Film

‘Gods of Egypt’ starring Gerard Butler looks to be the first big-budget miss of 2016 as ‘Deadpool’ continues to soar and ‘The Hateful Eight’ rides to $100M.

Lionsgate’s Gods of Egypt, starring Gerard Butler, fared poorly at the Friday box office, earning $4.8 million for a projected $13 million to $14 million debut over Oscar weekend despite a hefty $140 million production budget.

At this rate, the fantasy epic will be the first big-budget miss of the year at the North American box office. It’s hoping to make up ground overseas, where it rolls out in 68 markets this weekend before landing in China on March 11.

Fox’s superhero blockbuster Deadpool will have no trouble staying at No. 1 in its third outing. The movie took in $9 million Friday for a projected $31.2 weekend, putting it’s domestic gross north of $285 million through Sunday.

Deadpool could make life difficult for Gods of Egypt internationally as well. Also overseas this weekend, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight will ride past the $100 million mark for The Weinstein Co., pushing its global total to north of $150 million.

Gods of Egypt, with aspirations of launching a new franchise, earned $800,000 in Thursday-night previews before expanding into a total of 3,117 theaters on Friday morning.

The film stars Butler as god of darkness Set whose rule has forced the Egyptian empire into chaos and conflict. Brenton Thwaites plays a mortal hero who teams with the god Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to save the empire. Lionsgate insiders say the studio’s exposure on the budget is limited to $10 million after foreign presales and hefty Australian tax credits, but that doesn’t include $35 million to $40 million in marketing costs.

The other two newcomers this weekend are Fox’s sports dramedy Eddie the Eagle, starring Hugh Jackman and Taron Egerton, and crime thriller Triple 9. Eddie stars Egerton as real-life British ski jumper Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards while Jackman plays his coach. The film, which had a secret screening at Sundance, is directed by Dexter Fletcher.

Neither look to do big business, and are in a close race for the No. 5 spot with about $6 million each.

John Hillcoat’s indie crime-thriller Triple 9 has a strong cast including Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Teresa Palmer and Gal Gadot. Open Road Films is releasing the movie, which centers on crooked cops and criminals who plan a major heist, in the U.S.

Holdover Kung Fu Panda 3 is slotted to come in No. 3 for the weekend after Deadpool and Gods of Egypt with an estimated $8.7 million, pushing the animated movie’s domestic total to $128 million. Sony’s faith-based offering Risen stands to come in No. 3 with roughly $7.7 million for a 10-day total of nearly $23 million.
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In Last Cab to Darwin Rex embarks on a trip through the Australian Outback after he learns he does not have long to live.

Offing oneself has never been more winning than it is in Last Cab to Darwin, director Jeremy Sims’ (Beneath Hill 60) wryly comic tale of a grizzled taxi driver dying of cancer who drives from Broken Hill to Darwin – roughly Tennessee to Montana – in order to legally end his life via lethal injection.”

Offing oneself has never been more winning than it is in Last Cab to Darwin, director Jeremy Sims‘ (Beneath Hill 60) wryly comic tale of a grizzled taxi driver dying of cancer who drives from Broken Hill to Darwin – roughly Tennessee to Montana – in order to legally end his life via lethal injection. Adapted from Reg Cribb‘s stage play of the same name, the film shows little trace of its theatrical origins, not least because it consists of one ravishing shot of the blood-orange outback after another, and Sims wrings gentle pleasures from this most unlikely of subjects.

Michael Caton (beloved on these shores for his role in The Castle, an early showcase for the comic chops, since largely dormant, of Eric Bana) stars as Rex, who’s never left the mining town of Broken Hill. When he’s not picking up fares he spends his time draining schooners with his best mates – Simmo (John Howard), Col (Alan Dukes) and Dougie (David Field) – whose cheerful toast says it all: “Here’s to us, f**k the rest”. Then there’s Polly (Ningali Lawford-Wolf, wonderfully irascible), the aboriginal woman who lives across the road and occasionally shares his bed. Rex’s dog, Dog, looks on contentedly as the pair hold hands over a morning cuppa on the porch, though Rex pulls his hand away quickly when his neighbor emerges from next door.

Unbeknownst to his pals and Polly, Rex has three months to live. His diagnosis happily coincides, in the way of these things, with Dougie’s discovery of a newspaper article about the legalization of euthanasia in the Territory – “they did that in Broken Hill there’d be no bastards left!”, sayeth Dougie. Rex promptly decides to jump in his taxi and drive straight across the desert to the clinic run by Dr. Farmer (Jacki Weaver with a black helmet of hair). He interrupts a radio interview she’s conducting to tell her he’s on his way. She tells him to keep his fluids up, so Rex buys a six-pack and sets off.

Sims and playwright Cribb (who also wrote Sims’ debut feature, Last Train to Freo) fashioned their story out of two real ones from the 90’s. Last Cab seems to be set then, too; the only time we see a mobile phone is in the hands of a young FIFO miner in the back of Rex’s cab, who complains about his lack of reception and is given appropriately short shrift from Rex. Caton is an endearingly unpretentious star: with his formidable beer belly and dry, laconic mien, expect Robert Duvall in the remake.

After his windscreen is smashed, Rex pulls off the road and alongside Tilly (Mark Coles Smith), an indigenous man with a cowboy hat, a million dollar smile and endless swagger – all hips and dimples, a dead ringer for Brad Pitt’s hustler in Thelma and Louise. Coles Smith is superb as the charming Tilly, whose front masks gnawing disappointment. They’re joined on this cross-country jamboree by Julie (Emma Hamilton, BBC’s The Musketeers), a nurse from London moonlighting as a barmaid in the outback, who quits to take care of Rex.

Inevitably the trek is episodic but Steve Arnold‘s dusky photography and the good-natured sniping between the monosyllabic Rex and the motormouth Tilly keep it buoyant. Once they’ve arrived at Dr. Farmer’s clinic, though, the characters (and the film) find themselves in a holding pattern. Farmer sets about gathering the checks they need to proceed: principally, a signature from a psychiatrist signing off on Rex’s soundness of mind. After all that forward movement, Rex and co must sit and wait, amid much phone slamming from Weaver.

Last Cab to Darwin is no polemic, but its attitude towards euthanasia is oblique, chiefly because Farmer, the euthanasia advocate, is so unsympathetic. Weaver’s glassy-eyed stare so effective in Animal Kingdom is present here, too; so convincing on a gangster matriarch, it seems a curious fit for a right-to-die campaigner. Increasingly the film positions Farmer as a grasper, out to advance her cause but with little concern for Rex. As he says himself: “why do I get the feeling that woman wants me dead?”

The film never becomes morbid, though, which is both its strength and weakness. The real man on which Rex is partially based had to wear a catheter and couldn’t embrace another person without risking injury. Rex endures no ugly side effects – it’s not that kind of film. Without them, though, his reason for ending his life prematurely is less obvious. And of course that’s the idea, paving the way for Rex’s eleventh-hour realization of who and what really matters. Ed Kuepper‘s guitar-heavy score sees out the sun, and is perhaps a touch over-present in a film that in most other departments exhibits an admirably light touch.

Production Companies: Pork Chop Productions
Cast: Michael Caton, Ningali Lawford-Wolf, Mark Coles Smith, Emma Hamilton, David Field, John Howard, Alan Dukes, Jacki Weaver
Director: Jeremy Sims
Writers: Reg Cribb, Jeremy Sims
Producers: Greg Duffy, Lisa Duff, Jeremy Sims
Executive Producers: Ned Lander, Andrew Myer, Edward Simpson, Mark Nelson, Michael Burton, Ian Darling, Jon Adgemis, Prue MacLeod, Chris Cuffe, Natasha Cuffe
Director of Photography: Steve Arnold
Production Designer: Clayton Jauncey
Costume Designer: Jane Johnston
Editor: Marcus D’Arcy
Sound Designer: Simon Lister
Composer: Ed Kuepper
Casting Director: Kirsty McGregor

No rating, 123 minutes

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Hollywood’s racial and gender diversity is increasing, says Darnell Hunt, lead author of the second annual Hollywood Diversity Report by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, set for release Feb. 25.

This story first appeared in the March 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Hollywood’s racial and gender diversity is increasing. But it’s not increasing quickly enough, says Darnell Hunt, lead author of the second annual Hollywood Diversity Report by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, set for release Feb. 25. “Hollywood is not progressing at the same rate as America is diversifying,” says Hunt, the center’s director and a sociology professor. The U.S. population is about 40 percent minority and slightly more than half female, but, in news to no one, women and minorities are represented onscreen and behind the camera in drastically lesser proportions, the study indicates.

The problem isn’t audiences: During the years the study surveys — 2012 and 2013 — viewers preferred films and television shows with moderately diverse casts, according to Nielsen ratings and box-office reports. “Audiences, regardless of their race, are clamoring for more diverse content,” says co-author Ana-Christina Ramon.

The study blames the lack of diversity on agencies, guilds, studios and networks — “an industry culture that routinely devalues the talent of minorities and women,” reads the report.

The authors recognize the report’s time window limits its relevance, especially as racial diversity has shown big gains on TV during the 2014-15 season, but they predict their findings will encourage more progress. The study surveyed the top 200 films by global box office in 2012 and 2013, excluding foreign movies, and every broadcast, cable and digital TV series of the 2012-13 season (1,105 total).

FILM

In movies, minorities were underrepresented more than 2-to-1 (less than half as much as their share of the U.S. population) in lead roles and 2-to-1 as directors, and women lagged 2-to-1 as leads and 8-to-1 as directors (female-helmed films included 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty and The Guilt Trip and 2013’s Frozen and Carrie). Meanwhile, films with casts about 30 percent diverse did best at the worldwide box office.

The diversity gaps mostly were smaller than in 2011. “There are pockets of promise,” says Hunt, citing best picture winner 12 Years a Slave for upping the share of Oscar wins to 25 percent for films with a minority lead; Gravity, with seven Oscars, evened out the wins for male- and female-fronted releases. But after a 2014 Oscars race with all white acting nominees and only one best picture nominee with a black lead, “this year was a step backward from what might otherwise have been optimism from 2013,” admits Hunt.

Viewers like diversity, with broadcast scripted shows 41 percent to 50 percent diversely cast scoring the highest ratings in black and white households alike in 2012-13, while on cable, white and Latino viewers preferred casts with 31 percent to 40 percent diversity. Black households preferred cable shows with more than 50 percent diversity, a figure buoyed by BET programs including The Game and Kevin Hart’s Real Husbands of Hollywood.

But TV remained white-heavy onscreen and behind the camera, with minorities underrepresented nearly 6-to-1 in lead roles on scripted broadcast shows and nearly 2-to-1 as leads on cable (relative to their share of the U.S. population), more than 3-to-1 as cable series creators and more than 6-to-1 as broadcast creators. Women were underrepresented about 2-to-1 as broadcast and cable creators, and their frequency as leads on broadcast dipped below 50 percent; they also remained outnumbered on cable. Both groups were underrepresented in reality programming.

Hunt is hopeful, though. “Film has always been a step or two behind television in terms of its willingness and ability to open up and diversify,” he says. He feels the medium is becoming more inclusive with the bevy of new distributors and producers, particularly such digital platforms as Netflix and Amazon. “It’s creating a chance for people to get in who had no shot before,” says Hunt. “But they’re still not getting in at the rate the tried-and-true names are.”

He is “very optimistic” regarding this pilot season’s push for diversity — with numerous minority-led projects ordered, several through overall deals with diverse talent including Eva Longoria and producer Will Packer — as well as the recent success of Empire, Black-ish, How to Get Away With Murder, Fresh Off the Boat and other diverse programs.

EXECUTIVES

This year, for the first time, the study surveyed diversity in 2013 in the executive ranks of TV networks and studios (96 percent white and 71 percent male) and major and mini-major film studios (94 percent white and 100 percent male). The past year’s executive moves, such as Stacey Snider’s jump to 20th Century Fox and Amy Pascal stepping down as co-chair at Sony Pictures, aren’t reflected in this snapshot.

The report was backed financially by a half-dozen major studios and networks including the Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner. In addition to publishing the study online, Hunt and Ramon will present it to executives from each sponsor, as they did the first report in 2014. That study helped some executives make changes at their companies, including the creation of HBOAccess, a mentorship program for diverse writers and filmmakers, which Time Warner executive director of diversity and corporate social responsibility Jonathan Beane says was inspired largely by the report. “I want to make sure that what I’m preaching, I have data to support it. The report does that,” he says.

He agrees with the researchers that the problem stems from executive attitudes during the hiring process, which perpetuates the lack of diversity in executive suites — even if unintentionally. “I don’t believe it’s malicious,” says Beane. “It’s just that people have a better eye for talent when it looks like them and has the same background as them.”

Says Hunt: “It’s a high-risk industry. People want to surround themselves with collaborators they’re comfortable with, which tends to mean people they’ve networked with — and nine times out of 10, they’ll look similar. It reproduces the same opportunities for the same kind of people: You’re surrounding yourself with a bunch of white men to feel comfortable.”

He adds that the industry won’t change until that does. “It’s not like there’s this general trend upward, this wave everything is riding. It’s very precarious,” says Hunt. “It’s getting better, but it’s not getting better fast enough. And it’s still a big problem.”

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