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Avatar: The Way of Water has surpassed $2 billion in ticket sales worldwide after spending a sixth straight weekend at the top of the box office in the United States (the first film to do so since… 2009’s Avatar).

The Way of Water joins Avatar, Avengers: Endgame, Titanic, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Avengers: Infinity War as the only movies to gross over $2 billion globally. That’s a lot of James Cameron, but it’s even more Zoe Saldana.

The actress appears in four of the six highest-grossing movies of all-time, thanks to her roles as Neytiri in the Avatar franchise and Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That puts her fourth on the list of the highest-grossing lead performers, behind only Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., and Samuel L. Jackson (the only non-MCU stars in the top 10: the Toms, Cruise and Hanks). As long as Cameron keeps making Avatar sequels, which he will, Saldana will eventually dethrone Johansson:

So far, The Way of Water has generated $598 million at the domestic box office and $1.4 billion internationally. Overseas, the standout markets are China ($229 million), France ($129 million), Germany ($117 million), Korea ($96 million), and the United Kingdom ($81 million). It’s especially impressive that Avatar 2 managed to crack $2 billion, a benchmark that’s been impossible in COVID times, because not every market is re-connecting with the Na’vi. The follow-up isn’t playing in Russia, where the original grossed $116 million, and it’s flopping in Japan with $28 million, a dramatic decrease from the first film’s $176 million haul.

Never bet against James Cameron — or Zoe Saldana.

(Via Variety)

Drake’s Apollo Theater show in New York City turned out to be quite the event. In addition to having Harlem’s own Diplomats join him on stage to perform their beloved “national anthem,” Drake ran through a career’s worth of hits ranging from his earliest radio swings like “Headlines” and “Over” to his more recent 21 Savage collabs like “Rich Flex” (“do something for meeee”) and “Jimmy Cooks,” all while roasting his Degrassi: The Next Generation character and keeping an eye out for his fans.

During the Sunday night show, a fan fell from the balcony to the orchestra pit floor, prompting Drake to pause the show and ensure her safety. “Just gotta make sure somebody’s OK,” he told the fans. The crew also had to make sure that the other fans would be safe, removing a stage light the fallen fan knocked out of place, as well as its electrical cables.

After about 15 minutes, the show resumed with an announcement that there had been no serious injuries. Upon his return to the stage, Drake promised to make up for the delay saying, “Let’s just make some noise that everybody’s okay. I feel like they had to wait like 10 minutes; we should go up a little more.” He also gave fans something else to look forward to, teasing a new project in 2023.

Drake postponed his first-ever shows at the Apollo Theater from early December to Saturday, January 21 and Sunday, January 22, and the general consensus is that he could have postponed them to January 2024 and the wait would have been worth it. From performing an exhaustive set list to teasing a potential new project, Drake brought everything to the stage.

According to Billboard, Drake’s set was just as much a visual chronicle of his journey as it was a musical one. Drake opened the show with “Over My Dead Body” from 2011’s Take Care while wearing the same basketball jersey worn by Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Drake starred in the role from 2001 to 2009 — when he was still best known as Aubrey Graham — and he also mocked his haircut from that time elsewhere in the show.

“I wanted to make this show about gratitude,” Drake told the crowd near the top of the show, per Billboard. “This is a little story we put together about my deep love for my family, for my dear friends and for each and every one of you that have been supporting me for a long time.”

Drake also shared the stage with his Her Loss collaborator 21 Savage, Dipset, and Lil Uzi Vert across the two nights. Check out clips below.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Heading into Sundance, Jonathan Majors was already turning heads with his super jacked physique for Creed III. Majors was also packing some serious guns in the new trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but it turns out that neither of those roles featured the actor’s biggest body transformation.

In Magazine Dreams, Majors plays Killian Maddox, a toxic male bodybuilder who becomes a hulking beast of self-destruction and rage. The film has been garnering rave reviews for Majors at Sundance where the actor recently opened up about pushing his body to the limit for the insanely ripped performance, which involved eating 6,100 calories a day to pack on muscle mass. Via Variety:

“The normal bodybuilder works out two times a day,” Majors continued. “I’m playing Killian Maddox… Playing him you don’t f*ck around. What ended up happening is I would train two hours, two times a day for the movie and a third time after wrap. Meanwhile, you eat six times a day. Lots of chicken. Lots of elk. That’s just for me. I like it.”

Now that the role is over, Majors has scaled back his workout regimen, but not too much. The actor does have more Marvel appearances in his future, and he doesn’t mind pushing himself.

“I played football in Texas. I got an appetite,” Majors said. “I really like being physical. I like hiking and running. I’ve got dogs. I’m only 33… I got to do something to stay with it. I don’t work out three times a day anymore. Just once a day.”

(Via Variety)

On January 19, Dolly Parton turned 77 years old. Over those years, Parton has built one of the most esteemed legacies in music and in the entertainment industry more broadly. Her story is ripe for a film adaptation, and when/if that time comes, Parton has some ideas about the kind of person who should portray her. For example, they should have some boobs.

Parton was interviewed on CBS Mornings this weekend and a currently unproduced script of a biopic about her life came up. She was asked who should play her in the film and she responded, “Well, I don’t know. I think when it gets to that point, we’ll be auditioning a lot of different people. We’ll just have to see.”

The hosts then asked what qualities the actress should have and Parton continued:

“Well, she would need to have my spirit, I would think, and my personality. She’d have to have a lot of that fire and spunk. And she’d have to have some boobs, of course, whether they were homemade or whether they were for real [laughs]. She’d have to look the part, she’d have to be a little bit over-exaggerated. But hopefully… that would be pretty easy, even a boy could do that.”

Watch the interview above.

Jeremy Renner did not have the greatest start to 2023. He suffered a near-fatal snowplow accident yet miraculously seemed to be in good spirits while posting social media updates from his hospital bed. Despite the Mayor Of Kingstown star’s upbeat attitude, reports indicated that his injuries were much worse than originally reported.

Renner has now opened up more about his grueling recovery, and given that the snowplow nearly crushed him, what he’s detailing makes horrific sense. Over the weekend, he expressed endless gratitude for the support of friends, fans, and family. He also revealed that he endured 30 broken bones, which Renner vows “will mend, grow stronger, just like the love and bond with family and friends deepens.”

“Ouch” is my first response, and I’m probably not alone in that sentiment. Fortunately, fellow Avenger Chris Evans knew that it was time to seize the moment and fire up a joke. This actually sounds like something that Cap and Bucky would say to each other back in the day, but here’s Evans doing it himself: “That’s one tough mf’er. Has anyone even checked on the snowcat???”

Renner saw the response and had a ready response: “Love you brother…. I did check on the snow cat, she needs fuel.”

Given that the snowcat weighed 14,000 pounds, it’s a miracle that Renner is alive to exchange jokes with his buddy. Hopefully, his positive outlook will lead him to as smooth of a recovery as possible this year.

The first Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer had dungeons (of course), dragons (naturally), and Chris Pine playing the lute (hell yeah). But you know what it didn’t have? Any dialogue from Hugh Grant, as Forge Fitzwilliam the Rogue.

The new trailer corrects this egregious mistake. You can watch it above.

“I don’t want to see you die,” he says, while Pine’s Edgin the Bard is being constricted by some worm thing (my apologies to the D&D heads out there, especially Joe Manganiello, for not knowing the creature’s name). “Which is why I’m going to leave the room.” Grant should exclusively play despere-for-attention villains from now on.

Here’s the official plot synopsis for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves:

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which was directed by Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley and also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, and Daisy Head, opens on March 31.

Pamela Anderson claims in her memoir that Tim Allen flashed his penis at her on the Home Improvement set. In Love, Pamela, the model and actress writes, “On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe. He opened his robe and flashed me quickly — completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked. Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.”

The incident was alleged to have taken place in 1991, the same year Anderson was cast as Lisa, the original “Tool Time Girl,” on the hit ABC sitcom.

Variety reports that “Allen, who was 37 at the time, was presumably referring to Anderson’s modeling for Playboy, which helped turn the budding actress into an international sex symbol.” She was named Playmate of the Month in February 1990.

Allen denies the flashing ever occured. “No, it never happened. I would never do such a thing,” he said in a statement.

Love, Pamela comes out on January 31, the same day as the Netflix documentary, Pamela, a love story, in which “through personal video and diaries, Pamela Anderson shares the story of her rise to fame, rocky romances, and infamous sex tape scandal. Pamela Anderson defined a decade. Now she will define herself.”

(Via Variety)

It’s now been a few days since the world learned that iconic musician David Crosby had died at 81 years old. It would seem that Crosby’s passing was unexpected to those close to him, as he was apparently “practically giddy” about planning a new album and supporting tour, according to collaborator Steve Postell.

Postell told Variety:

“David didn’t think he was gonna last for years, which he joked about all the time, but there was no sense that we weren’t gonna be able to do this show and these tours. We were talking tour buses, and what kind of venues, and the whole team was all back together again — the road manager and tour manager and sound guys — on top of this band we’d put together. There was not even a remote sense that we weren’t about ready to hit the world. And it’s a shame people didn’t get to hear it. This was something else. This was as close to the original thing [sound of Crosby, Stills & Nash] as we were gonna get. It was very powerful.”

He also noted, “[Crosby] seemed practically giddy with all of it. […] He was showing us new songs, like, ‘What do you think of these lyrics?’ He hadn’t lost the fire. I’d like people to know that he was on it. He was writing, playing, singing his ass off and preparing a fantastic show. That’s what he was doing. He was not lying in a bed for two years, out of it. That’s not what happened at all.”

Read more from Postell on Crosby here.

2023 has started with massive layoffs for a number of significant companies, including Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet, and Salesforce, among others. On January 18, Microsoft announced a whopping 10,000 layoffs expected to happen between now and the third financial quarter of 2023. Immediately before that, though, a handful of the company’s higher-ups enjoyed a private Sting concert.

The night before the layoffs were announced, the company hosted “an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives” that featured a performance from Sting, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The event took place in Davos, Switzerland to coincide with the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. WSJ noted, “While hobnobbing at Davos is part of doing business for major tech corporations and the events are planned far in advance, making it difficult to change them, some employees thought it wasn’t the right time for a company-sponsored Sting concert. The theme of the event was sustainability.”

As for the layoffs, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted in a message shared with Microsoft employees:

“Today, we are making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3. This represents less than 5 percent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today. It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas. We know this is a challenging time for each person impacted. The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. […]

These decisions are difficult, but necessary. They are especially difficult because they impact people and people’s lives – our colleagues and friends. […] I want to extend my deepest thanks and gratitude to everyone who has contributed to Microsoft up to this point and to all of you who will continue to contribute as we chart our path ahead. Thank you for the focus, dedication, and resilience you demonstrate for Microsoft and our customers and partners each day.”