by Emily Nagle
Top 5 Highest Grossing Films For May 7-9, 2021:
5. Raya and the Last Dragon
4. Godzilla vs. Kong
3. Mortal Kombat
2. Demon Slayer: Mugen Train
1. Wrath of Man
The newest arrival to the box office was also the most profitable for this past weekend: Wrath of Man, directed by Guy Ritchie. Released Friday, this action thriller has already raked in $8.3 million at the box office. A remake of the 2004 film “Cash Truck”, it stars Jason Statham as H, a mysterious security guard for a cash truck. When H pulls off a heist, his coworkers are left to wonder who he really is, and what his intentions are. It has received mostly positive reviews so far, with critics praising the action scenes in particular.
by Emily Nagle
Since this time last year, Roku has grown by 79%, defying the expectations of financial analysts.
The streaming platform has experienced a customer boom, with a 35% increase in active customers since the same quarter last year. This came as a shock to Wall Street analysts, who predicted that it would lose money in Q1 of 2021. Now, Roku has 53.6 million active users, making it the top streaming provider in the United States.
In total, 18.3 billion hours of content has been streamed on Roku devices. The reason for its financial success? Roku’s advertising has also increased exponentially in the past year, with platform revenue reaching $466.5 million. That’s double the amount from last year.
Currently, Roku is gathering original programming, with new additions coming from Quibi and the producer of This Old House. As Roku’s original programming is free and ad-supported, this will increase ad revenue even more, as the streaming provider will appeal to more customers.
Roku offers access to 50 subscription-based streaming services, as well as hundreds of channels that appeal to a wide variety of audiences. Streaming devices start at $29.99.
by Emily Nagle
The recent premiere of season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” has become the most watched Hulu Original ever, out of all their series and films.
Viewership for episode one of the show’s fourth season has taken the throne for most-watched Hulu Original from movies United States vs. Billie Holiday and Happiest Season, which had 287 thousand and 416.6 thousand views respectively in their first weekends on streaming.
Season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” dropped on Hulu on April 28, nearly two years since the last season due to the pandemic shutdown. It follows June as she leads a revolution against Gilead. In the first week after its premiere, the new season received 1 million views across the United States in its first week on Hulu.
By Kurt Balingit
Tom Hiddleston has announced that the Marvel series ‘Loki’ is moving up its release date two days to Wednesday, June 9. The weekly episodes of will be released on Wednesdays instead of Fridays, which is the usual days that Marvel shows “WandaVision” and “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” follow on Disney+. In the true spirit of the God of Mischief, he needs to be the black sheep who does not follow the schedule. Even in our universe.
The announcement of the release date change was made in a video uploaded to Marvel’s YouTube channel. The video starts by playing a Marvel montage and is then interrupted by Tom Hiddleston talking about how Loki is always left out of superhero montages.
He mocks the Avengers montage by saying “I’ve noticed that in these long superhero montages, Loki tends to get a bit left out, even though arguably he’s incredibly heroic himself — cunning, charming, I could goon. But maybe…why don’t I just prove it to you. Wednesdays are the new Fridays,”
The upcoming series “Loki” follows the God of Mischief and takes place after escapes the Avengers in “Avengers: Endgame.” The Trailers for the series show Loki being recruited by the Time Keepers, a mysterious organization called to fix the flow of time and several alternate realities.
by Emily Nagle
After 7 seasons, “The Flash” regulars Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh will be departing from the series.
When he first started on the show in 2014, Valdes played Francisco “Cisco” Ramon, who helped create Flash’s super-suit. His character eventually took on the superhero alter ego of Vibe/Mecha-Vibe.
Cavanagh played scientist Harrison Wells, in addition to Flash’s nemesis Eobard Thawne. He was originally supposed to finish the show with season 6, but the pandemic shutdown caused him to stay for the first three episodes of season 7 to wrap up his storylines.
While they may not be appearing regularly on the show anymore, executive producer and showrunner Eric Wallace has announced that the two are welcome to return as guest stars further down the road. “Tom and Carlos have been an integral part of our show for seven seasons, and will be greatly missed,” he issued in a statement. “Both are incredible talents who created beloved characters that fans and audiences around the world have come to love. Which is why we are happily keeping the door open for return appearances.”
By Kurt Balingit
This weekend saw the debut of two big studio titles, both of which went directly to streaming platforms. Paramount’s Tom Clancy film “Without Remorse,” and Sony Animation’s “The Mitchells vs the Machines,” were launched on Amazon Prime and Netflix. On the Netflix chart. “The Mitchells vs the Machines” is currently the number one movie on Netflix.
After narrowly losing first place last weekend, “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train” has surged ahead of “Mortal Kombat” on U.S. box office charts. Funimation’s anime action adventure “Demon Slayer” ended the weekend with $6.4 million in ticket sales, with “Mortal Kombat” trailing behind it with $6.2 million. Both films debuted last weekend and dipped roughly 70% from last week.
- Demon Slayer: Mugen Train – $6,412,933 ($34,118,776 total gross)
- Mortal Kombat – $6,235,000 ($34,087,000 total gross)
- Godzilla vs. Kong – $2,820,000 ($90,390,000 total gross)
- Separation – $1,800,162 ($1,800,162 total gross)
- Raya and the Last Dragon – $1,381,155 ($41,627,102 total gross)
Demon Slayer was released in Japan in 2020 and is the Japan’s top grossing film of all time raking in $361 million there. After it’s release to U.S theaters it has made just over $400 million.
The only new release this weekend was William Brent Bell’s horror film “Separation,” which earned $1.8 million and an 9% Tomatometer score which was the worst score from all releases in 2021, beating Chaos Walking’s 23%. We have been seeing a trend in demographics attending the theater and younger, male audiences are turning out on opening weekend seeing action films
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