Scott Mendelson

6 days ago | scottmendelson.substack.com | Scott Mendelson

Pardon the accidental sabbatical. Long story short, I’m in Ohio visiting my parents with the kids but sans the spouse. I accidentally slept in until noon on my first post-flight day, and spent the next three days in or around Cedar Point. I’m still in Akron until Tuesday night — so hoping for a make-up subscriber chat on Thursday morning — but for now it’s (famous last words?) business as usual. Well, except for the fact that I haven’t seen either of this weekend’s two big newbies.

1 week ago | scottmendelson.substack.com | Scott Mendelson |Aaron Neuwirth |Jeremy Fuster |Lisa Laman

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:16:42Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Due to a false alarm regarding potentially malfunctioning Wi-Fi, we ended up with two special guests for the price of one. Kirsten Acuna, who recently started a new gig as a staff editor at People Magazine, dropped by to discuss the second of three high-profile live-action remakes for 2025.

1 week ago | scottmendelson.substack.com | Scott Mendelson

In what can’t help but serve as a comment on a kind of arrested development nostalgia currently dominating mainstream (at least theatrical) pop culture, the top two movies of the weekend are live-action remakes of animated films. After a few weeks led by Disney’s remake of Chris Sanders’s Lilo & Stitch, the domestic and global box office is now being dominated by Universal’s remake of… Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’s How to Train Your Dragon.

2 weeks ago | scottmendelson.substack.com | Scott Mendelson

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s Sinners has now earned $274.02 million in domestic gross. Barring a fluke, the R-rated, over/under $95 million original vampire flick will earn enough today to surpass the unadjusted $274.1 million domestic total of Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar-winning Gravity. This will make it the top-grossing live-action original since Chris Nolan’s Inception ($293 million) in the summer of 2010.

2 weeks ago | scottmendelson.substack.com | Scott Mendelson

Universal just announced that David Harbour’s bemusing “Die Hard with Santa Claus” actioner, Violent Night, will be getting a sequel. I think we knew that, but now it’s got a release date, namely the same early December slot–in 2026, where Universal opened Krampus and Violent Night and will drop Five Nights at Freddy’s this year. 87North will, of course, produce.