And everyone said it wouldn’t happen. Most box office watchers thought that Harry Potter would reign supreme in it’s second week but Captain America comes to the rescue and knocks the boy wizard from the number one spot making $65 million dollars. However, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has made almost $500 million dollars worldwide in just 2 weeks and still does really well but this weekend belong to Captain America.The Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake Friends with Benefits opens at #3, Transformers is barely holding one month into release at #4 and Horrible Bosses rounds out the top 5.

Date: July 24, 2011

Variety

COMPETITION

“36 vues du Pic Saint Loup,” Jacques Rivette (France)
“Accident,” Cheang Pou-Soi (China-Hong Kong)
“Baaria,” Giuseppe Tornatore (Italy) ? Opening Film
“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” Werner Herzog (U.S.)
“Between Two Worlds,” Vimukthi Jayasundara (Sri Lanka)
“Capitalism: A Love Story,” Michael Moore (U.S.)
“La Doppia Ora,” Giuseppe Capotondi (Italy)
“Il Grande Sogno,” Michele Placido (Italy)
“Lebanon,” Samuel Maoz (Israel)
“Life During Wartime,” Todd Solondz (U.S.)
“Lo Spazio Bianco,” Francesca Comencini (Italy)
“Lourdes,” Jessica Hausner (Austria)
“Mr. Nobody,” Jaco van Dormael (France)
“Persecution,” Patrice Chereau (France)
“Prince of Tears,” Yonfan (Hong Kong)
“The Road,” John Hillcoat (U.S.)
“A Single Man,” Tom Ford (U.S.)
“Soul Kitchen,” Fatih Akin (Germany)
“Survival of the Dead,” George Romero (U.S.)
“Tetsuo The Bullet Man,” Shinya Tsukamoto (Japan)
“The Traveller,” Ahmed Maher (Egypt)
“White Material,” Claire Denis (France)
“Women Without Men,” Shirin Neshat (Germany)

OUT OF COMPETITION

“Anni Luce,” Francesco Maselli (Italy)
“Chengdu, I Love You,” Fruit Chan, Cui Jian (China) ? Closing Film
“The Hole,” Joe Dante (U.S.)
“The Informant!,” Steven Soderbergh (U.S.)
“The Men Who Stare at Goats,” Grant Heslov (U.S.)
“Napoli Napoli Napoli,” Abel Ferrara (Italy)
“L’oro di Cuba,” Giuliano Montaldo (Italy)
“Prove per una tragedia Siciliana,” John Turturro, Roman Paska (Italy)
“REC 2,” Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza (Spain)
“Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story,” Yousry Nasrallah (Egypt)
“South of the Border,” Oliver Stone (U.S.)
“Yona Yona Penguin,” Rintaro (Japan)

MIDNIGHT MOVIES

“Gulaal,” Anurag Kashyap (India)
“Dev D,” Anurag Kashyap (India)
“Brooklyn’s Finest,” Antoine Fuqua (U.S.)
“Delhi-6,” Rakeysh Omprakash (India)
“Valhalla Rising,” Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark)

GOLDEN LION FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT 2009

JOHN LASSETER AND THE DISNEY/PIXAR DIRECTORS
“Toy Story 3-D” (New Version), John Lasseter (U.S.)
“Toy Story 2-D” (New Version), John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich, Ash Brannon (U.S.)

HORIZONS

“Francesca,” Bobby Paunescu (Romania) ? Opening Film
“One-Zero,” Kamla Abou Zekri (Egypt)
“Buried Secrets,” Raja Amari (Tunisia)
“Tender Parasites,” Christian Becker and Oliver Schwabe (Germany)
“Adrift,” Bui Thac Chuyen (Vietnam)
“Crush,” Petr Buslov, Aleksei German Jr., Borisd Khlebnikov, Kirill Serebrennikov, Ivan Vrypayev (Russia)
“Repo Chick,” Alex Cox (U.S.)
“Engkwentro,” Pepe Diokno (Philippines)
“The Man’s Woman and Other Stories,” Amit Dutta (India)
“Paraiso,” Hector Galvez (Peru)
“Io sono l’amore,” Luca Guadagnino (Italy)
“Cow,” Guan Hu (China)
“Judge,” Liu Jie (China)
“Pepperminta,” Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland)
“Tris di donne e abiti nunziali,” Martina Gedeck (Italy)
“Insolacao,” Daniela Thomas and Felipe Hirsch (Brazil)
“1428,” Du Haibin (China)
“I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You,” Marcelo Gomes and Karim Ainouz (Brazil)
“Once Upon a Time Proletarian: 12 Tales of a Country,” Guo Xiaolu (China)
“Villalobos,” Romuald Karmakar (Germany)
“Il colore delle parole,” Marco Simon Puccioni (Italy)
“The One All Alone,” Frank Scheffer (The Netherlands)
“Toto,” Peter Schreiner (Austria)

HORIZONS EVENTS
PROGRAM 1

“The Death of Pentheus,” Philip Haas (U.S.)
“Faces of Soul,” Gina Kim (U.S.)
“La Boheme,” Werner Herzog (U.K.)
“Mudanza,” Pere Portabella (Spain)
PROGRAM 2
“Deserto Rosa ? Luigi Ghirri,” Elisabetta Sgarbi (Italy)
“Reading Book of Blockade,” Aleksander Sokurov (Russia)
“Armando Testa ? Povero ma moderno,” Pappi Corsicato
“La Danse ? Le Ballet de l’Opera de Paris,” Fredrick Wiseman (U.S.) (In collaboration with Dance Biennale)
“Hugo en Afrique,” Stefano Knuchel (Switzerland)
“Via della Croce,” Serena Nono (Italy)

CONTROCAMPO ITALIANO ?? (NEW ITALIAN CINEMA TRENDS SIDEBAR)

“Poeti,” Toni D’Angelo
“Negli occhi,” Francesco del Grosso
“Il compleanno,” Daniele Anzellotti, Marco Filiberti
“Dieci Inverni,” Valerio Mieli
“Cosmonauta,” Susanna Nicchiarelli
“Hollywood sul Tevere,” Marco Spagnoli
“Il Piccolo,” Maurizio Zaccaro

CONTROCAMPO ITALIANO EVENTS
“Giuseppe De Santis,” Carlo Lizzani

CONTROCAMPO/RETROSPECTIVE EVENTS
“Lola,” Giulio Questi
“Hotel Courbet,” Tinto Brass

Variety

Leading WME Entertainment will be WMA chief exec Jim Wiatt as chairman, while Endeavor toppers Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell and WMA prexy Dave Wirtschafter will serve as co-CEOs.

The board of WMA and partners of Endeavor held separate votes on Monday to greenlight the merger. The news was confirmed by WMA and Endeavor in a brief press release. Insiders said the 27 Endeavor partners voted unanimously in favor of the deal. The vote among the 20 WMA board members was said to be 19 to 1.

Deal is expected to close within a few weeks, though it still requires approval from labor officials in California and New York, and it may face an antitrust review by the Justice Dept.

Variety

A badly split SAG national board approved a two-year tentative deal on its feature-primetime contract, triggering a ratification vote by the guild’s 120,000 members.

The board’s approval came Sunday, two days after SAG execs and the congloms hammered out the final details of the pact.

Brad Pitt drops out of ‘State of Play’
Universal will try to recast by Nov. 29
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Brad Pitt has pulled out of a pay or play deal on “State of Play,” putting the Universal Pictures drama in a state of flux.

Pitt ankled the film early Wednesday, following two weeks of struggle and meetings with director Kevin Macdonald that prevented the film from making its original Nov. 15 production start date.

Studio will try to find a star to replace Pitt. While strike-related production postponements of films like “Angels & Demons” and “Shantaram” have made actors like Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp suddenly available, the studio has a very short window of time to work in. If Universal doesn’t recast and get the picture going by Nov. 29, it will begin losing the other actors in the film.

Pitt was set to star with Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jason Bateman and Robin Wright Penn in the Matthew Michael Carnahan-scripted adaptation of the British miniseries. Pitt was playing a politico-turned-journalist who spearheads a newspaper’s investigation of a murder, a trail that leads to the fast-rising pol whose campaigns were once masterminded by Pitt’s character.

If the studio cannot recast the film, it is possible that Universal can bring a lawsuit against Pitt for bailing out of a pay or play deal. While several other films have been postponed due to an inability to get rewrites during the writer’s strike, the studio will maintain that the script wasn’t an issue. This isn’t the first time that Pitt has gotten cold feet on a film. He exited “The Fountain,” and considered doing so on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Fight Club.”

Universal confirmed Pitt’s exit in a statement.

“Brad Pitt has left the Universal Pictures production of `State of Play.’ We remain committed to this project and to the filmmakers, cast members, crew and others who are also involved in making the movie. We reserve all rights in this matter,” the U statement said.

By DAVE MCNARY

Duvall

New Line has tapped Robert Duvall for the holiday comedy “Four Christmases,” starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon.The mini-major’s planning on a December production start for “Four Christmases,” which is set up at Spyglass with Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum and Jonathan Glickman producing. Vaughn and Witherspoon also are producing the pic, in which a couple struggles to visit all four divorced parents on Christmas Day.

Seth Gordon is directing from a script by the writing team of Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson. New Line’s hopeful it can get “Four Christmases” into theaters during next year’s holiday season.

Variety 

Fox an ‘Under’ achiever

By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Mac

Bernie Mac is reuniting with Fox, signing on to star in a new laffer from “Drew Carey Show” creator Bruce Helford.Half-hour — tentatively titled “Starting Under” — comes from Warner Bros. TV, where earlier this summer Helford renewed his studio vows, sealing a hefty new two-year overall deal.

Fox scored the comedy after a fierce bidding war. Net gave a substantial series commitment to the untitled laffer (believed to be seven episodes), making it one of the biggest — if not the biggest — comedy deals of the now-suspended development season.

Deal was hammered out late Friday, making it the last major pilot pact before pencils went down early Monday and a writers strike began.

“I’ve been a huge Bernie Mac fan forever and felt we needed to bring that star back to TV,” said Fox Entertainment prexy Kevin Reilly.

Multicamera sitcom will star Mac as a large, opinionated guy (not unlike himself in that respect) who winds up divorced and living with his introverted twentysomething son. What’s more, he also winds up working for his son.

Helford will exec produce, along with his Mohawk shingle prexy Deb Oppenheimer. Andy Ackerman is also set as a director-exec producer on the pilot; Mac will serve as a producer.

“Bruce constructed a really clean construction, a solid vehicle for Bernie,” Reilly said. “And he doesn’t have it all riding on Bernie’s shoulder. There’s a great twist of a father-son relationship there, too. I have to hand it to Bruce — he nailed it.”

Reilly said he’d been chasing Mac for some time and even tried to get into business with the former “Bernie Mac Show” star earlier this season.

Mac’s recent credits include the features “Ocean’s Thirteen,” “Transformers” and “Pride.” He spent five seasons as the star of “Bernie Mac” and is also well known for his standup career as one of the Original Kings of Comedy.

As for Helford, the scribe is walking the picket line but released a statement: “I can’t wait for the strike to be over so I can start working with Bernie Mac.”

Reup with Helford was a no-brainer for Warner Bros. TV, where Helford has exec produced skeins such as “George Lopez,” “Nikki” and “Freddie” in addition to “Drew Carey.”

Variety