GoneTrending

As vaccines continue to roll out — there have been 115 million shots administered, meaning that 43 percent of the population over the age of 16 has received at least one shot — the pandemic-era box office continues to thaw. Last weekend saw the total box office for the entire weekend cross $50 million for the first time since March 2020, as Godzilla vs. Kong put up an impressive $48.5 million over its first five days.

Despite a precipitous 58-percent fall in its second weekend, Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong still has plenty enough muscle to generate around $13.3 million in its second weekend at around 3,084 theaters. With that, Warner Brothers’ film officially becomes the biggest film of the pandemic, earning around $69.5 million to date. That allows it to surpass Tenet ($58.5 million) Croods: New Age ($56.5 million), Wonder Woman 1984 ($46.2 million), and Tom & Jerry ($40.3 million) as the highest-grossing film of the pandemic, so far. Four of those five films are from Warner Brothers (Croods from Universal/DreamWorks Animation is the outlier).

The 58-percent second-week fall is not atypical. In fact, Godzilla: King of the Monsters experienced a 67-percent fall in its second weekend. What’s most impressive here, however, is that the $69 million earned by Godzilla Vs. Kong after two weekends is only around $8 million less than what Godzilla: King of the Monsters earned in two weekends during the summer in 2019 before the pandemic. Godzilla: King of the Monsters also didn’t have HBO Max airing the film for free to subscribers to cannibalize its box office.

What this means is that moviegoers were really excited about Godzilla vs. Kong itself, or they were really, really excited to return to movie theaters again, and Godzilla vs. Kong gave them the perfect excuse to do so. It’s unlikely that Godzilla vs. Kong will earn the $110 million that King of the Monsters took in domestically, but it might hit $100 million, which is incredibly impressive for a movie released during a pandemic that is also screening on our television sets.

What is just as impressive will be the fact that, by the end of the weekend, Godzilla vs. Kong will have earned nearly $300 million overseas (thanks in large part to China), and around $365 million worldwide, which again makes it the biggest American movie worldwide during the pandemic (surpassing the $305 million of Tenet). It even has a chance to surpass Bad Boys for Life ($428 million) for the biggest Hollywood movie of both 2020 and 2021.

The news wasn’t so great for the weekend’s one wide release, Neil Burger’s Voyagers, which illustrated the limits to which moviegoers would risk their health. The film received dismal reviews (25 percent on RT) and a bad Cinemascore (C), and ultimately could only muster only $1.3 million over the weekend, despite the presence of Colin Farrell and up-and-comers Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp. That was good for only fifth place. That’s not ideal for a $30 million film, but it can take solace in the fact that it didn’t cost $100 million like Chaos Walking, which opened with only $3.7 million and has only earned $12.5 million, so far.

In second place, Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody continues to do decent business, earning $2.6 million to bring its total to $15 million, the same as its budget. The film will be out digitally next weekend. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s The Unholy scratched off $2.4 million in its second weekend. It’s up to $6.7 million, which is probably not much worse than it might do outside of the pandemic given the dismal reviews. Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon actually jumped 5 percent this weekend, earning $2.1 million and $35.2 million, so far. It’s also available for a $30 premium to Disney+ subscribers.

In spite of the resurgent box office, the studios so far are still reluctant to push up their release dates to take advantage. There are no new wide releases next weekend, so Godzilla vs. Kong will continue its reign. However, April 23rd will see the release of Mortal Kombat and, depending on America’s mood that weekend, we could see another big box office showing (for the pandemic).

Source: Deadline, Box Office Mojo

When Erik Kripke, the creator and original showrunner of Supernatural, began running The Boys on Amazon Prime, it was only a matter of time before fans started speculating that he’d bring over some of his Supernatural pals. Jim Beaver has already made an appearance, and there has been endless speculation that Jeffrey Dean Morgan would appear in a future season of The Boys once he gets out from beneath commitments to The Walking Dead.

The big get for Kripke, however, was Jensen Ackles, whose Supernatural ended after 15 seasons last year. Kripke began teasing Ackles role as Soldier Boy in Season 3 less than a week after the Season 2 finale of The Boys.

Soldier Boy is the leader of Payback, another superhero group (and a parody of The Avengers). Soldier Boy himself is a parody of Captain America, and he’s one of the first superheroes (and was acquanted with Aya Cash’s Stormfront back in the day). We haven’t seen what Soldier Boy might look like in uniform, but Ackles did post a photo of himself on Instagram Stories while in quarantine ahead of portraying the character. Ackles looks almost unrecognizable.

It’s not clear if the beard will stick around for the shoot. In the comics, Soldier Boy is clean-shaven, although the character may begin his arc on the series in an entirely different state.

The Boys Season 3, by the way, has been shooting since January. If the third season debuts when the second season did (and there are no pandemic-related hangups), expect it to return to Amazon Prime sometime this fall.

Matt Gaetz continues to make news with his underage sex scandal and all the ways it’s clearly not his fault, and so SNL‘s Weekend Update continues to roast the Republican lawmaker to lead its weekly news segment. For the second straight week, co-host Colin Jost roasted Gaetz, this time about new allegations about Venmo payments and his continued insistence that he’s merely being “canceled” by the left.

“Well our favorite Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz, is back in the news, but this time it’s good,” Jost said. “I’m kidding, it’s still the sex stuff.”

Jost said that Gaetz looks like “all the dudes from American Pie combined” and riffed that his Venmo payments to an alleged sex trafficker, who then paid money to women, means that Gaetz is “the only congressman actually helping with student loans.”

Gaetz mentioned his speaking engagement where he said he “wasn’t going anywhere” and noted that it’s “a nice change to see women paying for an hour with Matt Gaetz.” He also made fun of Gaetz for counting on the support of politicians like Donald Trump, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene who have supported him publicly in the last week, noting that’s not actually a good thing to many people.

“Does he think those are good character references?” Jost asked. “Who’s next on his list, the ghost of Jeffery Epstein?”

Another highlight of the segment was Michael Che addressing Will.I.Am’s high-tech facemask that’s gotten some buzz this week.

“Singer Will.I.Am announced that he’s developing a new face mask that will come with an air filter, bluetooth and noise-canceling earbuds. Or, hear me out, just get the vaccine man,” Che said. “I like Will.I.Am, but if you don’t make another hit soon you’re going to be Will.I.Was.”

Saturday Night Live already has one news program in its Weekend Update segment, but in its latest episode the show led off with a fictional news program set in Minnesota to cover an important ongoing trial that’s been national news. The sketch, called Minnesota Now, has four anchors debating the trial of Derek Chauvin, who is accused of killing George Floyd in an incident that sparked nationwide protest and a renewed call for civil rights justice in America.

Despite the sea change the Black Lives Matter protests have had in some areas in recent months, however, the premise of the sketch is that the Black members of the news program aren’t so sure Chauvin will see consequences for Floyd’s death.

“Let’s just say we’ve seen this movie before,” Ego Nwodim’s anchor says to a pair of white anchors played by Kate McKinnon and Alex Moffat. Kenan Thompson’s anchor character, sitting next to Nwodim, agrees. The back and forth is supportive, with everyone on set believing the evidence against Chauvin is convincing and the crime horrible. But the optimism from McKinnon and Moffat was not embraced by the Black anchors.

“She means well, she means well,” Thompson’s character said when McKinnon’s insisted things would be different this time.

Chris Redd’s weatherman character was brought in to break a tie, so to speak, but he wasn’t having it.

“Man, don’t put me in this mess,” he said. “I’m still in hot water for being in that Paul Pierce video.”

The “dialogue” did, indeed, get “heated,” but they got to other sad news that also drew some confusion: the death of Prince Phillip and DMX.

The sketch concluded with something they assumed everyone could agree on: the plight of Matt Gaetz and his growing sex scandal. But, unfortunately, there was at least one person willing to stick up for him there as well.

We live in a time when conservatives breathlessly espouse personal freedoms but come up curiously empty on personal responsibility for just about anything of consequence, and no politician seems to embody that more these days than Matt Gaetz. The Florida congressman is currently embroiled in a scandal that’s grown to include allegations of a relationship with a 17-year-old, drugs and curious financial payments to an accused sex trafficker and dogged the fervent Donald Trump ally in recent days.

But Gaetz has blamed basically everyone but himself for the scandal, refusing calls for him to resign and claiming that anyone who thinks he’s done something wrong is simply trying to “cancel” him. The fact that he’s being “canceled” for allegations of some serious, QAnon-level crimes doesn’t seem to matter here. On Saturday, following a “Save America” rally at a Trump property in Florida where he insisted he was “not going anywhere,” Gaetz doubled down on Twitter to accuse the “deep state” for wrongly targeting him for cancelation.

The “Deep State” is a term conservatives tend to deploy to describe shadowy forces apparently in the US government and corporations that work to control America, often at the expense of conservatives and Republican ideals. But the idea that Gaetz is simply “canceled” by woke liberals is fairly absurd given the seriousness of the investigation against him, let alone the idea that his public Venmo transactions and potentially ushering underage women across borders is somehow an act of the Deep State. Which is why his message didn’t exactly go over very well on Twitter.

The tweet sparked the phrase “DEEP STATE” to trend on Twitter on Saturday, and drew a number of points of clarification from people responding online. It was the Justice Department during the Trump administration, for example, that apparently opened the investigation into potential Gaetz wrongdoing. But none of that seems to matter when Gaetz can lump his case into the growing list of things such as Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, and Dr. Seuss that MAGA folks insist are being wrongly canceled. But only one of those, mind you, has an open federal investigation against them that’s been made public knowledge.

After months of build and a few physical confrontations with The Miz, fans finally got their first look at rapper, singer, songwriter, and now professional wrestler, Bad Bunny, competing inside a WWE ring at WrestleMania 37.

After Damian Priest teased starting the match, Bad Bunny took the tag and hopped into the ring to square off with Miz. Bunny had his fair share of ups and downs throughout the match, taking the brunt of the beating from Miz and John Morrison, but showed off his fair share of offense before making the hot tag to Priest.

With Priest in the ring, Bunny stole the show, joining his partner to connect on stereo Falcon Arrows before climbing to the top rope and taking out Miz and Morrison on the outside.

Miz dropped Priest with the Skull-Crushing Finale, but Bunny made the save to keep his team in the match. After getting pulled off the apron by Morrison, Bunny laid him out with a Canadian Destroyer. To close out the match, Priest tagged Bunny in, who landed a flying crossbody on Miz to pin the former WWE champion.

It was clear from the opening bell that Bunny had put in a ton of work to get ready for WrestleMania and the match didn’t disappoint. Here’s what Miz told Uproxx earlier this week about Bunny’s work ethic in the build to ‘Mania.

“He loves WWE. He’s a huge, huge fan and he wanted to train. So I guess he’s been training the past couple of months and from what I’ve heard in the locker room, I don’t think any other celebrity has done the work he is doing. He literally came to a WWE ring and trained after winning a Grammy. He went to the Grammy’s, did a performance and then came to WWE ring the next day to train. This guy is dedicated and he’s hardworking.”

WrestleMania 37’s second night takes place on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Peacock.

Actress and writer Charlyne Yi publicly criticized James Franco earlier in the week, and on Saturday she posted on Instagram to double down on her description of the actor and director as “a sexual predator.” Yi, who appeared in The Disaster Artist in 2017 along with Franco and Seth Rogen, claimed she tried to quit the film because of Franco.

Yi, who appeared in the film about Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room, has also appeared in films like This Is 40, Knocked Up and has done a long list of voice acting roles. And now she’s making public her attempt to quit the Golden Globe-winning film and calling out people she feel enable Franco in Hollywood.

As the New York Daily News laid out, Yi claimed she was bribed in order to stay quiet about what she described as new allegations of abuse against Franco she learned about while filming.

On Thursday, Yi said that when she tried “to break legal contract” and quit the movie “because James Franco is a sexual predator,” producers tried to “bribe” her with a better role.

That was exactly the opposite of what she wanted, she told them, adding that she “didn’t feel safe working with a f–ng sexual predator.”

Producers tried to minimize the situation, telling her that “Franco being a predator was so last [year] and that he changed… when I literally heard of him abusing new women that week.”

You can read her first post in full below.

On Saturday, Yi addressed her claims again on Instagram, critiquing reporters who covered allegations of sexual abuse against Franco from several women in 2018, reports that surfaced in the wake of his Golden Globe win for The Disaster Artist.

“Denying/gaslighting is a tactic that abusers and enablers use that is psychological violence, & has serious affects: the survivor loses sense of reality/intuition to protect self from targeted again, PTSD, suicidal thoughts/suicide, etc,” Yi wrote. She also criticized Seth Rogen for willfully “enabling Franco preying on children”

Allegations against Franco are nothing new: Busy Philipps famously alleged Franco assaulted her on the set of Freaks and Geeks, though in her memoir she claimed that the two are now friends. Yi has posted several times in recent days about abuse, gaslighting and what people can do to support victims of sexual misconduct. Neither Franco nor Rogen have addressed Yi’s comments since they were shared on social media, but they shined new light on a very troubling series of allegations in recent days.

Despite the fact that there were a number of high-profile injury absences for both teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets went head-to-head on ABC on Saturday night. Anthony Davis and LeBron James were sidelined for L.A., while James Harden didn’t take the floor for Brooklyn. And in the third quarter of action, a little more star power left the floor due to some extracurriculars.

Kyrie Irving got called for a foul on Dennis Schröder as he tried to hold his ground while the Lakers’ guard was dribbling. Schröder went up to an official to express some gripes, which apparently did not sit well with Irving. The pair got face-to-face with one another, leading to technical fouls being assessed. Despite getting split up, Irving and Schröder kept talking with one another, leading to a second wave of techs getting handed out and both of their nights ending a little earlier than they expected.

At the times of their ejections, Irving had 18 points on 6-for-11 shooting with four rebounds, while Schröder had 19 on 7-for-11 shooting with four assists and a rebound. The Lakers would go on to beat the Nets, 126-101, with Andre Drummond’s 20 points and 11 rebounds leading the way.

We’ll soon find out what the next wrestling video game from 2K Sports looks like after a year off for the long-running series. Hype for the return of WWE 2K22 started during Night 1 of WrestleMania 37 on Saturday evening, with a teaser for the new game aired during the broadcast.

The teaser trailer features “work-in-progress” builds of Rey Mysterio and Cesaro and serves as the first look we’ve seen of a series that’s essentially been on pause.

After a year of frustrating gameplay and technical glitches in WWE 2K20, the video game series didn’t make plans to return in 2021. Instead 2K and WWE teamed up to release WWE Battlegrounds, an arcade-style game featuring over-the-top Superstar designs, environments and moves, while promising a commitment to fixing what went wrong in the 2020 iteration.

“We hear you and we know you want more from the franchise, so here’s what we’re going to do: we are applying what we’ve learned to the next WWE 2K simulation game with a renewed focus on quality and fun. As part of that commitment, we are extending the production timeline and will not be releasing a WWE 2K simulation game in 2020 (T2 fiscal year 2021). We want to ensure the development team at Visual Concepts can create a great game that will entertain grizzled WWE 2K veterans, as well as newcomers who want to climb through the ropes and step into the ring for the very first time.”

We’ll see more of the work they put into the game in the coming months as we get closer to a release date for the franchise’s latest title.

The Los Angeles Lakers have done a decent enough job staying afloat while LeBron James and Anthony Davis have been on the sidelines due to injuries. Ever since James went down with a high ankle sprain last month, Los Angeles has managed to go 4-6, which to this point has been enough to keep them out of the play-in tournament.

Exact dates for James and Davis’ returns are still to be determined, but on Saturday evening, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that timetables are beginning to pop up for both. Davis, who hasn’t appeared in a game since mid-February with a calf strain and right leg tendinosis, may be able to return to action in the next 10-14 days. Per the report, Davis will get looked at when the Lakers return from their current five-game road trip, at which point there should be more clarity.

James’ return, meanwhile, is expected to be a little after that. The reigning NBA Finals MVP is apparently “on track” to come back in three weeks, which would mean he’d end up missing about a month due to the ankle sprain he suffered against the Atlanta Hawks.

The Lakers were the fifth seed in the Western Conference entering Saturday night’s games, sitting 2.5 games above the Dallas Mavericks for the No. 7 seed.