Matthew Monagle

Who would you rather fight, a million spider-sized ape or one ape-sized spider? It’s a question that’s been haunting my mind since, oh, about an hour ago when I started to look up the box office numbers for this past weekend. And while I might not be any closer to solving my riddle, I can at least say this: when it comes to week-old spiders versus brand new primates, the primates are destined to win. Here’s the box office numbers as of Sunday afternoon:

With a handful of major Hollywood stars choosing to speak out on behalf of gender pay equality in Hollywood, we’ve been treated to an unprecedented amount of transparency over these past few years. Major stars like Jessica Chastain, Keira Knightley, and Jessica Lawrence have all spoken out publicly about their own negative experiences on Hollywood franchises, and each passing week, more stars are encouraged to share their own experiences. Through it all, one important theme has emerged: in many of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, female actors are not being paid as much as men.

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for, Edgar Wright fans: did the filmmaker’s action-packed Baby Driver score big with audiences? Or does this weekend belong to sequels, sequels, and more sequels? This weekend was always going to belong to Despicable Me 3— it’s a big hit with the kiddos, don’t you know— but there’s definitely some room for optimism in how the rest of the weekend Top 10 shook out. Here’s the numbers as of Sunday afternoon:

Let me make this perfectly clear: I’m less of a Top Gun fan and more of a fan of putting Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in more blockbuster movies, but the end result is pretty much the same: I am ready for a little Top Gun 2 action. The long-rumored film — or perhaps just long-desired film — was finally confirmed by Cruise earlier this year, and now Paramount Pictures is cranking up the movie-making machine to deliver on the promise of more midair dogfights and subtle homoeroticism. With Cruise back, and Kilmer hopefully soon to follow, this could be the perfect throwback to the heydays of studio filmmaking of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Another weekend, another Weekend Box Office Report! While it won’t surprise you to find out that Michael Bay’s latest episode of Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots won the weekend, the specifics of that win come with enough asterisks to make even Barry Bonds blush. It was a terrible weekend for Transformers: The Last Knight one on continent and a record-breaking opening on another, which just goes to show how confusing this whole box office thing can be at times. Here’s the projected numbers as of Sunday afternoon:

It’s a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the world, which means it’s time for your weekend box office updates! While this was a disappointing weekend overall for a handful of new releases, there’s good news to be had: after a disappointing $144 million total gross last weekend, the box office bounced back to $187 million total over the past few days. That takes some of the pressure off Wonder Woman to, you know, save the summer blockbuster as we know it. Here’s the totals as of Sunday afternoon:

If you only look at the surface numbers, this was a pretty predictable week at the box office. Wonder Woman did well, The Mummy did not, and everything else shook out accordingly. That being said, there’s some pretty interesting narratives emerging in the how and why of this weekend’s box office report. Let’s take a look at the rankings as of Sunday afternoon and dive into some of the specifics:

Based on how this weekend’s box office numbers shaped up, odds are good that you either saw Wonder Woman this weekend or you avoided the theater altogether. It was a record-setting few days for everyone’s favorite warrior princess  —  sorry, Xena  —  but things were decidedly less rosy if your movie was… well, literally anything else. Here are the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:

Audiences have grown accustomed to seeing a slew of screenwriter credits on summer blockbusters. A few studios, like Universal and Paramount, have put together writers’ rooms for their biggest franchises; some films also have a host of different writers who either worked to develop the story or hammered out the final screenplay itself. Therefore, fans probably won’t bat an eye when they see three different writers’ names pop up in the Wonder Woman opening credits, but to hear one of the film’s producers tell it, that’s only part of the story. The road to bring Wonder Woman to the big screen involved a whole host of writers who didn’t end up mentioned in the final product.

It’s been a few years since Charlie Sheen has appeared in a feature film of any type, but to hear the actor say it, he’s already lined up his big comeback project. For a while now, Sheen has been talking up the possibility of a Major League sequel that brings back the cast and crew of the original film. And now it sounds like the actor has put in the work and might be closer than ever to getting that film made with a bunch of familiar faces.

Look, I’m a pretty simple guy. I don’t ask for a lot out of life. Life doesn’t ask for a lot out of me. But I do have one very small goal, and that’s to eventually do something well enough that a bunch of colleges around the United States decide to praise me with honorary doctorate degrees. A pretty modest aim, right? One pithy news article about Star Wars rumors, and suddenly, the University of Southern California and UCLA are competing to see who can give me the most pieces of paper with my name on it. In the immortal words of Cannibal! The Musical, that’s all I’m asking for.

What if I told you that there was another Star Wars universe very different from the one you know? In this universe, Han Solo doesn’t sound like Harrison Ford and Darth Vader doesn’t sound like James Earl Jones. Here, Princess Leia is played by a Broadway star instead of Carrie Fisher. And Luke Skywalker and C-3PO ... well, actually, those parts are still played by Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels. Some things are just multiversal constants.