Melissa McCarthy's Spy Shoots To The Top Of The US Box Office

Entourage bros down in fourth

This weekend at the American box office, it was girls and ghouls vs. boys, as Melissa McCarthy’s new action comedy Spy took on horror pic Insidious Chapter 3 and bro-tastic Hollywood comedy (Johnny) drama Entourage. Despite a frantic Friday, the overall winner was Spy, which nabbed the top spot with a studio-estimated $30 million. 

Added to its estimated overseas take so far, the film has made $86.5 million, which is a healthy opening for both McCarthy and director Paul Feig, though a little less than either The Heat or Bridesmaids in terms of US take. It should have a successful run, though, thanks to good reviews and audience response.

Neither of the other two new arrivals could overcome Dwayne Johnson and earthquake adventure San Andreas, though, with The Rock's latest falling just one place to second with $26.4 million for $92.1 million in its Stateside coffers so far. Insidious Chapter 3 was the better performer of the two, earning $23 million for third place. The prequel, which finds writer/actor Leigh Whannell taking over the director’s chair from James Wan, proves there’s life in the deathly series yet.

Entourage, which transports the TV show to the big screen, seemed to be strong at first but didn’t last well over the weekend, almost in diverse proportion to the series’ usual plotlines of minor difficulties followed by triumph for Vinnie, Drama, E, Turtle, Ari, Voldemort, Dance Belt, Big Giant, Little Giant and Colonel Sanders. But with a relatively slim $30 million production budget, that $10.4 million start should put it on the road to earning some profit. 

Rounding out the top five was Mad Max: Fury Road with $7.9 million and a $130.8 million domestic take to date. Sixth place was Pitch Perfect 2, which fell from second with $7.7 million. Tomorrowland slipped from third to seventh, earning $7 million, while Avengers: Age Of Ultron (which is now the fifth-highest worldwide earner ever) took home $6.2 million in eighth. 

Cameron Crowe's Aloha slumped from its sixth place launch to ninth, making $3.3 million, while the Poltergeist remake haunted 10th with $2.8 million.

To see Melissa McCarthy sneak past ghosts and dudes in the full chart listings, head to Box Office Mojo.

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Vera Farmiga Joins Special Correspondents

America Ferrara also on for Ricky Gervais' new film

Despite being at work on his latest film, Special Correspondents, Ricky Gervais took a moment out for a cast photo showing off his new ensemble. And with that, brought word that Vera Farmiga, America Ferrara, Kelly Macdonald, Bill Lake, Kevin Pollak, Mimi Kuzyk, Raúl Castillo, Megan Heffern, Ari Cohen and Benjamin Bratt are on board. 

Gervais has written and is directing the film, which finds Bana as a Manhattan-based radio journalist who enjoys privileged status but has slowly being undoing himself thanks to arrogance and his decadent lifestyle. 

When his bosses decide they’ve had enough, he volunteers to report from the front lines of a conflict – only to fake the dispatches from his hideout above a Spanish restaurant in the heart of the Big Apple, aided and abetted by his technician sidekick, played by Gervais.

Filming has been underway since last month in Toronto and will finish in New York in a little under a month. With Netflix aboard to distribute, the comedy will hit the streaming service next year. 

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Jackie Chan Will Be The Foreigner In A New Action Thriller

Nick Cassavetes is in talks to direct

With fresh chatter that he’ll be back in the saddle for a third Shanghai film to follow Noon and Knights, there’s more solid information about another new Jackie Chan project. He’s taking the lead role in a new action thriller called The Foreigner.

According to Variety, Nick Cassavetes is in talks to direct the film, which David Marconi has adapted from Stephen Leather’s 1992 novel The Chinaman. The story finds a restaurant owner in London’s Chinatown who has to track down the terrorists who killed his daughter. 

It’s a typical blending of action and emotion for Chan, though could be something different for Cassavetes, whose directing CV includes films more like The Notebook, The Other Woman and My Sister’s Keeper. It does, however, hark back to one of his earlier films, John Q.

Whoever ends up in the director’s chair should have the cameras rolling this October. Chan has various films on the way, including Dragon Blade, Skiptrace and Railroad Tigers, and he’ll once again be the voice of Monkey in Kung Fu Panda 3, due here on March 18 next year. Chan fans that have not heard it should check out our special Podcast about the man, which you can find below.

P.S. You can check out our podcast photo gallery here and subscribe to the Empire Podcast via our iTunes page or this handy RSS feed.

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Radha Mitchell And More Set For The Shack

Graham Greene and Aviv Alush join Stuart Hazeldine's latest

The cameras are about to start rolling on Exam director Stuart Hazeldine’s latest, the adaptation of William Paul Young’s 2007 novel The Shack. He’s just added some new actors to the cast, including Radha Mitchell, Graham Greene and Aviv Alush.

Adapted by John Fusco from Young’s book, the story follows a man (Sam Worthington) whose youngest daughter is kidnapped during a family holiday. Evidence turns up in an abandoned shack to suggest she was murdered, which stymies the case. But then, four years later, he receives a note, apparently from God, inviting him to go back to the ruined building. He accepts, against his better judgment, and what he finds there changes his life forever. 

As it turns out, he might be in luck twice over, as Greene is on to play Male Papa, a calm and serene representation of the deity, with Spencer playing the female take. Mitchell, meanwhile, is Worthington’s devout wife. And Alush? The Israeli actor will be none other than Jesus.

The Shack doesn’t yet have a release date, but we’d expect that to be announced before too long. 

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Nicole Perlman Re-Writing Sci-Fi Adaptation Wool

Guardians Of The Galaxy co-writer finds another project

Nicole Perlman wrote the initial drafts that helped Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy start its journey to the screen, and the studio has kept her around as one of the duo writing Captain Marvel. Now she’s found another, much darker science fiction project to work on at the same time, signing on to re-write the adaptation of Wool for 20th Century Fox. 

Hugh Howey’s high concept novel was something of a sensation when the self-published e-book became a massive success and 20th Century Fox quickly dived in to snap up the rights. The book is set in a dystopian future where the planet’s air has become toxic and the population lives crowded in a giant underground silo. We follow several characters as they begin to learn that all is not quite how the authorities have told them.

Ridley Scott and Steven Zaillian are producing the adaptation, for which J Blakeson has written a couple of drafts. Perlman will now take over before the team starts looking for a director. If the film is a success, there are several Wool stories, plus prequel trilogy Shift and follow-up tome Dust just waiting to serve as source material for other movies.

As mentioned above, Perlman is busy co-writing Captain Marvel along with Meg LeFauve, who was one of the screenwriters on Pixar’s Inside Out.

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New Southpaw Trailer Punches In

Jake Gyllenhaal: great will and brawl

We’ve seen one trailer for Jake Gyllenhaal’s latest, boxing drama Southpaw. But if you skipped it, worried that it gave too much away, maybe you’ll be safer with this shorter second effort.

Gyllenhaal is Billy Hope, the reigning junior middleweight boxing champ whose trademark “Southpaw” stance is a brutal, powerful style of fighting. He’s driven by an ever-present need for fame, money and love even while blessed with a wonderful family in Rachel McAdams as his wife Maureen and Clare Foley as daughter Alice. But then tragedy strikes and he faces losing everything. He’ll have to start punching his weight, and not just in the ring. Can he make a comeback? 

Hope is a role that was originally written – by Sons Of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter – with Eminem in mind. But while he dropped out of the lead to focus on music (he’s overseen the soundtrack and you can hear his main tune for the film below), Gyllenhaal packed on the pounds of muscle to tackle the role himself. With Forest Whitaker, Naomie Harris, Tyrese Gibson and Beau Knapp in the cast, Southpaw will hit UK cinemas on July 24. 

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The Stand May Head Back To TV Before The New Film

So director Josh Boone can squeeze more plot in

Given that it has most famously appeared on screens in miniseries form back in the 1990s, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that the new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand might be headed for TV itself. According to The Wrap, director Josh Boone and Warner Bros. want to make an eight-part miniseries to lead in to the new planned film version. 

The studio is in talks with US cable channel Showtime to handle the series, with Boone overseeing both projects. He said when he first took on the job of turning the sprawling book into a movie that he wanted more space to tell the story, and initially it looked like it could lead to multiple movies to handle the narrative of survivors of a virus that has all but wiped out the American population caught in a battle between good and evil.

It’s an ambitious idea, but not set in stone yet – and there are potential pitfalls as the team behind another Stephen King adaptation, The Dark Tower, have discovered. Despite an initial grand plan to make several movies and a linked TV series, Ron Howard and the rest have now scaled back to an initial film to kick things off, with Nicolaj Arcel in talks to direct that.

 So while we may see The Stand back on TV, if the multi-format idea goes ahead and works, expect it to spur other projects to try the same trick.

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