Latest news with #TheLastRodeo
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life', ‘The Last Rodeo', ‘Friendship' Counterprogram ‘Lilo & Stitch' & ‘Mission: Impossible' Holiday Weekend
Sony Pictures Classics is out with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life in limited release, Angel Studios' The Last Rodeo opens wide and A24's Friendship added screens with few new indies braving the double whammy of live action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount's Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. The former may have set a Disney record for Memorial Day weekend previews, Deadline reports, while Tom Cruise's high octane eighth outing as Ethan Hunt may have set a record preview night for a Mission: Impossible. More from Deadline 'Friendship' Rocks As Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Bromance Expands - Specialty Box Office 'Friendship' Moves To Top Ten Markets, Star Tim Robinson's Hometown Detroit; 'Sister Midnight', 'The Old Woman With The Knife' - Specialty Preview 'Friendship' Skyrockets To Top Limited Opening Of 2025 For Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Comedy - Specialty Box Office Jane Austen in her own right 'has become a bit of a rock star in the marketplace,' SPC brass rightly noted when the distributor acquired the feature debut by Laura Piani ahead of its TIFF world premiere last year. It's opening on 61 screens in select markets including Lincoln Square and Angelika Film Center in New York and the AMC Grove and Laemmle Royal in LA. SPC is planning a nationwide bump next week to about 500 runs. Stars Camille Rutherford as Agathe, a hopelessly clumsy yet charming young woman who works in the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris. She dreams of being a successful writer and of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel but finds herself desperately single and plagued by writer's block. When Agathe's best friend (Pablo Pauly) gets her invited to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England, she finally has her Jane Austen moment. Certified Fresh at 85% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Angel Studios opens by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Black Swan, Risky Business) on 2,205 screens. Stars Neal McDonough (who also co-wrote) as a retired rodeo legend who risks it all to save his grandson. Facing his own painful past and the fears of his family, he enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition as the oldest contestant ever. Along the way, he reconciles old wounds with his estranged daughter Sally (Sarah Jones) and proves that true courage is found in the fight for family. Produced in association with the Professional Bull Riders Association. Also stars Christopher McDonald and Ruve McDonough. Written by Avnet, Neal McDonough and Derek Presley. This is Angel's third partnership with faith-based McDonough Company after 2023 thriller The Shift and post-apocalyptic drama Homestead, slated for release December 20. A24s starring comedian Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) and Paul Rudd has a big week 3 expansion to about 1,200 screens from 60. After a great limited opening at 6 theaters it rocked an expansion to 60 last week with $1.4 million and a no. 7 spot at the domestic box office. The R-rated directorial debut of Andrew DeYoung follows a bromance gone bad between two suburban dads. Comedy from Menemsha Films opens on four screens in NYC with Q&As at the Quad. Follows a $17k week and $110k run in Florida and a $225k cume from select showings. Expands to San Francisco May 30 and LA the following week. Directed by Daniel Robbins, it star Kyra Sedgwick, Cliff 'Method Man' Smith, David Paymer, Milana Vayntrub, Jon Bass, Meghan Leathers, Theo Taplitz, Catherine Curtin, John Bedford Lloyd and Ashley Zukerman. David and his fiancée Meg are about to have their parents meet for the first time over a Shabbat dinner on New York's Upper West Side when an accidental death (or murder?) gets in the way. With Meg's Catholic parents due any moment, this family dinner soon spirals into disaster. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. from Vertical, written and directed by Warwick Thornton, produced by and starring Cate Blanchett, is having a 7-day limited theatrical run before hitting VOD May 30. Set in 1940s Australia at a remote monastery with a mission for Aboriginal children run by a renegade nun, Sister Eileen (Blanchett). A new charge (Aswan Reid) is delivered in the dead of night, a boy who appears to have special powers. But the boy's Indigenous spiritual life does not mesh with the mission's Christianity and his mysterious power becomes a threat. Sister Eileen is faced with a choice between the traditions of her faith and the truth embodied in the boy. Premiered at Cannes in 2023, see Deadline review. Restoration: Akira Kurosawa's , the director's re-imagining of Shakespeare's King Lear transposed to medieval 16th century Japan, starts a run at New York's IFC Center and Laemmle Royal in LA to celebrate the epic's 40th anniversary. The 4K restoration is being re-released by New York-based Rialto Pictures. Resting after a wild boar hunt, warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to divide his domain among his three sons. A battle ensues between color-coded armies, a castle burns to the ground. Designed from the director's own watercolor storyboards, the film had four Oscar nominations including Best Director, Cinematography and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for costumes. Best of Deadline 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Katie Holmes To Simon Hellberg Everything We Know About Amazon's 'Verity' Movie So Far Everything We Know About 'The Testaments,' Sequel Series To 'The Handmaid's Tale' So Far
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Wes Anderson's ‘The Phoenician Scheme' Tees Up Strong Indie Weekend With Angelika Film Center Takeover
Focus Features has done a full takeover of the Angelika Film Center with on all six screens for filmmaker Wes Anderson's latest. There's a lobby and café redesign for full immersion, a jazz band, custom cocktails, t-shirts and totes as the film, which clocked a lengthy standing ovation at its recent Cannes world premiere (see Deadline review) bows theatrically in limited release at six locations including NYC's Alamo Brooklyn and AMC Lincoln Square and AMC's The Grove, Century City and Burbank in LA. Around this time in 2023, Anderson's Asteroid City, also from Focus, delivered a massive jolt to the arthouse and specialty world with a $790k three-day weekend, also at six theaters, including a takeover of the Landmark LA. That opening per-theater average of $132k was the biggest in years for a helmer known to energize the specialty box office. His Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014 opened at $800k on four screens for a PSA of $200k — still considered the one to top in absolute. More from Deadline 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life', 'The Last Rodeo', 'Friendship' Counterprogram 'Lilo & Stitch' & 'Mission: Impossible' Holiday Weekend - Specialty Preview How Wes Anderson Devised 'The Phoenician Scheme' - Crew Call Podcast At Cannes Wes Anderson Teases Next Project With Richard Ayoade & Roman Coppola - Cannes The Angelika's immersive experience features a Marseille Bob's themed bar with customized menu items including a signature champagne cocktail and photos taken by a film-inspired Egyptian elevator and vintage train. The theater is offering a premium ticket for $60 with a t-shirt, large popcorn and drink (including cocktail) combo and King Size Hershey's Bar. A standard experience ticket is $30. Q&As Friday with Anderson and cast members Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera at the 4:40 pm and 5:40 pm shows. Del Toro stars as wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda, who names his only daughter (Threapleton), a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins. Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch, Moonrise Kingdom, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Express, Isle Of Dogs, Rushmore and more) will be introducing shows at 7 pm. and 7:20 pm. The director's large and devoted following is welcome as independent films have generally struggled post Covid and the 2025 indie box office only recently perked up from a long post-holiday lull. It's been feeling some love in recent weeks from a lively Cannes and an overall crush in ticket buying at the North American box office. 'Wes means a huge amount to me personally as an artist, and I feel like I'm probably not the only one in the room who would say something like that, and just getting to be even a small part of any of his movies truly means the world to me,' said Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski at screening of The Phoenician Scheme at Jazz At Lincoln Center this week. 'I can speak for all of us at Focus when I say it is just such a joy, such a pleasure, such a point of pride to be part of this ride with Wes and the entire team.' New openings: IFC debuts period action-drama written and directed by John Maclean in moderate release on 412 screens. Set in the rugged landscape of 1790s Britain, the film follows Tornado (Kōki,) who finds herself caught in a perilous situation when she and her father's traveling puppet show crosses paths with a ruthless criminal gang led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his ambitious son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). In an attempt to create a new life, Tornado seizes the opportunity to steal the gold from the gang's most recent heist. World premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in February. Music Box Films presents , Jonathan Millet's debut feature that opened Cannes in 2024 (Deadline review here). Inspired by true events, the drama-thriller follows Hamid, a former literature professor from Syria, (rising French-Tunisian star Adam Bessa, César-nominated for his performance), living in France two years after being released from one of Bashar El-Assad's's jails. Haunted by the traumatic memories of his imprisonment, Hamid tirelessly searches for the man who tortured him, helped by members of a secret cell of other exiled Syrians hunting down war criminals. The film excavates the moral dilemmas migrants confront as they struggle to rebuild their lives and take control of their destinies. Written by Millet and Florence Rochat, also stars Tawfeek Barhom, Julia Franz Richter and Hala Rajab. Abramorama opens Jack Sumner's documentary at the Quad in NYC. In a career spanning sixty years, concert promoter and impresario Ron Delsener was the name behind virtually every major contemporary music concert in New York City for generations — from promoting the Beatles at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, to bringing David Bowie to Carnegie Hall and Patti Smith to the Palladium, to somehow convincing Simon and Garfunkel to bury the hatchet and play the biggest concert of all time in Central Park. Features Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmy Buffett, Cher, Art Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Lorne Michaels, Bette Midler, Gene Simmons, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Stanley and Steven Van Zandt. Live events: Trafalgar presents j-hope tour , a live broadcast of the BTS star's concert from Osaka to 2,700+ cinemas including 631 across North America. Select encores on Sunday. Fathom is on about 800 screens in North America with and Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). Encores on Sunday. Noting A24's Friendship, which has had a great run, is on 1,280 screens in week 4 (the distributor is opening horror wide on 2,400 screens), and Sony Pictures Classics Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, which had a strong debut last week, jumps to 526 screens from 60. MORE Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Katie Holmes To Simon Hellberg 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Epoch Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
‘The Last Rodeo': An Avoidable Misstep From Angel Studios
PG | 1h 58m | Drama, Sports | 2025 First, the good news: 'The Last Rodeo' is leading man Neal McDonough's third Angel Studio project in as many years, and it is slightly better than the last one ('Homestead'). The bad news: It's not nearly as good as 'The Shift,' where McDonough played a humanized incarnation of Satan.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life', ‘The Last Rodeo', ‘Friendship' Counterprogram ‘Lilo & Stitch' & ‘Mission: Impossible' Holiday Weekend
Sony Pictures Classics is out with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life in limited release, Angel Studios' The Last Rodeo opens wide and A24's Friendship added screens with few new indies braving the double whammy oflive action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount's Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. The former may have set a Disney record for Memorial Day weekend previews, Deadline reports, while Tom Cruise's high octane eight outing as Ethan Hunt may have set a record preview night for a Mission: Impossible. More from Deadline 'Friendship' Rocks As Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Bromance Expands - Specialty Box Office 'Friendship' Moves To Top Ten Markets, Star Tim Robinson's Hometown Detroit; 'Sister Midnight', 'The Old Woman With The Knife' - Specialty Preview 'Friendship' Skyrockets To Top Limited Opening Of 2025 For Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Comedy - Specialty Box Office Jane Austen in her own right 'has become a bit of a rock star in the marketplace,' SPC brass rightly noted when the distributor acquired the feature debut by Laura Piani ahead of its TIFF world premiere last year. It's opening on 61 screens in select markets including Lincoln Square and Angelika Film Center in New York and the AMC Grove and Laemmle Royal in LA. SPC is planning a nationwide bump next week to about 500 runs. Stars Camille Rutherford as Agathe, a hopelessly clumsy yet charming young woman who works in the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris. She dreams of being a successful writer and of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel but finds herself desperately single and plagued by writer's block. When Agathe's best friend (Pablo Pauly) gets her invited to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England, she finally has her Jane Austen moment. Certified Fresh at 85% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Angel Studios opens by Jon Avent (Fried Green Tomatoes, Black Swan, Risky Business) on 2,205 screens. Stars Neal McDonough (who also co-wrote) as a retired rodeo legend who risks it all to save his grandson. Facing his own painful past and the fears of his family, he enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition as the oldest contestant ever. Along the way, he reconciles old wounds with his estranged daughter Sally (Sarah Jones) and proves that true courage is found in the fight for family. Produced in association with the Professional Bull Riders Association. Also stars Christopher McDonald and Ruve McDonough. Written by Avnet, Neal McDonough and Derek Presley. This is Angel's third partnership with faith-based McDonough Company after 2023 thriller The Shift and post-apocalyptic drama Homestead, slated for release December 20. A24s starring comedian Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) and Paul Rudd has a big week 3 expansion to about 1,200 screens from 60. After a great limited opening at 6 theaters it rocked an expansion to 60 last week with $1.4 million and a no. 7 spot at the domestic box office. The R-rated directorial debut of Andrew DeYoung follows a bromance gone bad between two suburban dads. from Vertical, written and directed by Warwick Thornton, produced by and starring Cate Blanchett, is having a 7-day limited theatrical run before hitting VOD May 30. Set in 1940s Australia at a remote monastery with a mission for Aboriginal children run by a renegade nun, Sister Eileen (Blanchett). A new charge (Aswan Reid) is delivered in the dead of night, a boy who appears to have special powers. But the boy's Indigenous spiritual life does not mesh with the mission's Christianity and his mysterious power becomes a threat. Sister Eileen is faced with a choice between the traditions of her faith and the truth embodied in the boy. Premiered at Cannes in 2023, see Deadline review. Restoration: Akira Kurosawa's , the director's re-imagining of Shakespeare's King Lear transposed to medieval 16th century Japan, starts a run at New York's IFC Center and Laemmle Royal in LA to celebrate the epic's 40th anniversary. The 4K restoration is being re-released by New York-based Rialto Pictures. Resting after a wild boar hunt, warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to divide his domain among his three sons. A battle ensues between color-coded armies, a castle burns to the ground. Designed from the director's own watercolor storyboards, the film had four Oscar nominations including Best Director, Cinematography and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for costumes. Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
UPI
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- UPI
Neal McDonough: 'Rodeo' is 'Rocky' on a bull, 'Justified' family reunion
1 of 5 | Sarah Jones and Neal McDonough star in the new family drama, "The Last Rodeo." Photo courtesy of Angel Studios NEW YORK, May 23 (UPI) -- Neal McDonough says his new family drama, The Last Rodeo, reunited some of his favorite people from the iconic TV series, Justified. Directed by Jon Avnet and in theaters Friday, the film follows widower and retired professional bull-riding star Joe Wainwright (McDonough) as he returns to the ring to compete for the money to save his beloved grandson Cody (Graham Harvey) from the same type of brain cancer that killed his beloved wife Rose (Ruve McDonough). Helping him get back in the game -- over the objections of his worried daughter Sally (Sarah Jones) -- are Joe's estranged friends Charlie (Mykelti Williamson) and Jimmy Mack (Christopher McDonald). "The guy who cut my arm off [in Justified] happens to be now my best friend in this movie," McDonough, 59, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "How does that happen? Because Mykelti Williamson, in real life, is one of my best, dearest friends on the planet. I love him. What a great actor! He's a thief. He stole every scene he was in with me. It was awful," McDonough laughed. Avnet said his relationship with McDonough and Williamson dates back more than 20 years to the crime drama, Boomtown. "That's when I cast Neal with [Justified writer-producer] Graham Yost and Mykelti and they got to know each other, so when we got to work together all on Justified, it was a reunion, and it gave us an economy of words and the ability to explore things," the filmmaker said. "These are real pros and they're just great." Even Jones guest starred on Justified in 2011. The only main cast member who didn't have some connection to the show was McDonald, but McDonough said he was quickly embraced by The Last Rodeo family. "He showed up swinging for the fences," McDonough recalled. "He walks in a situation, which he's never worked with Jon before and there's me and Mykelti in our own shorthand and then Jon and I have our own shorthand, and here he comes into this like, 'How do I fit into this party?' And you know what he did? He manned up and he crushed it. Chris McDonald is a beast." Avnet agreed. "He wants to make sure he knows the character," Avnet explained. "It's not like they walk in and they're fearless. They care and they worry and they work to overcome that because they want to be worthy of the characters, worthy of the friendship, worthy of the respect," Avnet said of his cast. McDonough wrote the film with Avnet and Derek Presley after he was away on a film shoot, missing his wife Ruve and wondering how he would survive if anything happened to the mother of his five children. "This idea from above came into my head -- write a film about Rocky on a bull, about a grandfather that has to save his grandson because he's dying of the same brain tumor that his wife died of," said McDonough, who is a devout Catholic. "I'm a pretty smart guy, but I didn't come up with that myself and, within a week, we had the first draft, within another week, Ruve helped me raise the financing and the distribution through the amazing Angel Studios," he added. "They said, 'Who do you want to direct it?' And I said, 'There's only one choice for me -- the greatest director I've ever worked with, a guy who has been a mentor to me, but, also, like a big brother to me for all these years, and that's Jon Avnet.'" Catch these two powerhouse actors in The Last Rodeo - a story about family, brotherhood, and rodeo! In theaters May 23! Get your tickets now at ️ The Last Rodeo Movie (@lastrodeomovie) May 22, 2025 Avnet -- whose credits include Risky Business, Less Than Zero, The Three Musketeers and Fried Green Tomatoes -- said the aspect of the story that most intrigued him was the loving, but tense relationship between Joe and his daughter. "I've got two daughters, two older sisters, my wife has two sisters, there are three women in her family, and [I know] dads don't do the greatest job often communicating with their daughters," Avnet noted. "It's hard to figure out how to fix that. So, that interested me very much, and I thought it's really universal message of the whole film." Avnet also wanted to take a closer look at the friendship with Charlie that Joe abandoned when he sinks into his grief over Rose's death and why Charlie forgives Joe after their long estrangement. "He's become a kind of narcissistic, self-involved character that really has gone inside and he's hurt so many people who love them and the sad circumstances that forces him to ride also gives him the opportunity to, perhaps, mend the friendship with Charlie and, perhaps, have a second shot with his daughter," Avnet said. The filmmaker also was happy to see his longtime friend -- who is frequently cast as villains on shows like Justified, Tulsa King and Yellowstone -- finally get to play the hero. "I believed he could be something he hasn't been in films before -- the leading man in the mold of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne or Gary Cooper or Jimmy Stewart," Avnet said. "I believed if i did my job well, the audience would see him the same way and because he has that gravitas and, what people don't know about him unless they're close friends with him, is he is so emotionally accessible. He's just there and I knew he could bring that out in this character in film." Avnet offers as an example an emotional scene in which thousands of people stand and pray for Joe's family when he walks into the bull-riding ring. "It's so moving and Neal says nothing," Avnet said. "You just see on his face this private guy, this tormented guy, this guy who never knew how to mourn the loss of his wife, standing there and seeing these strangers sending their prayers and love." But McDonough credited Avnet for polishing the script he handed off to him and weaving the whole story together through his thoughtful direction. "He pulled so many amazing things out of the actors and their performances and there's a trust that we have with Jon because he protects the actors," McDonough said. "More than anything, he wants the actors to have complete comfort on a set and the ability to do something different and to try things and to build characters and build moments." McDonough said he doesn't generally play heroes because he refuses to do intimate scenes with anyone but his spouse. Luckily for him, Ruve played his late wife Rose in flashback scenes, so McDonough finally gets to kiss the girl on screen. "I'm famous for one or two takes [filming a scene], but I think I got to 13 takes that day before my daughter London got so disgusted, saying, 'Dad, that's enough.' So, I had fun. This is my moment," he said. "I'm the most blessed dude that I know."
