Author: SD

UK-Ireland top five, April 17-19 Rank  Film (origin) Distributor Apr 17-19 Total Week 1  The Super Mario Galaxy Movie  (US)  Universal  £2.6m  £32.9m  3 2   Project Hail Mary  (US)  Sony  £1.7m   £30.3m  5 3   The Drama  (US)  EFD  £1.2m  £8.1m  3  4   Lee Cronin’s The Mummy  (US)  Warner Bros  £970,220  £970,220  1  5   Akira  (Japan)  Anime  £881,306  £883,200  1  GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.35 The Super Mario Galaxy Movie neared £33m on its third weekend at the UK-Ireland box office, as new releases Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and Akira entered…

Warner Bros’ horror Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opens in UK and Ireland cinemas this weekend as event titles dominate new releases.  The Mummy is launching in 550 locations. A reimagining of the horror franchise from the 1930s and 40s, the film follows a father whose daughter returns eight years after disappearing in the desert. Cronin previously directed 2023’s Evil Dead Rise which opened on £1.5m from 587 cinemas. Jack Reynor and Laia Costa star in The Mummy which is also produced by horror juggernaut James Wan, whose credits include The Conjuring, Saw and M3GAN franchises. National Theatre Live’s All My Sons…

Nathalie Baye, one of France’s most renowned actresses, has died at the age of 77.  Baye starred in more than 80 films during a career that spanned five decades, working with acclaimed filmmakers including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol.  She was also a familiar face outside of France with roles in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, Downton Abbey: A New Era and Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways.  She won the best actress award at the 1999 Venice Film Festival for An Affair Of Love and had a long history at Cannes Film Festival, serving on the jury in 1996 and appearing in multiple…

It is a very quiet year for UK-Ireland directors and producers in the official selection and parallel sidebars of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.  Clio Barnard is representing UK filmmakers with the BFI and BBC Film-backed I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, which has been selected for Directors’ Fortnight, produced by Tracy O’Riordan at Moonspun Pictures. Additionally, Amsterdam-based UK-Yemeni filmmaker Sara Ishaq’s The Station has been selected for Critics’ Week. For Ireland, Alexander Murphy’s feature documentary about Irish travellers, Tin Castle, is also screening in Critics’ Week. The film is produced by Eamon Hughes of Dublin-based Samson Films, with Cosme Bongrain of France’s Goodspeed Productions.  There are no films by…

Paramount CEO David Ellison moved to allay concerns over the studio’s proposed merger with Warner Bros Discovery when he told CinemaCon attendees on Thursday morning that he was fully committed to the theatrical model. “I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and say that once we combine with Warner Bros we’re going to make a minimum of 30 films across both studios,” the CEO said. “At Paramount we’ve already demonstrated since launching the new company eight months ago our ability to increase output, with 15 films for for 2026, up from eight in 2025. ”Every…

Warner Bros pulled out the stops in a sensory assault of a CinemaCon presentation on Tuesday afternoon that saw on-stage appearances from Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman – separately – as well as Zendaya, Sandra Bullock, Timothée Chalamet, Jason Momoa and two of the greatest living directors. It culminated with the opening seven minutes from Dune: Part Three. When motion picture group co-heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy assembled their key executives and brought up the house lights to applaud exhibitors after two-and-a-half hours at Dolby Colosseum, they were acknowledging a Goliath year at the box office and awards…

Cinema United president and CEO Michael O’Leary and Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin used CinemaCon’s state of the industry session on Tuesday to emphasise the promise of the film industry, while also addressing the challenges of consolidation, windows, and copyright theft. Year-to-date North American box office currently leads 2025 at the same stage by 23% according to Comscore, and analysts Gower Street have forecast 2026 global box office will reach $34.7bn, down slightly from their initial $35bn estimate due to a slow first quarter in China. “Theatre owners work every day to make their cinemas special, from reinvesting in…

More than 1,000 leading industry figures, including JJ Abrams, Denis Villeneuve, Kristen Stewart and David Fincher, have signed a letter expressing “unequivocal opposition” to Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The letter, first published on Monday, April 13, by The New York Times, said the deal “would further consolidate an already concentrated media landscape, reducing competition at a moment when our industries—and the audiences we serve—can least afford it”. Later on Monday morning Paramount responded, saying in a statement: “This merger strengthens both consumer choice and competition, creating greater opportunities for creators, audiences and the communities they live and work…

An independent review commissioned by Bafta over the handling and broadcast of a racial slur by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson during the Bafta Film Awards has found “a number of structural weaknesses in Bafta’s planning, escalation procedures and crisis coordination arrangements” but did not find “malicious intent on the part of those involved in delivering the event”. The review, conducted by Rise Associates, stated that “it would be wrong to describe the event as evidence of institutional racism, as this misses an important point. Institutional racism means that racial bias is built into systems, policies, and culture. In such systems, discriminatory outcomes…

For the first time in several years CinemaCon (April 13-16) attendees will descend upon Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in a relatively positive mood – despite the prevalence of debt loads and ongoing consolidation, specifically the impending Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) merger. Buoyed by early box office successes, encouraging news on the Guilds’ contract negotiations, the emergence of Gen Z as a cinema-going class, and a bumper summer season on the near horizon there are certainly reasons to be cheerful. By the weekend of April 3-5 North American ticket sales led 2025 at the same stage by approximately 25%, thanks…