There’s lots of geek showbiz news, and we round it up here.
Dune opened with $40.1 million in sales at the North American box office, according to Variety. That’s less than recent Marvel movies, but Dune is also available to streaming subscribers of the ad-free HBO Max service (see “Warner Bros. Drops ‘Dune’ Trailer“). This was the biggest open for a Warner Bros. film since it began simultaneously streaming its new releases, and is at the high end of expectations. With $180 million to date in international markets, the film has grossed $220 million worldwide to date.
Hayden Christensen will reprise his role of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in Ahsoka, the new Star Wars live-action series planned for Disney+, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Christensen played the role in three of the Star Wars features (II, III, IX). As Disney announced on its Investor Day, Rosario Dawson will play the title role (which was introduced in The Mandalorian, see “10 ‘Star Wars’ Project Announcements“).
The first two episodes of animated series The Freak Brothers will be dropped on the ad-supported Tubi streaming service on November 14, the streamer announced. Subsequent epiodes will be dropped on per week on Sundays through the finale on December 26. The series, with an all-star voice cast led by Woody Harrelson, John Goodman, Tiffany Haddish and Pete Davidson tells the story of the comic heroes waking up after a 50-year nap (see “’Freak Brothers’ Casting“).
FX on Hulu is not renewing Y: The Last Man for Season 2, showrunner Eliza Clark announced on Twitter. The series is currently running, with only one episode remaining to drop (see “’Y: The Last Man’ Gets Date“). The show is apparently being shopped to other streamers and networks. “[W]e know that someone else is going to be very lucky to have this team and this story,” Clark wrote. “We are committed to finding Y its next home.”
South Korean horror series Squid Game topped household streaming the week ended September 26, the most recent week for which data is available from A.C. Nielsen, according to Media Play News. Households spent around 1.9 billion minutes watching the nine episodes of Squid Game that week, more than doubling the second most popular series, Lucifer, which had 860 minutes. This data corroborates the announcement by Netflix that the series attracted 142 million subscriber households in its first 28 days, a record for the streamer.
Fathom Events and Toei Animation will release One Piece Film: Strong World, an animated feature written by creator Eiichiro Oda, in U.S. theaters on November 7 (dub) and November 9 (sub). This is the first U.S. theatrical release for the feature, which was originally released in 2009. It will be released in conjunction with a featurette, One Piece: Mugiwara Chase. The release is part of a major U.S. push for the property in conjunction with the release of the 1000th episode of the animated series. Source: ICv2
