From Billion-Dollar Box Office Smashes to Major Labor Battles and Shocking Star
Controversies, the Entertainment Capital is Humming with High Stakes Drama
The bright lights of Hollywood have been shining even brighter than usual over the past few months, generating a sizzling summer’s worth of major movie premierships, high-profile labor disputes and no shortage of salacious celebrity scandals. As the entertainment industry’s power players jetted off for a brief August reprieve, we’re taking a look at all the latest action coming out of Tinseltown.
Box Office Shattering Summers
When it comes to blockbuster seasons, they don’t get much bigger than 2023’s run at the multiplex. Led by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Avengers: Secret Wars, several tentpole franchises delivered record-smashing performances at the global box office over the past few months.
The massively hyped culmination of Marvel’s Multiverse Saga obliterated the all-time box office record books, blowing past $3 billion worldwide in just over a month. It became only the third movie ever to cross that once-unfathomable threshold and close in on Avatar’s $3.2 billion all-time haul.
“It’s just a monumental achievement for this film and the entire Marvel Universe that it’s built over 15 years,” said Disney CEO Bob Chapek during the studio’s recent blockbuster earnings call.
With its dazzling visual spectacle, wildly ambitious multiversal storyline, and stacked ensemble cast featuring everyone from Tom Holland to Brie Larson, Secret Wars proved to be the very definition of an event film. Analysts say it should easily supplant Avatar as the new global box office champ before its run is complete.
But Marvel wasn’t the only Hollywood juggernaut shattering box office records this summer. Warner Bros/DC’s The Brave and the Bold delivered a bona fide mega-hit debut for the all-new rebooted Batman and Robin played by Robert Pattinson and Zoe Kravitz. Earning over $1.1 billion globally against an estimated $400 million production budget, the gritty crime thriller is already slated for multiple sequels and spinoffs set in its new DcEU continuity.
“This is the start of something big, something very big,” proclaimed Warner Bros Chairperson Pamela Abdy.
Paramount’s long-awaited follow-up to its sci-fi smash Interstellar, entitled Intersteller: Infinite, also rocketed past $1 billion globally following its Memorial Day weekend debut. Driven by rave reviews and towering IMAX visuals, it reaffirmed Christopher Nolan’s status as one of Hollywood’s most bankable big-screen auteurs.
Not to be outdone, Universal’s Jurassic World: Primordial stomped onto the scene in early June and left behind an extinction-level event of its own at the summer box office. Playing to huge family audiences, the dino-centric action/thriller crushed franchise records with over $1.4 billion earned globally in just six weeks.
So despite wildly divergent plots and tones, these four summer juggernauts proved there’s still an insatiable global appetite for big-screen spectacle, when done right. Combined they’ve already generated over $7 billion at the worldwide box office, putting 2023 on pace to potentially become the biggest year in Hollywood history.
“These films resonated across all quadrants – domestic, international, young audiences, older audiences,” said media analyst Cathleen Taff. “After several years of question marks due to streaming and the pandemic, it shows the enduring power of theatrical when Hollywood produces those once-in-a-generation event films.”
Unfortunately, the summer’s historic box office haul has been increasingly overshadowed by dire headlines surrounding strikes and labor disputes that could soon grind that success to a halt.
High-Stakes Labor War Looming
Tensions between Hollywood’s top studios and the industry’s most powerful unions came to a head this summer as contentious contract negotiations broke down on multiple fronts.
In early May, members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly in favor of authorizing a strike after being unable to reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The writers’ previous contract had expired two months earlier.
Then just a few weeks later in early June, the main actors union SAG-AFTRA mirrored the WGA’s move by voting to authorize an industry-wide strike of its own. The two unions now had the full authority to call for a simultaneous “double strike” for the first time since 1960 if new deals couldn’t be brokered.
“The companies have been dragging their feet at the table,” said SAG-AFTRA president Courtney B. Vance. “They have undervalued our labor and underestimated our resolve.”
The central issues remain the same in both heated labor disputes – higher baseline pay, more comprehensive residual compensation plans, pension and health care protections, along with stronger regulatory crackdowns on mini-room employment and issues surrounding AI.
The looming deep strike threats left major studios and burgeoning streamers like Netflix and Amazon scrambling to bank enough new content before the possibility of a prolonged industry blackout.
Taking the major studios’ side, AMPTP representatives argued the talent unions were making unrealistic demands given the challenging economics and volatility currently facing entertainment giants.
“Our industry is facing very real cost challenges, and we simply cannot afford to agree to the union’s front-loaded proposals,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “The exorbitant and unclear proposals are neither reasonable nor sustainable.”
With both sides remaining intractable as of early August, speculation began to ramp up that strikes could commence before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA’s existing authorizations expired on May 1st of 2024.
Should the double-strike scenario emerge in the coming months, production on nearly all Hollywood film and television projects would grind to a screeching halt, potentially costing the industry tens of billions of dollars in economic fallout. So far no new talks are scheduled, leaving dark clouds hovering over Hollywood’s horizon.
Celebrity Courtrooms and Shocking Scandals
No juicy summer in Hollywood would be complete, however, without its usual spate of salacious celebrity scandals and courthouse drama playing out for the world to see. The past few months offered no shortage of material.
Just this week, actor Ezra Miller of The Flash fame was officially hit with felony burglary and petit larceny charges stemming from a string of recent arrests and legal run-ins related to disturbing allegations ranging from harassment to disorderly conduct.
The 30-year-old Miller has become one of Hollywood’s biggest PR headaches after numerous reports of erratic and at times violent public outbursts seemed to spiral out of control over the past year. The star is currently undergoing treatment for what they described as “complex mental health issues.“
The ongoing saga proved ironic given the otherwise rapturous reception for Miller’s stand-alone blockbuster The Flash. The film was a box office smash for Warner Bros over the Summer, earning over $800 million globally after being greenlit during the SnyderVerse revamp. However, the studio is reportedly discussing contingencies should Miller face jailtime or need to be written out the newly established DC continuity.
Over in the world of music, disgraced pop superstar Yeezus returned to the headlines for all the wrong reasons again after shocking new allegations of abuse and intimidation surfaced. Two former employees of his popular fashion brand came forward, accusing the firebrand artist of subjecting them and other staffers to disturbing incidents of offensive behavior, inappropriate workplace conduct and an overall culture of fear.
Universal Music Group was quickly forced to reconsider its recently extended artist partnership with the temperamental Yeezus amid the rising tide of negative publicity. For his part, the embattled singer staunchly denied any wrongdoing and vowed to take legal action, intensifying the sensational fallout that just won’t seem to go away.
But even Hollywood’s lighter scandals couldn’t escape notice. Case in point: The uproar surrounding the alleged disastrously-catered “Honey I Shrank the Crew” wrap party for the big-budget Disney sequel, currently in post-production.
According to viral posts and leaks from multiple production insiders, the producer-hosted after-party’s food and snack selections fell so drastically short, that most of the crew spent the evening either waiting hours for food truck replacements or simply ordering their pizza deliveries to the vacant banquet hall.
With photos and video flooded across social media showing the apparent lack of culinary preparations, Disney and parent company Comcast found themselves facing intense backlash from commentators railing against alleged corporate pettiness and mistreatment of hard-working film crews. The story only inflamed existing concerns over the studio’s escalating penny-pinching
