Latest in The Legend of Tarzan

UPDATED, Monday, 1:56 PM: International weekend grosses for two of the three openers came in higher than expected — in one case over $20M higher than anticipated as the Jackie Chan action comedy Skiptrace opened in China to a big $62.2M and gives Chan a new record in China (see related story). In seven markets, its…

UPDATE, WRITETHRU, TUESDAY AM PT: International finals are in and updated for another overseas weekend without a new major studio wide release, leaving room for China’s Cold War II to take the top spot as the summer box office holiday kicked off there in earnest. Also making a big impact was Bollywood’s Salman Khan…

7TH UPDATE, Monday 5:20 PM: This weekend, Illumination Entertainment further proved it’s not just an animation label relegated to a Russian-speaking villain and yellow Tic-Tac guys as The Secret Life Of Pets came in well above its weekend estimates with $104.35 million gross, the sixth-best opening in July and second…

EXCLUSIVE: Despite a lackluster summer and a meh Fourth of July weekend, this past holiday ended up the fourth-best three-day holiday weekend in 21 years — up 40% from last year. How is that even possible? Well, given that the calendar year fell on a Monday, Sunday basically performed like a Saturday and the diversity…

UPDATE, WRITETHRU TUESDAY: Studio actuals are in for all Warner Bros films, and also for Disney, while we have estimates still on what was a hodgepodge of titles offshore this weekend. There were no major wide releases in the session, although staggered rollouts began on Warner Bros/Village Roadshow's The Legend Of Tar…

TUESDAY FINAL UPDATE, 2:30 PM: Blame it on the good weather across the country, an unusually competitive weekend with family titles and a basic lack of interest in the product, but we have some certifiable duds on our hands this Fourth of July including one from brandmaster Steven Spielberg himself. Shouldering…

4th WRITE-THRU, Saturday 8:36AM: Given how lucrative Valentine's Day, Easter and April have lately proven to be as tentpole launches for Deadpool, Batman v. Superman and The Jungle Book, it's a wonder whether more traditional summer slots like the Independence Day and Memorial Day weekends even matter anymore. Last…

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: Here's the prevailing wisdom about summer box office: Filmgoers are exuberant about a couple of new releases (Finding Dory) but…

Certainly one of the most enduring characters in all of literature and definitely movies is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan. In terms of cinema, beginning with Johnny Weissmuller’s immortal interpretation of the tree-swinging man brought up by apes in the jungles, there have been countless actors who have taken on the…

This isn’t the Independence Day weekend of Transformers, Twilight, Spider-Man or even Will Smith, but it will be the holiday that belongs to Disney’s Finding Dory. For a second year in a row, a Pixar holdover will rule the July 4th box office with Dory making between $45 million-$50 million over four days. Last year…

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad, arguably the last big tentpole of the summer on Aug. 5, generated the most social media conversations at 66K last week according to ComScore’s PreAct, beating other highly anticipated movies such as Disney’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Dec. 16) and Warner Bros.’ own Harry Potte…

I haven’t seen the film so I’ve no idea just how far it derivates from the original pulp novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the latest trailer for The Legend of Tarzan suggests it’s going to be closer to King Kong than Lord Greystoke. (Obviously, there are apes in the original stories, but the tone of this is much…