are real.
Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell both star as Army officer Lee Shaw, Kurt playing him in the present day and Wyatt acting as the character in the 1950s.
“This world, it’s not ours. Believe me,” Kurt says in the trailer. “The world is on fire. If you want to save millions of lives, we can use some help.”
“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch,” its official description reads.
Also starring Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto and Anders Holm, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters premieres its first two episodes on November 17, with new episodes streaming every Friday through the finale on January 12.
Melissa McBride is returning to The Walking Dead universe.
The actress will reunite with Norman Reedus in season 2 of the spinoff series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, reprising her role as Carol Peletier.
Announced Thursday during AMC’s presentation at New York Comic Con, McBride will join the show as a series regular. Season 2 also gets a new title to account for McBride’s return. It will be called The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol.
“I’ve known there was much more to be told of Carol’s story as I felt her so unsettled when we last saw her, as she watched her best friend, Daryl, ride away,” McBride said. “Apart or (hopefully!) together, their stories run deep, and I’m so excited to continue Carol’s journey here. This team of storytellers have done amazing work to land these two established characters in an entirely new world to them, and I’m loving the discoveries!”
The season 1 finale of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon airs Sunday, October 15, and it will feature an appearance from McBride. Season 2 is set to air in 2024.
Brie Larson is dishing out chemistry lessons in the new Apple TV+ series Lessons in Chemistry. The show premieres Friday, October 13 and it’s based on the popular book.
Showrunner Lee Eisenberg tells ABC Audio the plot revolves around a female chemist in the 1950s who faces a lot of misogyny and sexism in the workplace, but it’s also about so much more.
“It really encompasses kind of the whole of the human experience,” he explains. “There’s love, there’s loss, there’s grief, there’s laughter, and all of those things that we felt so, you know, so much in the book, we really tried to, you know, put into the show.”
“You know, I think we’ve seen many stories about sexism in the workplace, particularly for white women, and yes, it’s about that,” the show’s director Sarah Adina Smith adds. “But if it were only about that I think it would be boring and not worth watching. It’s really about something much more complex, which is about a character who is so passionate about her pursuit of the truth that she’s had to put up walls to protect yourself against, you know, the forces that would like to keep her down.”
Lessons in Chemistry also stars Top Gun: Maverick‘s Lewis Pullman, How to Get Away with Murder‘s Aja Naomi King, The Flight Attendant‘s Stephanie Koenig, The Big Bang Theory‘s Kevin Sussman, Gaslit‘s Patrick Walker and Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty‘s Thomas Mann.
Have no fear, your reality roundup is here! Here’s a look at what happened in the world of reality television this week.
Vanderpump Rules (Bravo)
Former Vanderpump Rules star Raquel Leviss, now going by Rachel, is ready for closure.On her October 10 Instagram Story, she announced her decision to auction her TomTom hoodie and gold Scandoval lightning bolt necklace, both emblematic of her secret romance with co-star Tom Sandoval during his nine-year relationship with Ariana Madix. “I’m currently in the process of letting go: letting go of the things that no longer serve me anymore,” she said. All proceeds will be donated to The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI). Bids on eBay have already reached $8,900 for the hoodie and $3,250 for the necklace.
90 Day Fiancé (TLC) Leida Margaretha, who appeared on season 6 of 90 Day Fiancé, was arrested and booked at Columbia County Jail in Wisconsin last Friday. Her charges include theft in a business setting, fraudulent data alteration, wire fraud against a financial institution and uttering a forgery,Page Sixreports. Local law enforcement in Portage, Wisconsin, acted upon complaints from the owners of Loggerhead Deco, where Margaretha was employed. Allegations include fraudulent financial transactions using the company’s account information, causing substantial losses to several parties. As investigations continue, additional charges may arise.
Selling Sunset (Netflix)
A new trailer has been released for season 7 of the series. Things get tense at a dinner party when real estate bosses Jason and Brett Oppenheim tell their LA agents that they’ve “gotten a little bit complacent” compared to the O.C. agents who “work their a**** off.” The new season debuts November 3.
Just in time for spooky season comes the new TV series Goosebumps, which fittingly drops on Disney+ and Hulu this Friday the 13th.
Based on the popular children’s horror books by R. L. Stine, this new adaptation of Goosebumps got the seal of approval from the scribe himself, series creator Rob Letterman told ABC Audio.
“We got his blessing. We showed him the episodes, which he loved,” Letterman said. “The books that he wrote never pandered down to a younger audience, which we embraced and kind of used that concept to then, you know, age everything up and elevate it.”
Stine also gave Letterman and co-creator Nicholas Stoller some helpful advice about how to accurately capture the overarching theme of his books, which is to be careful what you wish for.
“That’s something that is, like, key to his books and key to the TV show,” Stoller said. “These are not paths of characters who move into a creepy house and then creepy stuff happens to them. These are characters that want stuff, and they use the thing that they get to create the problem. And I think there’s something very active about that, and relatable, too.”
Letterman says this new adaptation honors the source material as well as the fans who grew up reading the books.
“They’re in their thirties and forties now,” Letterman said. “That’s still part of the Goosebumps audience. So, we wanted to make something that would work for them, for adults with or without kids, as well as a younger audience and for people who’d never even heard of Goosebumps.”
This year’s Suits resurgence has broken several streaming records, and now the series will be making a comeback. Suits Creator Adam Korsh is developing a new show for NBCUniversal that will take place in the Suits universe. According to Deadline, the show will not be a reboot of the original series, but instead something with a new setting and new characters in the vein of the CSI and NCIS franchises…
Based on a True Story is coming back for more. The satire true-crime series, which debuted its first season in June and stars Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina, has been renewed for a second season at Peacock…
The world of Orphan Black is back and bringing a bunch of clones with it in the trailer for the new spinoff series Orphan Black: Echoes. Krysten Ritter stars as Lucy, a woman living in the near future who wakes up with no memories of her identity. The show will premiere on AMC in 2024…
