Archive Page 2160

April 17, 2023

Robert Downey Jr gets birthday attention from Marvel/Disney – MSN Screenrant

The Comic Books of April

Story at Multiversity Comics

Article looks at comic books from April in 1941, 1990, and 2020

Blue Beetle Movie director in controversy over death wish for former Pres Trump – Bounding into Comics

And then there's the "Batman is a fascist" line in the Blue Beetle trailer – Uproxx

Actor Comic theft trial

Actor Ray Buffer could be headed to trial after a comic book store rejected the alleged thief’s offer to pay them back for comics he’s accused of stealing, law enforcement officials and the store’s owner said Thursday. Buffer, who’s appeared in shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “ER,” was charged with petty theft after Southern California Comics alleged the actor swiped comics from their San Diego store in October.

Article at New York Post

D&D Honor Among Thieves has success: but can it turn a profit?

According to OMB reviews, even though Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves has surpassed expectations, all the same its production budget ($150 million) and marketing costs ($75 million) means it will have a hard time actually reaching the break-even of $375 million and then doing that thing Hollywood loves, birth a franchise. On the other hand, it has good audience scores and general word of mouth, and this gives it a (long) shot at net earnings, something that (for example) Quantumania and Shazam II appears to have no chance to achieve.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves rules the box office with higher than expected numbers, cheering the movie-making community

Story at Yahoo News

As of Sunday morning, Paramount has estimated that "Honor Among Thieves" has brought in $38.5 million in its first weekend, the third-biggest opening for the month and making it so that every single weekend this month, there was a movie opening over $30 million. It’s been a very long time since that happened, especially outside of the summer.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at $71,500,000 worldwide – Box Office Mojo

Fast review: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A good deal of humor lubricates Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, courtesy of the cast and script, and though the tale is engineered out of many other films – Reveiw of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Blackhawk! – Heritage Auctions

"Military Comics #20 (Quality, 1943) Condition: VG+. Blackhawk cover by Reed Crandall. Story and art by Fred Guardineer. This copy displays tanning and foxing. Overstreet 2022 VG 4.0 value = $108."

Article about this at Bleeding Cool "The Golden Age Lady Blackhawk in Military Comics #20, at Auction Miltary Comics fans will want to grab this classic Blackhawk story..."

Frank Quitely at Forbidden Planet on Saturday signing his new book The Ambassadors – Glasgow Times

This is how the Glasgow Times headlined it: "Legendary Glasgow-born comic book artist to appear at signing in city centre"

"Marvel Confirms When Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Tickets Go on Sale" – comicbook – They confirm it? That's fantastic, you mean they're not giving them away?

Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will soon be able to purchase tickets for the franchise's next outing. Saturday, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

This starts off like a pure promotional piece. It does modulate into a news story, though, talking about what will likely be in the coming film.

Disney Pain

One of the results of the recent calamities that have struck Disney is that some media outlets are re-evaluating the performance of past films, such as Shang-chi, The Enternals and Black Widow, all of which are now being poked at for actual production costs versus reported productions costs. The result is that there is an argument that the last film to actually make money for Disney over cost wasn't even a true Disney film, but the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man No Way Home. With recent firings and productions getting cancelled or curtailed, and news stories about cost over-runs on re-shoots and CGI, and then contradictory stories of CGI not even getting completed because people were moved Film "A" before it was even finished and put onto "Film B," which adds up to a not-so-subtle accusation that leadership has fallen apart inside Mouse House.

With Disney wounded, the Hollywood media is starting to show more teeth about the company, whereas for years there's been a tacit "everything they do it right" attitude because of the huge boxoffice.

Fraudsters attempt sale of $4,000 worth of stolen Marvel comic books and action figures – WSPA Spartenburg

Apparently, ripped off one comic book store then tried unloading it at a different comic book store which knew of the stolen items.

June releases from Boom! – Comicscontinuum

Looking like Gotham Knights is going to get canned after precipitous audience drop

Story at Bounding into Comics

Article say "was doomed from the start" because... "the CW is moribund and the Arrowverse is over, victims of wokeness and increasingly cheaper-looking programming."

Another Disney firing - Ike Perlmutter, the chairman of its Marvel Entertainment unit, is cut

Story at Bloomberg

7,000 job cut at DIsney coming – Hindustan Times

"Go small again" with superhero movies – MSN Collider

Unfortunately, these new follow-ups blow up the scale of their predecessors and engage in lots of CGI-heavy “epic” mayhem. All the humanity and charm of earlier Ant-Man and Shazam! adventures get lost in the middle of all the noise."

John Wicks has huge opening; Shazam II continues fade – Variety MSN

Boosted by positive reviews and enthusiastic word-of-mouth, the fourth installment in Lionsgate’s action series, led by Keanu Reeves as a legendary assassin, landed the best start of the franchise. It’s one of the rare original properties to keep growing and improving upon the last, in terms of ticket sales. The original “John Wick” opened to a modest $14 million in 2014, its sequel “John Wick: Chapter 2” took in $30.4 million to start in 2017 and the third film “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” previously marked a series-high with $56.8 million in 2019.

DC and Marvel both hit with bombs: Meanwhile, Shazam Fury O' the Gods continues a rough slide with a $9.7 million take which means a ticket sale slide of 69% on the second weekend. Reported to cost $110 million to make with $100 million to promote it, its not going to make its money back in theaters, and this is following the same thing that happened to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania that has also not earned what's needed to cover its cost.

Scooby Doo show Season 2 gets pulled – Bounding into Comics

Kang arrested – Superherohype

Wondercon shows off "The Dawn of DC" – Comicsbeat

Avatar passes up Infinity War for highest grossing domestic market movie – Comicbookmovie

Indiana Jones project effort getting shifted to Star Wars projects at Disney – Bounding into Comics

The Last Ronin TMNT storyline becoming a video game – Polygon

Joe Giella has died

R.I.P. Joe Giella, most known for his prolific inking on DC Comics in the 50s & 60s, assisting on The Phantom & Flash Gordon comic strips, and 15 years as artist on the Mary Worth comic strip. pic.twitter.com/FuvMl1cDuV

— ComicsintheGoldenAge (@ComicsintheGA) March 22, 2023

DC will put out a series of George Perez variant covers in June – Comic-watch

Resurrecting Gold Key Comics

Story Never Dies. pic.twitter.com/Is4ya0HYRh

— Gold Key Comics (@GoldKeyComic) March 23, 2023

The coming The Flash movie gets a PG-13 rating – Comicbookmovie

The comics shops that closed down in 2022 – Comicsbeat

Snyder has announced that his three DC movies are coming back to theaters for a three-night "SnyderCon"

Story at SuperHeroHype MSN

this is Anthony Mackie talking about the Captain America 4 script, which is evil by itself, but also kills me because they're based on existing comic books. i can go to a comic shop and probably figure out most of what's gonna happen in the movie. pic.twitter.com/JNp6ZlAcOK

— alexis ➡️ galaxycon richmond (@theswordwizard) March 17, 2023

Copy of Detective Comics #27 on auction – NY Post article about the event

CGC has graded 75 known copies of Detective Comics #27

Link to the Heritage Auction page – Page blurb: "Not only is it in contention with Action Comics #1 as the most important Golden Age comic of all, it's just about as hard to find in any grade! We've offered just four copies in higher grades in the last 22 years, and just two nicer copies in the past 10 years!"

Shazam II and Black Adam controversy – Superherohype

Johnson blocked Levi’s cameo in Black Adam, which would have seen Shazam join the Justice Society, opting to include Henry Cavill’s Superman in the mid-credits scene instead.

Shazam Fury O' the Gods at $64,711,158 worldwide – started off with $30 million weekend when $35 to $40 million was expected

No more superhero movies for me says Director David Sandberg – Yahoo

Director David Sandberg and star Rachel Zegler address people hating on 'Shazam! Fury of the Gods' – LA Times - MSN News

"Superhero movies have a quality problem" – Los Angeles Times

The Joker Tha Man Who Stopped Laughing #9 Variant Cover

"He looks like he's surrounded by Funko Toys, I wouldn't be laughing either, a lot of comic shops are going broke on those..." – Perch on Comics You Tube

Funko plans to send $30 million worth of its vinyl figurines to the trash – The Washington-based company, known for its toys depicting pop-culture icons, cited ballooning inventory and limited warehouse capacity – USA Today

Blade reboot: no Black Knight – MSN Game Rant

Blade reboot will instead be about the daughter – Boundingintocomics

Following up on his previous report that the film’s star, Mahershala Ali, was still unhappy with its script over eight months after allegedly having first raised issues with its quality and as such had taken the matter of fixing it into his own hands...”

About the Black Knight and Blade

Scott Nybakken goes from DC Comics to Dynamite as Marketing director

Story at icv2.com

Victoria Alonso and the exit from the MCU

Behind the scenes of the multiple directors for The Flash – Bounding into comics

DC publishes Justice Society Of America Vol 5 on occasion of SHAZAM II at the theatres, but the book stories are out of order. – Bleedingcool

DC Comics layoffs amid restructuring – Comicsbeat

DC has already had recent layoffs which were thought to insulate them from the general rounds of layoffs that is passing through all the Warners companies. But, according to the Comcsbeat article, it looks like DC jobs are being eliminated, apparently "people involved with the business end of things" are the ones being let go.

Was Gal Gadot "deepfaked" into the new Shazam movie? – CBR

Snyder Cut Justice League going to get an Imax release? – Comicbookmovie

End of the line for Batgirl with issue #19 and Tim Drake: Robin ending with issue #10 – Comicbook

DC Comics' releases for March 21

1. Batman: One Bad Day - Ra's Al Ghul #1.
2. Batman/superman: World's Finest #13.
3. Black Adam #9.
4. Catwoman #53.
5. Dceased: War Of The Undead Gods Society Of #7.
6. Dc's Legion Of Bloom #1.
7. The Flash #795.
8. G.C.P.D.: The Blue Wall #6
9. Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: Legion Of Bats! #6
10. Milestone 30th Anniversary Special #1
11. Nightwing #102
12. Superman #2
13. Swamp Thing: Green Hell #3
14. Wonder Woman #797

$30 Million dollar start for Shazam Fury O' the Gods

Story at MSN Variety

People are "senselessly mean" says Rachel Zegler about criticisms of the low-performing Shazam Sequel debut – Yahoo News

And I know, I know, ‘if you can’t handle the heat…’ and all that nonsense, and you’re right. but our film is actually very good. it’s just cool to hate on fun nowadays. That’s okay. We’re good."

Original page Febraury 14, 2023