‘Top Gun’ tops for Cruise
In its sophomore outing at the box office, “Top Gun: Maverick” has already become Tom Cruise’s highest-grossing domestic release of his career.
The patriotic action film earned $86 million this weekend for a North American cumulative of $291.6 million, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore. Prior to this, Cruise’s biggest domestic box office success was “War of the Worlds,” which amassed $234.3 million in 2005.
The veteran movie star’s domestic box-office breakthrough comes a week after “Top Gun: Maverick” opened to a massive $153 million and shattered the Memorial Day Weekend record. The blockbuster also notched the biggest domestic box office debut ever for Cruise, who reprised his iconic role as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell more than three decades after the original “Top Gun” hit theaters.
Championed by audiences and critics alike, “Top Gun: Maverick” sustained only a 32 percent drop in North American ticket sales during its second weekend — the lowest number for any movie that has launched at $100 million or more. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the hit sequel also added $81.7 million internationally this weekend for a global cumulative of $548.6 million.
Rounding out the domestic top five this weekend are Disney and Marvel’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which collected $9.3 million in its fifth weekend for a North American cumulative of $388.7 million; 20th Century Studios’ “The Bob’s Burgers Movie,” which nabbed $4.5 million in its second weekend for a North American cumulative of $22.2 million; Universal Pictures’ “The Bad Guys,” which earned $3.3 million in its seventh weekend for a North American cumulative of $87.3 million; and Focus Features’ “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” which made $3 million in its third weekend for a North American cumulative of $35.7 million.
Opening in wide release next weekend is Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World Dominion,” starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill and Laura Dern.
— Los Angeles Times
Mariah Carey sued over Christmas tune
All he wants is a cool $20 million.
Mariah Carey is being sued by a Louisiana songwriter for copyright infringement in relation to her Christmas anthem, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Yes, the one played ad nauseam starting every October, the BBC reports.
Andy Stone — who under the pseudonym Vince Vance performs with the band Vince Vance and the Valiants — is seeking at least $20 million in damages, according to the outlet.
He insists that fivetime Grammy winner Carey, 53, and co-writer Walter Afanasieff — as well as Sony Music Entertainment — exploited Stone’s “popularity” and “style,” and that he wrote a song with the identical title in 1989, five years prior to the release of Carey’s, the outlet reports.
Stone claims the three parties “knowingly, willfully, and intentionally engaged in a campaign” to infringe copyright, resulting in “undeserved profits,” in part because he never afford them permission to use his song for any purpose, including “the creation of a derivative work,” according to the BBC.
— New York Daily News
Marlboro Man Brad Johnson dies
Brad Johnson, who jumped from rodeo cowboy to portraying the Marlboro Man in cigarette spots and film and TV roles including Steven Spielberg’s “Always” and “Melrose Place,” has died. He was 62.
Johnson died Feb. 18 in Fort Worth, Texas, of complications from COVID-19, his agent, Linda Mcalister, said Saturday.
Johnson played opposite Holly Hunter in 1989’s “Always,” a remake of a 1943 film (”A Guy Named Joe”) about firefighting pilots. He played a pilot again in the 2000 religious apocalyptic thriller “Left Behind,” starring Kirk Cameron, and was in its two sequels.
He worked regularly on TV, including in the recurring role of Dr. Dominick O’malley in “Melrose Place”; “Rough Riders,” “Soldier of Fortune, Inc.” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
His work as an actor and as a Marlboro Man — one of a succession used by the brand — brought Johnson and his wife, Laurie, to California.
They eventually moved their family to a ranch in New Mexico and the Colorado mountains before settling in north Texas. He sold ranchland real estate there.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by eight children and his stepmother.