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    Jack Black’s ‘Minecraft Movie’ Song, ‘Steve’s Lava Chicken,’ Hits the Charts

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    “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie,” made the Billboard Hot 100. He charted before with a song from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”Don’t call him a one-hit wonder. Jack Black made a surprise return to the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week with another unlikely song from a video game movie: “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie.”The song entered the chart at 78, fueled by its popularity on TikTok, where it has been used in more than 280,000 videos. On Spotify, the song has racked up nearly 22 million streams.“Steve’s Lava Chicken” is Black’s second Hot 100 hit from a video game-themed movie. In April 2023 his song “Peaches,” from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” peaked at 56 on the chart, according to Billboard.What makes “Steve’s Lava Chicken” so unusual is its length: It is just 34 seconds, which Billboard said set a record as the shortest song in the chart’s 67-year history. It is nearly three minutes shorter than the average length of last year’s No. 1 hits, according to Hits Songs Deconstructed, a company that provides analysis of hit songs.Black, a movie star known for playing quirky characters, is also a musician. He appeared in “School of Rock,” a film about a failed rock star who pretends to be a substitute teacher, and lampooned heavy metal with the comedy-rock duo Tenacious D, alongside Kyle Gass.“A Minecraft Movie,” co-starring Black and Jason Momoa, was released more than three weeks ago and has earned nearly $380 million domestically at the box office. Warner Bros. Pictures wants to cash in on the craze — and people who want to shout “I am Steve” and “Chicken jockey.”The studio announced that it would host a “block party” on Friday at participating theaters where fans can embrace the film by singing or meme-ing along to their favorite songs and scenes. More

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      ‘The Pitt’ Is Concerned About Your Health, America

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      The Max hospital drama is a TV throwback with an of-the-moment message about systems pushed to the breaking point.Ever have one of those endless days at work? For 15 hours in the Pitt, the emergency room that lends its name to the Max medical drama, a team of doctors and nurses, led by Dr. Michael Robinavitch (Noah Wyle), have been tackling every woe that human frailty and the city of Pittsburgh can throw at them.What do they treat? You name it. Mass-shooting injuries. Overdoses. Problem pregnancies. Heart attacks. Measles.What do they really treat? Despair. The flood of opioids. The lack of insurance. The lack of support networks. Male rage. Rage, in general. The breakdown of the public health system. The breakdown of the public.Over a long, stressful, yet reassuringly competent and entertaining first season, which wrapped up on Thursday, “The Pitt” generated old-school melodrama out of a simple understanding: The E.R. is where people end up when something goes wrong, either with the body individual or with the body politic.And what is wrong with the American corpus? Buddy, take a number; the waiting room is full.If the concerns of “The Pitt” are of-the-moment, its appeal is as old as rabbit-ear antennas. It’s a Big Fat Hospital Show, wringing suspense and jerking tears out of life and death weekly. It is a successor, almost a crypto-sequel, to a specific Big Fat Hospital Show — “ER,” the alma mater of Wyle; the “Pitt” creator, R. Scott Gemmill; and the producer John Wells. (The estate of Michael Crichton, the creator of “ER,” has filed a lawsuit accusing “The Pitt” of being an unauthorized reboot. Warner Bros. Television, the studio that produces “The Pitt,” has called the claims “baseless.”)Three decades ago, “ER” was itself a new spin on a hoary genre, and “The Pitt” shares some of its predecessor’s hallmarks. There’s the adrenaline pace, with the camera chasing doctors and nurses around a fully built-out hospital set. There is the dedication to technical realism. (“Does [show] get [factual detail] right?” is my least favorite standard for judging art, but if that’s your thing, medical professionals give it high marks.) The season even bookends its beginning and ending with scenes on the roof, calling back to the site of several high-drama “ER” moments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Small Streamers Like Hallmark+ and BritBox See Subscribers Surge

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      Like Christmas shows? So does Hallmark+. Like horror? Dare to try Shudder. And British shows? There’s BritBox and more.Executives from the Hallmark Channel made a curious decision this fall: They started a new streaming service.It seemed like an awfully late date to do so. Most media companies entered the streaming fray years ago, and few have had success going head-to-head against titans like Netflix, Amazon and Disney.But Hallmark executives decided the timing was not an issue. Their app, Hallmark+, did not need to appeal to the whole country, they said, just their core audience — the people who regularly flock en masse to the network’s trademark holiday and feel-good programming.“We don’t have to make content that are all things to all people,” said John Matts, Hallmark Media’s chief operating officer.He might very well be onto something.For much of the past decade, conventional wisdom inside the entertainment world has been that only a small handful of megaservices would survive the streaming wars. After all, they had the stars, the budgets and the technological prowess.But numerous media executives now believe that there could be room for some more modest streaming services, too.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netflix Wanted ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Margot Robbie Wanted a Theatrical Release.

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      In the end, Ms. Robbie got what she wanted, signing a deal with Warner Bros.In the latest Hollywood movie bidding war, the battle between a theatrical and a streaming release could not have been more stark.And in this case, theaters won out.The project is an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” seen through the warped mind of Emerald Fennell, the writer and director whose previous projects, “Promising Young Woman” and last year’s “Saltburn,” were viral, transgressive hits. The film will star Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi from “Saltburn” as the rageful Heathcliff. Based on Ms. Fennell’s past work, the R-rated film promises to be sexy, gothic and excessively modern.Netflix was willing to pay $150 million to have it.But Ms. Robbie, who is producing the film with her husband, Tom Ackerley, and their business partner Josey McNamara, wanted to maintain her track record of making movies for traditional studios that put them into theaters. Think “Barbie 2.0” with less pink and much more sex.Ms. Robbie’s company and its partner, MRC, an independent studio, have instead been won over by Warner Bros., the studio said on Thursday. The company offered them around $80 million plus a significant marketing commitment, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. (It helps that her company, LuckyChap, also has a multiyear first-look deal with the studio.)“From the moment we were introduced to Emerald’s vision for the film, and with an incredible cast led by Margot and Jacob, we were instantly committed to forging a partnership with this team to ensure the movie was brought to theaters around the world,” Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, co-chairs of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, said in a statement.The decision to go with Warner Bros. is a blow to Netflix. Getting the film would have been viewed as a feather in the cap of the company’s new film chief, Dan Lin.Yet Mr. Lin found himself up against the same restrictions as his predecessor: his boss’s reluctance to take films to theaters to appease filmmakers, most of whom want their films to debut on the big screen before heading to a streaming service.Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive of Netflix, restated his uninterest in theatrical releases just last week during his earnings call. “I’m just going to reiterate we are in the subscription entertainment business,” he said before adding, “I’m sure that we can continue to pierce the zeitgeist and have those moments in the culture, even when those moments begin on Netflix.”Ms. Robbie is one of the few A-list stars who have not starred in a film released by a streaming service. The actress, who headlined “Barbie” and produced it, has seen her power in Hollywood only rise on the back that film, which was the highest-grossing film of 2023. “Wuthering Heights” will be her next film, and production is set to begin in the first quarter of next year. More

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      ‘Joker’ Sequel Falls Far Short of Original at the Box Office

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      The bleak musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend.The original “Joker,” in 2019, earned 11 Oscar nominations, $1 billion in global box office receipts and created a cultural phenomenon. So it was inevitable that Warner Bros. would make a sequel, with the same director, Todd Phillips, and star, Joaquin Phoenix.More of a surprise is that the new film was dismissed by its audience this weekend. Titled “Joker: Folie à Deux,” and featuring Lady Gaga as Mr. Phoenix’s love interest/partner-in-crime, the bleak R-rated musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend. The studio will now struggle to earn back its production budget of around $200 million, plus its hefty marketing costs.Reviews have been dismal. The New York Times called it “a dour, unpleasant slog,” and audiences awarded it a D score in exit polls, according to tracker CinemaScore. The musical element — an idea that apparently came to Mr. Phoenix in a dream — offered audiences a fresh idea and, to many critics, it served as the proper way to further explore a deranged main character with a warped imagination. But in this case, it alienated the typical fanboy audience who would be expected to have been frothing for a follow-up to the nihilistic film that won Mr. Phoenix his Best Actor Oscar.The opening draw is a far cry from the $96 million “Joker” generated in its first weekend five years ago, almost to the day. That film cost $55 million to make. This one is contained primarily to two locations: Arkham Asylum, which houses Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. The Joker, after his murderous spree killed six people, and the courthouse, where he’s being tried for his crimes. So it shouldn’t have cost as much. But everyone was paid handsomely for their efforts, under the new production heads at Warner Bros., Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. (Trade reports indicate that Mr. Phoenix received $20 million to reprise his role of Arthur Fleck/Joker while Lady Gaga earned $12 million to return to the bleak world of Mr. Phillips’s creation.)“Lady Gaga in a musical was an unconventional choice,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email. “‘Joker’ was a well-made character study about a dark, sad figure. That story had limited potential to grow, and ‘Folie à Deux’ is not overcoming it.”With overall box office receipts down 12 percent compared with last year at this time, Hollywood was looking for a big hit to kick off October and help the studios stoke momentum through the rest of the year. Now it looks as if it will have to rely on “Venom: The Last Dance” and the Thanksgiving movies: “Wicked,” “Gladiator 2” and “Moana 2” to recover. More

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      Michael Crichton’s Estate Calls New Show an Unauthorized ‘ER’ Remake in Lawsuit

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      The best-selling author’s estate has filed suit over “The Pitt,” an upcoming series, claiming that it is an unauthorized reboot of the hit hospital drama.The estate of Michael Crichton filed suit against Warner Bros. Television on Tuesday, claiming that its upcoming Max series, “The Pitt,” is an unauthorized “ER” reboot that fails to credit him and compensate his heirs.The suit accused Warner Bros. and R. Scott Gemmill, the showrunner of “The Pitt,” of breaching a contract that requires Crichton’s consent for any remakes of the hit hospital drama. The estate also sued John Wells, an executive producer, and Noah Wyle, set to star and serve as an executive producer.“The lawsuit filed by the Crichton Estate is baseless,” Warner Bros. Television said in an emailed statement, calling “The Pitt” a “new and original show.” The company said it would “vigorously defend against these meritless claims.”The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims that in 2020, Warner Bros., Gemmill, Wells and Wyle began developing a reboot of the show without informing Sherri Crichton, the author’s widow and the guardian of his estate. Gemmill and Wells were executive producers on “ER,” and Wyle was a star of that show.When they told her about the project, nearly two years into development, Crichton’s estate was prepared to approve a reboot based on the condition that he would be credited as a creator, in addition to a set of financial terms. But Warner Bros. later walked back on many of its promises, the lawsuit said.After negotiating for nearly a year, the parties did not reach an agreement, according to the suit. But Warner Bros. “simply moved the show from Chicago to Pittsburgh, rebranded it ‘The Pitt’ and has plowed ahead without any attribution or compensation for Crichton and his heirs,” the complaint said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Barbie’ Was Supposed to Change Hollywood. Many See ‘No Effect.’

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      The film was a global phenomenon and seemed to herald a new era of embracing stories by, about and for women. What happened?When “Barbie” was released in 2023, it quickly became a phenomenon. It was the top box office film of the year, earning $1.4 billion worldwide, and it became Warner Bros.’s highest-grossing film ever, outpacing both “Dark Knight” movies, “Wonder Woman” and every chapter in the “Harry Potter” franchise.It was a DayGlo-pink rebuttal to decades of conventional Hollywood thinking, and its success seemed to herald a new paradigm for the film industry. Movies written and directed by women and focused on female protagonists could attract enormous audiences to multiplexes around the world.Yet in the 12 months since the movie’s release, little has changed in Hollywood. Buffeted by dual labor strikes that went on for months and a general retrenchment by entertainment companies trying to navigate the economics of the streaming era, the industry has retreated to its usual ways of doing business.The box office is down 17 percent from last year at this time, and studios spooked by a fickle audience (yes to “Twisters,” no to “Fall Guy”) are again questioning the reliability of the theatrical marketplace. Films released in 2023 featured the same number of girls or women in a leading role as in 2010, according to a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Ask around Hollywood and the consensus seems to be that “Barbie” is a singular success, a gargantuan feat helmed by particular talents, the writer-director Greta Gerwig and the star Margot Robbie. Translation: Don’t expect a lot of movies like that in theaters anytime soon.“‘Barbie’ had no effect,” said Stacy L. Smith, the founder of the inclusion initiative, which studies inequality in Hollywood. “It’s perceived cognitively as a one-off. They have individuated the Margot Robbie, Greta Gerwig success and haven’t thought about how their own decision-making could be different and inclusive to create a new path forward.“Like most things with this industry, they’re like, ‘Oh, this is neat and shiny,’ and then they go right back to the way they’ve always been.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie Will Put Gollum Center Stage

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      Andy Serkis, who played the creature in the trilogy, will direct and star in “The Hunt for Gollum,” an expansion of the fantasy epic scheduled for 2026.The next movie in the “Lord of the Rings” franchise will focus on Gollum, one of the series’s most recognizable characters, Warner Bros. Pictures announced on Thursday.Andy Serkis, who played the miniature creature in the original film trilogy, will direct and star in “Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” which is scheduled for 2026, the studio said in a news release.Another “Lord of the Rings” movie will follow “The Hunt for Gollum,” Warner Bros. said. The original trilogy’s director, Peter Jackson, and screenwriters, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, will act as producers on both films. A separate animated movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” will be released in December.“Yesssss, Precious,” Serkis said in a statement. “The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth.”In addition to his work in “The Lord of the Rings,” Serkis played Caesar in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise and Supreme Leader Snoke in “Star Wars” movies. He has directed “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” and is leading an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”The “Lord of the Rings” movies are based on a series of fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. The trilogy directed by Jackson — “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) — grossed $3 billion combined.About a decade later, Jackson directed a three-part movie series based on Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” Amazon Prime Video released the Middle-earth show “The Rings of Power” in 2022.The announcement of two new “Lord of the Rings” movies comes as David Zaslav, the chief executive of the studio’s parent company, faces criticism for receiving $49.7 million in compensation last year despite the company’s financial troubles. The conglomerate is also reportedly in jeopardy of losing its rights to broadcast National Basketball Association games. More

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      ‘Color Purple’ Struggles at Box Office After Big Christmas Opening

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      The musical adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel seemed an instant hit, but it sold less than $5 million in tickets in its second weekend.“The Color Purple,” a new musical take on Alice Walker’s landmark novel, seemed to arrive as an instant hit.Awash in critical exultation, the movie rolled into theaters on Christmas Day and sold more than $18 million in tickets, a near record for the holiday. Audiences gave it an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls. Oprah Winfrey, who produced the film with Steven Spielberg, celebrated on Instagram. “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude,” she wrote, adding, “For y’all to buy tickets, dress up in purple, and show up in droves is filling me up.”But the sizzle has turned to a sputter.“The Color Purple,” which cost Warner Bros. at least $90 million to make and another $40 million to market, collected an estimated $4.8 million from 3,218 theaters in the United States and Canada over the weekend, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. It was enough only for seventh place, behind George Clooney’s “The Boys in the Boat” — a period drama that also arrived on Christmas Day — even though “The Boys in the Boat” had only 2,687 theaters.What happened?In Hollywood parlance, the movie has not broadened beyond a “specialty audience.” To put it more candidly, “The Color Purple,” enthusiastically received by Black moviegoers, needs more white, Hispanic and Asian ticket buyers to give it a chance. The film’s opening-weekend audience was 65 percent Black, 19 percent white, 8 percent Hispanic and about 5 percent Asian, according to PostTrak, a service that provides studios with demographic information on ticket buyers.Fantasia Barrino was nominated for a Golden Globe and could receive more recognition for her performance.Warner Bros. PicturesWarner Bros. has not given up.“I think the jury is going to be out for several weeks, as people talk to their friends about what movies they have seen and enjoyed — what has moved them and uplifted them — and the film continues to be honored by awards groups,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner’s president of domestic distribution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More