Indiana jones

When Brian Robbins, CEO of Paramount Studios, addressed the company in a town hall meeting on Tuesday, he was not in celebratory mood. Amid the grim and downbeat words he had to utter — “We know what a difficult and disruptive period it has been. And while we cannot say that the noise will disappear, we are here today to lay out a go-forward plan that can set us up for success no matter what path the company chooses to go down” — the news that the studio’s profits have declined by 61 precent over the past five years was described by Showtime CEO Chris McCarthy as “simply unacceptable.” Paramount is in big trouble. The only questions now are why, and what can be done to ameliorate the situation?

For the past several days, the internet has been focused on the astounding Independence Day failure of Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny, which was beaten on its opening day by an anti-human trafficking indie movie starring Jim Caviezel, Sound of Freedom. Of course Indy 5 will, and already has, raked in far more than the Christian-themed film based on the true story of OUR Rescue founder Tim Ballard, but the latter film already made its $14 million budget back while going toe to toe with a $300 million CGI-laden Disney-Lucasfilm picture. But the real question people should be asking is: will this embarrassment finally be the end of Kathleen Kennedy?

When The Flash opens at cinemas this week, its production company DC Studios and distributor Warner Brothers will no doubt be hoping that attention is diverted away from its troubled, pronoun-wielding star Ezra Miller and towards its multiverse qualities. To the uninitiated, this sounds simply as if the studio has rounded up every actor who ever played Batman (save Christian Bale, who has wisely moved onto other things), chucked a Supergirl into the mix and even produced a truly bizarre Nicolas Cage cameo as Superman. Even Christopher Reeve appears, from beyond the grave. But to its now-desperate makers, mindful of the massive financial success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film has to succeed.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge must be destroyed before it's too late. The short-bob comedienne fond of wall-breaking and lazy edits has, in very short order, emasculated and destroyed multiple franchises thanks to the overwrought praise for her adaptation of her one-woman show, a descriptor that should itself elicit a bit of vomit in the back of the throat. Not content to politicize Star Wars as an irritating droid in Solo or to chop off the balls of James Bond in Daniel Craig's swan song whose name no one remembers, Waller-Bridge has now set her sights on a firmly American man to take down: Indiana Jones, whose fifth edition box office she will eradicate in spite of all the goodwill of these United States. https://twitter.