Sam Raimi Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. After reigning over the box office, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” will hit Disney+ this month.The Benedict Cumberbatch-led movie arrives on the streamer June 22, just a handful of weeks after its May 6 release.

Carson Burton The multiverse is hot right now.From “Everything Everywhere All At Once” to “Star Trek” to the DC Extended Universe, each multiversal story carries with it its own style, rules and implications on reality. Now, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe aims its post-“Endgame” storyline through the multiverse the stakes are ever-increasing. Creating the multiversal, mind-bending looks for the new blockbuster hit “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is a tall task for VFX artists working on the Sam Raimi project, but the innate flexibility of these stories allows for creative expression to thrive.“The hardest part on this kind of project is sometimes not the execution of the work itself, but sometimes it’s just finding what is it that we want to do,” Alexis Wajsbrot of Framestore VFX told Variety.

EXCLUSIVE: Crazy Rich Asians-backer Peter Luo’s Stars Collective has signed Google engineer-turned-viral-YouTuber Jonathan Ma aka Joma to a managing, development and production deal, and he has set first project: a dark comedy/drama about the birth of Bitcoin and the true identity of mysterious founder Satoshi.

EXCLUSIVE: J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos), Jackie Earle Haley (The First Lady), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Suicide Squad), Jessica De Gouw (The Secrets She Keeps) and Alice Lee (Brittany Runs a Marathon) have signed on to star alongside Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry in the Netflix thriller Our Man from Jersey, from director Julian Farino (Ballers).

LOS ANGELES -- Doctor Strange and his multiverse got to linger a little longer atop the weekend box office as Tom Cruise and “Top Gun” wait in the wings.Marvel's “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” was the top-earning film of the weekend for the third straight week, bringing in $31.6 million in 4,534 North American theaters, according to studio estimates released Sunday.“Downtown Abbey: A New Era” made a strong opening showing for Focus Features with $16 million from 3,820 theaters, but there was no real blockbuster competition for “Doctor Strange."That will change with the long awaited, and long delayed, release of “Top Gun: Maverick,” the sequel that arrives next week on Memorial Day weekend, 36 years after the original smash hit and cultural landmark.It flies in amid sky-high hype.Cruise had the film festival in Cannes, France, abuzz on Wednesday with a whirlwind appearance for the film's European premiere that included a fly over of French fighter jets and an honorary Palme d’Or award.But while the world waits, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” crossed the $800 million mark in global grosses, surpassing “The Batman” to become the top-grossing film of the year.Released by the Walt Disney Co. and directed by Sam Raimi, “ Doctor Strange 2 ” benefitted from being the first Marvel movie to follow “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” in which Benedict Cumberbatch’s sorcerer played a pivotal role.It also builds upon the popular Disney+ series “Wandavision” and contains a number of cameos that fans didn’t want to be spoiled.Holdover family films “The Bad Guys” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” took the third and fourth spots.

Refresh for latest…: Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness crossed $800M globally this weekend, now with $803.2M after three frames. Of that $342.1M is from domestic and $461.1M from the international box office. The offshore drop was 53% with $40M from 49 markets.

FRIDAY MIDDAY UPDATE: Focus Features sequel Downton Abbey: A New Era is heading toward an $18M opening after a projected $8M Friday that includes $1M in Thursday night previews.

A rundown of notable films coming out this summer:May 6“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Disney, theaters): After breaking open the multiverse in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Benedict Cumberbatch once again takes center stage as the brilliant Doctor Strange as he and Wong deal with new enemies in the Sam Raimi-directed spectacle.“Happening” (IFC, theaters): This Venice Film Festival winner directed by Audrey Diwan is based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir about being a young college student in 1960s France seeking to terminate a pregnancy when it was still illegal.“Along for the Ride ”(Netflix): A teenage girl meets a mysterious insomniac the summer before college.May 11“Operation Mincemeat” (Netflix): John Madden directs two Mr.

Sam Raimi would be open to directing a new Spider-Man movie, but only if he could get the old gang back together.

Refresh for latest…: Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is approaching $700M globally after two weekends. The worldwide cume through Sunday is now an estimated $688.1M, including $291.9M domestic and $396.2M from the international box office. The latter number will shortly pass The Batman to become the biggest overseas release of 2022.

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” stayed on top of the box office charts during its second weekend in theaters, earning an additional $61 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.With $688 million in global grosses, it’s already one of the highest grossing films of the pandemic and the second biggest of 2022. But a 67% fall is also a steep drop — even for reliably frontloaded superhero films.

First the somewhat bad news: this domestic result represents a 67% drop from the film’s $187 million domestic opening. By comparison, 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which opened to $191 million and 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War,” which opened to $179 million, had holds of 59.5% and earned second weekend totals of over $70 million.

J. Kim Murphy The sorcerer continues to reign supreme in North America’s multiplexes of madness.

That would be a somewhat larger second weekend drop from its $187 million opening weekend than MCU films like “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which had similar opening weekends and topped $70 million in their second frame. Still, Sam Raimi’s MCU film is close to joining “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “The Batman” as only the third film of the COVID era to earn over $300 million at the global box office, and will also pass $600 million in global grosses this weekend.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticDanny Elfman comes by his “Strange” love naturally. “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is the composer’s ninth film with director Sam Raimi and fourth on a Marvel project, but more than that, a kind of controlled insanity has been a part of virtually everything he’s done, going back to Oingo Boingo days, so asking him to make a score both superheroic and super-nuts is not necessarily a tall order.Variety spoke with him a few days after the opening, by which point it was abundantly clear that any worries he had about about the film being too Raimi-esque for the mass audience were unfounded, just like the reservations he’d held about how his twin Coachella performances would go over at that festival last month.

“Doctor Strange 2” screenwriter Michael Waldron knows a thing or two about the multiverse. He first burst onto the scene as a writer on the beloved animated series “Rick and Morty” and was in line to become the show’s new showrunner, that is until Marvel Studios came calling asking if he wanted to head up a live-action TV show about Tom Hiddleston’s trickster villain Loki.It was while working on the Disney+ series “Loki” that Waldron was offered the opportunity to take a crack at a few different things all in one project: Marvel’s first horror movie, a Sam Raimi movie and a “Doctor Strange” sequel.

Jordan Moreau “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” still reigns supreme. The Marvel sequel crossed $550 million at the global box office in nine days, Disney announced Friday.The Benedict Cumberbatch-led movie, directed by Sam Raimi, will put a spell over the box office once again this weekend, where it faces no major competition in theaters.

Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will easily reign in its second weekend without any truly fire-breathing competition from rival majors, expected to draw $74M-$80M, a 57% to 60% decline.

EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Good Doctor executive producer Liz Friedman has been named co-showrunner on the ABC medical drama for next season alongside The Good Doctor developer and executive producer David Shore, who has served as showrunner for the past five seasons.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness writer Michael Waldron has confirmed there were discussions about a Deadpool cameo.The Marvel character, played by Ryan Reynolds, has yet to make an appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe following Disney‘s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. While many hoped he would appear in the Doctor Strange sequel, a cameo didn’t materialise.Speaking to ComicBook.com, screenwriter Waldron confirmed Deadpool was considered for a cameo during the writing stage.

A rundown of notable films coming out this summer:May 6“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Disney, theaters): After breaking open the multiverse in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Benedict Cumberbatch once again takes center stage as the brilliant Doctor Strange as he and Wong deal with new enemies in the Sam Raimi-directed spectacle.“Happening” (IFC, theaters): This Venice Film Festival winner directed by Audrey Diwan is based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir about being a young college student in 1960s France seeking to terminate a pregnancy when it was still illegal.“Along for the Ride ”(Netflix): A teenage girl meets a mysterious insomniac the summer before college.May 11“Operation Mincemeat” (Netflix): John Madden directs two Mr.

After crossing the $200M domestic mark on Monday, Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness on Tuesday zoomed past $500M global. It is also nearing $300M at the international box office, certain to reach that milestone today.

*You may call this a spoiler, and we’d be inclined to agree, but well, Charlize Theron has said, “the cat’s out of the bag” and posted publicly on social media, so it’s unfortunately, for some, fair game.* Director Sam Raimi’s (“Evil Dead“) return to the world of Marvel Comics has been one of his biggest box office successes as “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness” has already earned $479 million globally, which is quite the feat given the first film’s total was $677.7 million.

(Warning: This post features spoilers for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”Fresh off a massive opening weekend box office, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is proving to be one of the more divisive Marvel movies in recent memory. Fans seem to be split over the decision to peg Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff as the antagonist in the sequel – a fact that was obscured in the marketing, but one many expected given the character’s transformation into the Scarlet Witch in the comics.But the shift from hero to antagonist proved difficult for some fans to swallow coming off the character’s deeply empathetic portrayal in “WandaVision,” which explored how her grief over Vision’s death manifested in holding an entire town hostage.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment WriterSPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” currently playing in theaters.

Marvel movies that has labelled them “a lesser type of art”.The actor, who is currently starring in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, shared her frustration at comments made by filmmakers and audiences that criticised the MCU.“I’m not saying we’re making indie art films, but I just think it takes away from our crew, which bugs me,” she told The Independent.“These are some of the most amazing set designers, costume designers, camera operators — I feel diminishing them with that kind of criticism takes away from all the people who do award-winning films that also work on these projects.”Olsen continued: “From an actor’s point of view, whatever, I get it; I totally understand that there’s a different kind of performance that’s happening. But I do think throwing Marvel under the bus takes away from the hundreds of very talented crew people.

Manori Ravindran International EditorCapstone Global has boarded action-thriller “Boy Kills World,” starring Bill Skarsgård, Michelle Dockery and Jessica Rothe.The Los Angeles-based production and sales outfit is partnering on the pic with Nthibah Pictures, Hammerstone Studios, Sam Raimi’s Raimi Productions and Roy Lee’s Vertigo Entertainment. Sales will be launched in Cannes, with both Capstone and CAA co-representing U.S.

Marvel Cinematic Universe following Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.In the film, Wanda Maximoff aka the Scarlet Witch appears to sacrifice herself to destroy the Darkhold throughout the multiverse, burying herself in the ruins of Mount Wundagore with the evil text.Olsen, who plays Wanda, has since teased however this won’t be the end of the character.“I sign extensions every time they want me to do a movie,” Olsen told Collider. “I just a signed a very short one at the beginning, so everything’s constantly just, it’s always adjusting for me.

Elizabeth Olsen has gone on quite the journey over the course of several Marvel films and the limited series,, which set the character up for her latest evolution as the Scarlet Witch in. While speaking to ET’s Will Marfuggi, the actress opens up about the film’s many cameos and what this latest installment means for her future in the MCU. [: Spoilers for ] In the sequel written by creator Micahel Waldron and directed by Sam Raimi, Wanda, now known as the Scarlet Witch, finds herself at odds with Dr.