World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Amazon’s Mutiny leak leaves international buyers fuming, Insidious and Spider-Man battle it out at the US box office, and a sad farewell to French actress Bérangère Bonvoisin.
Morning all — after yesterday’s UK-releases bonanza, today’s roundup is dominated by one properly messy story out of Amazon, plus the weekend numbers settling in behind it. Here’s what happened in the world of movies during the last 24 hours.
Amazon accidentally leaks Mutiny, and international buyers are livid: As mentioned yesterday, Jason Statham’s Mutiny opened in UK and US cinemas — but the story dominating the trade press today is how Amazon managed to make the full 95-minute film playable on Prime Video for several hours earlier this week, after a backend error placed it on a page normally reserved for trailers. The film had already opened strongly in France and the Middle East before the leak broke, and with Lionsgate understood to have paid an eight-figure sum for distribution rights, international buyers are now describing it as “a multimillion-dollar problem” and coordinating a formal response to Amazon, amid reports of the film already being pirated across multiple territories. One buyer put it rather more bluntly to Deadline: “It’s a major f*ck-up… buyers will expect a check to be written to help resolve this.” Amazon, notably, is also a Premium VOD partner on the film — so this one’s got a fair way to run yet. Oops!
Insidious and Spider-Man scrap it out stateside: Over in the US, Insidious: Out Of The Further is tracking towards a $50 million-plus worldwide opening, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day — now well past the $800 million domestic milestone mentioned earlier this week — is projected to hold on for another $85 million-plus worldwide in its fourth frame. Between a tired old horror franchise and a wall-crawler that refuses to slow down, it’s shaping up to be a genuinely competitive August at US multiplexes, with next Friday’s Coyote vs. Acme (released yesterday in the UK) still to come.
And in one final, sad piece of news: French actress and theatre director Bérangère Bonvoisin has died, best known to cinema audiences for roles in The Adolescent, L’Intouchable (pictured) and Hôtel du Paradis. Tributes from across French film and theatre have been landing over the last day as the industry marks the loss of one of its own.
That’s your lot for today — between an Amazon PR headache and a genuinely stacked box office weekend, there’s plenty to keep tabs on. Until next time.
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