UPDATED, Monday, 1:42 PM: The final tallies are in for the four new debuts this weekend — Fox’s Fantastic Four, STX’s The Gift, Sony’s Ricki and the Flash and Aardman Animation and Lionsgate’s Shaun the Sheep Movie as well as for Paramount’s Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation — the 1 box office champ two weekends in a…

UPDATED, 8:57 AM: 20th Century Fox's Fantastic Four debuted last night at 8 PM and ended up pulling in $2.7M from 2,900 locations. The superhero franchise expands to about 3,950 screens tonight and is still on track for a $40M+ three-day. The opening of Fantastic Four comes as its director Josh Trank revealed his own…

UPDATES with video:  Is there anything Meryl Streep can’t do? In Ricki And The Flash she sings the hits and then manages to hit you in the heart as a lowly San Fernando Valley club rocker who never quite made it in the big time and suffers from a dysfunctional family she basically abandoned.  As I say in my video…

While tomorrow will see the fan fueled debut of Aardman Animation’s Shaun the Sheep from Lionsgate, this weekend the No. 1 and 2 spots are expected to be 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four and Paramount Pictures’ Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. Fantastic Four is expected to gross between $40M and $50M for the…

Peter Bart and Mike Fleming Jr. worked together for two decades at Daily Variety. In this weekly column, two old friends get together and grind their axes, mostly on the movie business. BART: Nine years ago I was invited to a lavish cocktail party to celebrate the appointment of Tom Cruise as the new production chief…

Here’s the first trailer for the first film from Tom Rothman’s revived TriStar Pictures. Ricki And The Flash stars Meryl Streep as Ricki Rendazzo, a hard-rocking singer-guitarist trying to make things right with the family she left behind in her quest for musical stardom. The Oscar perennial’s real-life daughter Mamie…

In addition to returning in his Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier character in Captain America 3, Sebastian Stan has been set for two strong roles. On the heels of wrapping the Duplass brothers' film The Bronze, he will play NASA scientist Dr. Chris Beck in Ridley Scott's The Martian co-starring Matt Damon, Jessica…

Jonathan Demme’s Ricki And The Flash, written by Diablo Cody and starring Meryl Streep, will be released June 26, 2015, and Robert Zemeckis’ Phillip Petit tale starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt will bow on October 2, 2015. These are the first two films under Tom Rothman‘s new TriStar Productions at Sony Pictures. TriStar…

EXCLUSIVE:  Tom Rothman’s TriStar Productions is closing a deal to finance and distribute Ricki And The Flash, a hot package that had several studios circling because it comes with Meryl Streep playing a hard rocking mama. Scripted by Juno‘s Diablo Cody, the film will be directed by Jonathan Demme, and produced by…