Stranger People

Stranger Things Bust

British actor Charlie Heaton was denied entry into the U.S. after “trace amounts of cocaine were found in his luggage” at Los Angeles International Airport a week ago, according to The Associated Press.

Law enforcement officials told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor admitted to consuming the drug.

The 23-year-old, best known for his role as Jonathan Byers on the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” was forced to return to London and as a result missed the show’s season 2 premiere in LA on Thursday night.

The second season of “Stranger Things”is now available for streaming on Netflix.

Lucas Ozarowski, a 27-year-old film and TV editor, says he also was assaulted by Grasham after Blaise Godbe Lipman first spoke up on Facebook talking about what he faced from the agent while seeking representation 10 years ago as a child actor.

  Tyler Grasham has been put on a leave of absence by his agency APA and is no longer physically in the Beverly Hills offices. We hear the agency took the agent off his desk Wednesday after accuser Blaise Godbe Lipman, now 28, went public on Facebook saying that the rep sexually assaulted him 10 years ago when he was seeking representation as a child actor. Deadline also spoke to another man who came forward with a similar allegation against Grasham.

rasham, who has many child clients, will stay on a leave as the investigation by an independent third party continues. The agency is now working to place his 50-some clients with other agents So far, two successful actor clients already fired him as their rep. One, Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fired both the agent and APA; the other, Cameron Boyce of Disney’s Descendants franchise, fired the agent but has not decided whether he will stay with the agency. Both have other representation as well.

TV Ratings 9-30-17

“Marvel’s Inhumans” got off to a credible start in its two-hour debut by the low standards of Friday night. But ABC had better news as L3 ratings for Monday showed new drama “The Good Doctor” adding 5 million viewers and more than a rating point in adults 18-49 after three days of delayed viewing.
“Inhumans” opened to 3.8 million viewers and 0.9 rating/4 share in the adults 18-49 demo from 8-10 p.m., according to Nielsen’s fast national ratings.
The Marvel fantasy vehicle that has taken a drubbing from critics narrowly topped the sophomore season premiere of CBS’ “MacGyver” (6.6 million, 0.8/4), earning bragging rights in the adults 18-49 demo at 8 p.m., and was narrowly beaten by CBS’ “Hawaii 5-0” (8.5 million, 1.0/5) in the demo at 9 p.m. CBS’ “Blue Bloods” won the night as usual with 9.8 million viewers and 1.1/5.
Fox was weak at the 9 p.m. hour with the Season 2 premiere of “The Exorcist” coming in at 1.7 million viewers and 0.6/3 in adults 18-49.
The L3 ratings for Monday premieres showed “The Good Doctor” logging the highest lift for a new series bow on any network in three years, since the premiere of ABC’s “How to Get Away With Murder.” “The Good Doctor” grew 5.5 million viewers to 16.9 million and padded its adults 18-49 demo score to 3.7, from 2.2.
CBS saw “The Big Bang Theory” Season 10 premiere spike to 22 million viewers (up 4.3 million) and 5.5 rating in adults 18-49 (from 4.1). New comedy “Young Sheldon” grew 25% in viewers to 21.5 million and 37% in adults 18-49, to 5.2.

In L7 ratings for Thursday, Fox cited an 80% lift in viewers and adults 18-49 for new dramedy “The Orville” (7.4 million) and adults 18-49 (2.0). Returning drama “Gotham” posted a 78% gain in viewers (5.7 million) and 70% gain in adults 18-49 (1.7).

Hollywood's Rotten Tomatoes

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood had a horrible summer.

Between the first weekend in May and Labor Day, a sequel-stuffed period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales, box office revenue in North America totaled $3.8 billion, a 15 percent decline from the same span last year. To find a slower summer, you would have to go back 20 years. Business has been so bad that America’s three biggest theater chains have lost roughly $4 billion in market value since May.

Ready for the truly alarming part? Hollywood is blaming a website: Rotten Tomatoes.

“I think it’s the destruction of our business,” Brett Ratner, the director, producer and film financier, said at a film festival this year.

Some studio executives privately concede that a few recent movies — just a few — were simply bad. Flawed marketing may have played a role in a couple of other instances, they acknowledged, along with competition from Netflix and Amazon.

But most studio fingers point toward Rotten Tomatoes, which boils down hundreds of reviews to give films “fresh” or “rotten” scores on its Tomatometer. The site has surged in popularity, attracting 13.6 million unique visitors in May, a 32 percent increase above last year’s total for the month, according to the analytics firm comScore.

Studio executives’ complaints about Rotten Tomatoes include the way its Tomatometer

hacks off critical nuance, the site’s seemingly loose definition of who qualifies as a critic

and the spread of Tomatometer scores across the web. Last year, scores started appearing on Fandango, the online movie ticket-selling site, leading to grousing that a rotten score next to the purchase button was the same as posting this message: You are an idiot if you pay to see this movie.

Mr. Ratner’s sentiment was echoed almost daily in studio dining rooms all summer, although not for attribution, for fear of giving Rotten Tomatoes more credibility. Over lunch last month, the chief executive of a major movie company looked me in the eye and declared flatly that his mission was to destroy the review-aggregation site.

Kersplat: Paramount’s “Baywatch” bombed after arriving to a Tomatometer score of 19, the percentage of reviews the movie received that the site considered positive (36 out of 191). Doug Creutz, a media analyst at Cowen and Company, wrote of the film in a research note, “Our high expectations appear to have been crushed by a 19 Rotten Tomatoes score.”

Kersplat: “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” got a Tomatometer score of 28 — anything under 60 is marked rotten — and audiences stayed away. After costing Warner Bros. at least $175 million to make, the movie took in $39 million at the domestic box office. In total.

How did a clunky website that has been around for 19 years amass such power?

The 36 people who work for Rotten Tomatoes hardly seem like industry killers. The site’s staff occupies a relatively ordinary Beverly Hills office complex — albeit one with conference rooms named “La La Land” and “Oz” — and includes people like Jeff Voris, an easygoing former Disney executive with graying hair who oversees operations, and Timothy Ryan, a former newspaper reporter who is a Rotten Tomatoes senior editor and lists “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide” as favorite reading.

The employee with the pink mohawk is Grae Drake, senior movie editor. She does a lot of video interviews and lately has been helping to fill a void created when Matt Atchity left as editor in chief in July for a bigger job at TYT Network, an online video company.

Jeff Giles, a 12-year Rotten Tomatoes veteran and the author of books like “Llanview in the Afternoon: An Oral History of ‘One Life to Live’,” writes what the site calls Critics Consensus, a one-sentence summary of the response to each film. (Disney’s latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie was summarized as proving “that neither a change in directors nor an undead Javier Bardem is enough to drain this sinking franchise’s murky bilge.”)

“Everyone here sweats the details every day,” said Paul Yanover, the president of Fandango, which owns Rotten Tomatoes. “Because we are serious movie fans ourselves, our priority — our entire focus — is being as useful to fans as we absolutely can be.”

Hold on a minute. Fandango?

Yes. In an absurdist plot twist, Rotten Tomatoes is owned by film companies. Fandango, a unit of NBCUniversal, which also owns Universal Pictures, has a 75 percent stake, with the balance held by Warner Bros. Fandango bought control from Warner last year for an undisclosed price. (All parties insist that Rotten Tomatoes operates independently.)

Mr. Yanover said it was silly for studios to make Rotten Tomatoes a box office scapegoat.

“There is no question that there is some correlation to box office performance — critics matter — but I don’t think Rotten Tomatoes can definitively make or break a movie in either direction,” he said. “Anyone who says otherwise is cherry-picking examples to create a hypothesis.”

He cited “Wonder Woman,” which was the No. 1 movie of the summer, with $410 million in ticket sales. It was undoubtedly helped by a strong Tomatometer score of 92. “Dunkirk,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” all received high scores and drew huge crowds. Other films did not do well on the Tomatometer (“The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “The Emoji Movie”) but still managed to find audiences.

Some filmmakers complain bitterly that Rotten Tomatoes casts too wide a critical net. The site says it works with some 3,000 critics worldwide, including bloggers and YouTube-based pundits. But should reviewers from Screen Junkies and Punch Drunk Critics really be treated as the equals of those from The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker?

Mr. Yanover rejected those complaints, pointing to the site’s posted requirements. (“Online critics must have published no less than 100 reviews across two calendar years at a single, Tomatometer-approved publication,” for instance.) He also noted that critics at traditional outlets tended to be white men and that Rotten Tomatoes wanted to include female and minority voices.

‘Incredibly Layered’ Process

For the studios, the question of how individual reviews get classified as fresh or rotten is also a point of contention. Only about half of critics self-submit reviews and classifications to the site. Rotten Tomatoes staffers comb the web and pull the other half themselves. They then assign positive or negative grades.

“We have a well-defined process,” said Mr. Voris, the vice president of Rotten Tomatoes. “Our curators audit each other’s work. If there is any question about how a review should be classified, we have three curators separate and do independent reads. If there still isn’t agreement, we call the journalist.”

Staff members also fact-check what critics have self-submitted. In one recent instance, a review of “Alien: Covenant” that was submitted as fresh seemed rotten. The site reversed the categorization after contacting the critic for clarification.

DISNEY COMCAST DROPS

Disney and the largest cable operators saw their share prices take a hit on Thursday as investors seemed to renew concerns about long-term trends in the traditional media sector.

Disney shares were down as much as 5% after CEO Bob Iger announced during the Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., that the studio has decided to include its Marvel and “Star Wars” movie titles in the subscription entertainment service that it is planning to launch in the U.S. by the end of 2019. The new service will take the place of the traditional pay TV window for Disney film titles.

Disney ended the day down 4.4%, or $4.46, to close at $97.04.

Meanwhile, cable shares were also hammered by news of the past 24 hours. Comcast executive Matthew Strauss, also speaking at the Bank of America conference, acknowledged that video subscribers would be down for the quarter by 100,000-150,000. That sent Comcast shares down 6.2%, to close at $38.60, marking the biggest one-day drop in six years, per CNBC.

Shares in Comcast rivals Charter Communications and Altice USA also took a hit. The cable drop was also likely exacerbated by a report issued Wednesday evening by Moody’s Investor Service casting doubt on the plausibility of Charter being acquired by a telco or tech giant because of the debt load that would accompany any transaction. Charter, the second-largest cable operator behind Comcast, has been the subject of takeover talk on Wall Street in recent months amid chatter that Verizon was eyeing the company.

Charter shares were down 1.7% at closing to $395.64. Altice fell 3.4% to $29.26.

Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said the surprise news from Comcast had a ripple effect across the sector, even as Comcast executives reaffirmed their financial targets for the quarter and 2017 overall. Concerns about subscriber losses from storm-battered areas in Texas and Florida only adds to the uncertainty, she said in a research note.

“We think (Comcast’s) comments on Q3 subs are moving the stocks more than anything else,” Ryvicker wrote. “Unfortunately we don’t know how much is competition and how much is weather. And no one seems to care about the financials at the moment.”

Disney’s volatility proved a drag on other media stocks, although not to the same degree. Fox was off 2.2% ($25.38), Viacom fell 3.6% ($27.20), and CBS dipped 2.1% ($60.50). Time Warner weathered the turbulence with a less than 1% drop but AT&T, which is in the process of acquiring TW, slid 2.7% ($35.60).

The reaction to Disney’s decision to revamp its pay TV theatrical window strategy largely reflected skepticism that even the biggest media companies can go it alone with direct-to-consumer services.

The ability to license theatrical releases for a pay TV window on a premium cabler has historically been a big component of film profits for all but the biggest blockbusters. Netflix has been paying Disney an estimated $300 million a year for those rights. Disney and other media companies have to balance the loss of that considerable licensing revenue against the costs of building a proprietary service that also has to be stocked with some original programming.

Kardashian Farris IT Veep

Bust out the pink balloons – 'cause Kim Kardashianand Kanye West are having a baby girl ... TMZ has learned.

Sources familiar with the pregnancy tell us the couple's surrogate is carrying a female bundle of joy.

We broke the stories ... the baby's due in late January by a surrogate Kim and Kanye hired for medical reasons. Kim's placenta accreta condition could kill her if she carries another baby to term.

This will be girl #9 in the Kardashian clan -- not including Kris herself -- and we've learned it bodes well for one of those ladies in particular.

We spoke with a notable child psychologist, who tells us North West and baby #3 will probably form a closer bond than Saint might with his new sis. And the reason's simple: sisters gravitate to their sisters. You don't gotta tell us ... or the Kardashians, either.

Kind of a bummer for Saint, though -- especially since Kim recently said North "does not like" him ... and doesn't seem to be getting past the meanie phase.

Anna Faris will release the memoir and self-help guide Anna Faris Is Unqualified in October, just three months after she and Chris Pratt announced their separation.

With the book’s debut looming, Faris has admitted she is “really, really nervous” given the “intimate” nature of the material. The “Mom” actress reportedly delves into her love life in the memoir, which is still set to include a forward written by Pratt.

“I’m excited and when I first got the book deal, I thought, ‘What a great adventure this is going to be,’ and now that it’s getting closer, I feel nervous in a sense that I’ve always been able to hide behind characters,” Faris explained during the most recent episode of her podcast, which shares a title with the upcoming book. “And now, it’s like, this is me. It feels a little scary.” 

The book, she continued, covers “what I’ve learned from feeling [like] a really quiet kid with headgear, and then suddenly being an actress in LA, and sort of how I haven’t felt comfortable in my own skin, and learning to do that.”

The new reboot of Stephen King’s “It” hasn’t even opened in theaters, but director Andy Muschiettiis already planning for the next installment. The sequel is a near-certainty since King’s book switches off between two storylines, and it’s already known that the film that opens Friday focuses more on the child characters.

Though it has always been planned as a two-part story, Warner Bros. isn’t emphasizing the two movies in marketing materials. Perhaps the studio learned from “The Dark Tower,” which was planned as a movie, TV series and more, but fizzled after the first film disappointed.

However, the movie itself leaves plenty of room for a sequel, not to mention the fact that the title card at the end of the film (MILD SPOILER ALERT) reads “It: Chapter One.”

HBO’s “Veep” will end after its seventh season next year, HBO confirmed on Wednesday night.

The half-hour comedy, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer — a vice president, then president, then ex-president — has been showered with Emmy Awards and praise from critics. Ms. Louis-Dreyfus has won the Emmy for best actress in a comedy five consecutive times for the role, and is up for a sixth award at this year’s ceremony on Sept. 17. If she wins, she’ll also tie Cloris Leachman with eight Primetime Emmy wins.

“Veep” has also won the Emmy for best comedy in each of the last two years, and is nominated again this year.

The Hollywood Reporter reported first that “Veep” was finishing after next season.

“We love the show and everyone involved but respect the producers’ choice to bring Selina Meyer’s journey to its conclusion after an extraordinary run of critical and award-winning acclaim,” said Casey Bloys, HBO’s president of programming, in a statement. “Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ comedic brilliance infused Selina with a dynamic presence and a vibrant wit which will ensure her a place in the history of television’s most iconic comedic characters.”

Bad Box Office And Angelina

Someone get Angelina Jolie on Tinder, stat.

The 42-year-old actress, who filed for divorce from Brad Pitt last year is promoting her new directorial offering, “First They Killed My Father,” and got pretty candid with the Sunday Telegraph about singlehood.

“I don’t enjoy being single,” she told the outlet. “It’s not something I wanted. There’s nothing nice about it. It’s just hard.”

Jolie and Pitt, a former Hollywood power couple, met in on the set of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” and were together for 12 years and married for two. The couple split in September 2016, and Jolie’s life since has been physically and emotionally taxing.

“Sometimes maybe it appears I am pulling it all together, but really I am just trying to get through my days.”

“Emotionally, it’s been a very difficult year,” she added. “I have had some other health issues. So my health is something I have to monitor.”

In 2013, Jolie had a preventive double mastectomy and in 2015, she had her ovaries removed. Last year, around the time of her breakup, she also developed hypertension and Bell’s palsy, which causes a drooping in the face, due to damaged facial nerves.

A disastrous domestic summer box office is ending on a low note.Without any fresh competition in wide release, “Hitman’s Bodyguard” appears the be the holiday weekend’s movie of choice. The Lionsgate release with Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson at the center is tracking to earn $12.9 million from 3,370 locations over the four-day weekend. Its seemingly imminent win would make “Hitman’s Bodyguard” the only flick this summer to retain the top spot on the domestic box office charts for three consecutive weekends. “Dunkirk,” “Wonder Woman,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” each stayed first for two frame

But while the action comedy is certainly profitable at this point, its threepeat is less due to the movie’s overwhelming popularity, and more attributable to the lack of alternatives. This — the first Labor Day weekend in recent history without a new wide release — is tracking to have the lowest four-day total for the holiday in nearly two decades. The 28 movies currently in release are tracking to bring in about $95.5 million, according to ComScore. Not since 1998 has the Labor Day domestic box office dropped below a $100 million four-day total. The last time there were no wide releases over Labor Day weekend was in 1992.

Apple Microsoft TWC

(Reuters) - More than four million records of users of Time Warner Cable’s MyTWC app were found unsecured on an Amazon server last month, digital security research center Kromtech Security Center said in a blog post on Friday.The files — more than 600 gigabytes in size containing sensitive information such as transaction ID, user names, Mac addresses, serial numbers, account numbers — were discovered on Aug. 24 without a password by researchers of Kromtech. (bit.ly/2wqgA3J)

“A vendor has notified us that certain non-financial information of legacy Time Warner Cable customers who used the MyTWC app became potentially visible by external sources,” Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O), Time Warner Cable’s parent, said in an email.

The information was removed immediately after the discovery and the incident is being investigated, Charter said. The breach was eventually linked to BroadSoft Inc (BSFT.O), a communications company, whose unit developed the MyTWC app. Broadsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple’s digital assistant is under new management.  Along with updating its corporate leadership page to include its two newest VPs, Apple also revealed that it has replaced Eddy Cue as Siri’s boss and given the task over to software VP Craig Federighi. The change isn’t much of a surprise considering Craig was the one presenting all the changes Apple made to Siri at WWDC 2017. Cue is more of a media and services guru. He was tasked with fixing Siri after Scott Forstall was kicked out of the company back in 2012 following the disastrous launch of I phone 7. Siri can do more than ever in iOS 11 thanks to the updated SiriKit framework that lets third-party apps tap into her powers. Once iOS 11 is released this fall, Siri will know your voice, the context of your query, your interests and how you use your device. Ultimately, that will let Siri know what you want next, said Federighi on stage.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Microsoft is to update its flagship operating system next month so that the latest generation of Windows 10 hardware devices and software can tap into augmented and virtual reality technologies, executives said on Friday.

The software upgrade, its fourth update, will be offered from Oct. 17 to existing customers of Windows 10 running on more than 500 million devices, the company said.

Microsoft also announced plans by computer and virtual-reality headset makers to introduce new hardware for businesses, consumers and video gamers to take advantage of so-called “mixed reality” features in the October software release.

“We’re enabling you to immerse yourself in a new reality - mixed reality,” Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s executive vice president in charge of Windows, said in a speech at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

Mixed reality is the term Microsoft uses to describe software that covers both augmented and virtual reality.

Augmented reality overlays text, sounds, graphics and video on real-world images that users actually see in front of them, while virtual reality creates entirely computer-generated worlds.

Apple Motorola Destiny2

Destiny 2's new live action trailer has quite the director behind it: Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of this year's Kong: Skull Island, not to mention the upcoming Metal Gear Solid movie. For him, he told GameSpot, anything related to video games is a labor of love.

"It really did have to do with my love of video games, and sci-fi, and Destiny," he said. "It was just impossible for me to turn down. It had too many things that I love in it."

The latest in a long line of live action Destiny trailers, this Beastie Boys-scored spot begins with Cayde-6, voiced as ever by Nathan Fillion, introducing a trio of freshly resurrected Guardians to their new life in a world bereft of comforts. Then, they use their big guns and space magic to blow aliens up for a good minute of straight action. They also show off some of Destiny 2's new powers, including each class's new Super ability.

NEW DELHI: Motorola has finally launched its much-talked about budget smartphones, Moto G5S and Moto G5s Plus, in India. The Moto G5S is priced at Rs 13,999, while the Moto G5S Plus will be available at Rs 15,999. Both variants will be available from Amazon India starting at 11.59 am tonight.
The handsets are going on sale along with some offers. Customers can get Rs 1,000 off on exchanging their old Moto smartphone. There is also the option to buy the smartphone at no cost EMIs on credit cards. Moto G5S and the Moto G5S Plus customers will get the option to buy Moto Sports headphones at a discounted price of Rs 499. Furthermore, customers will get 80% off (up to Rs 300) on the Amazon Kindle app. Reliance Jio users will get 50GB additional 4G data on the purchase of the two smartphones.

Apple is reigniting its push for the living room, investing more in original shows and following in the footsteps of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. But there's no doubt that Apple, which reports have said is spending as much as $1 billion on developing its own shows, is late to the party when it comes to courting audiences, and it's unclear how it will stand out to the average couch potato.

Apple is expected to announce at a Sept. 12 event that Apple TV is getting support for 4K — an ultra high-definition format — which would see it catch up to competitors that already do.

FOX NEWS CANCELED

TV viewers in the United Kingdom will likely not miss watching Fox News, as the network’s parent company 21st Century Fox announced on Tuesday that the company would pull the channel amid low ratings.

“Fox News is focused on the U.S. market and designed for a U.S. audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the U.K.,” 21st Century Fox said in a statement provided to CNN. “We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the U.K.”

While 21st Century Fox said its decision was based on the channel’s inability to attract a considerable audience, critics say it’s actually an attempt to smooth over the media giant’s bid to take over European satellite company Sky. (21st Century Fox owns a controlling stake in Sky PLC, the parent company of the London-headquartered network.)

HuffPost UK reports that if the takeover is successful, it would give Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch access to Sky’s 22 million customers in Europe. This audience would be in addition to those of the three U.K. newspapers ― The Sun, The Times, and The Sunday Times ― that the media mogul already owns.

In June, officials delayed Murdoch’s attempted takeover of the 61 percent of Sky that his family does not currently own. British authorities asked regulators to review the deal to see if the takeover would give the family too much control over the country’s media landscape.

Sky ceased broadcasting Fox News on Tuesday at 4 p.m.

Hollywood Takes OFF

Hollywood effectively took the weekend off, resulting in one of the most dismal box-office results in 16 years.

An already slow August came to a screeching halt at the multiplex, where no major new releases were unveiled. That left the Samuel Jackson-Ryan Reynolds action-comedy "The Hitman's Bodyguard" to top all films for the second week with an estimated $10.1 million in ticket sales.

But the entire slate of films grossed only about $65 million in North America and the top 12 films generated just $49.6 million. There have been similarly slow weekends in recent years, including early September in 2014 and in 2016. But not since September 2001 have the numbers been quite so dreadful.

Mid-August through early September is historically the sleepiest time of the year for the movie business, but it's been especially so this year. This August is down a whopping 35 percent from last year, according to comScore. Next week is expected to be just as bad: No new wide releases are scheduled for Labor Day weekend.

For many, the weekend's top entertainment option was Saturday night's Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor match. The Fathom Events simulcast of the fight was one of the more popular offerings in theaters, taking in $2.4 million from 481 screens.

But the bigger problem was the death of significant releases. The six major studios have released only two new wide-release films this August: Sony's poorly received Stephen King adaptation "The Dark Tower" and Warner Bros.'s successful horror spinoff sequel "Annabelle: Creation." The latter came in second this weekend with $7.4 million, bringing its three-week total to $77.9 million.

The Weinstein Co. animated release "Leap!" was one of the few new films to hit theaters. It earned a scant $5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"It's a black eye for Hollywood but not a knock-out punch," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. "Make no mistake about it, there was little foot traffic in theaters this weekend. But the story line will change in two weeks when 'It' opens."

That second recent King adaptation is the only near light on the horizon for theaters, which are struggling through the lowest-grossing summers in years. ComScore estimates that this will be the first summer in a decade not to cross $4 billion in domestic ticket sales. The summer as a whole is running 14 percent behind last year — and the deadly quiet August is a big reason.

Hurricane Harvey had a minimal effect on nationwide grosses. Instead, mediocre offerings were largely to blame. The Bruce Lee homage "Birth of the Dragon" opened with $2.5 million in 1,618 theaters for BH Tilt and WWE Studios. The low-budget Sony Christian film "All Saints" took in $1.6 million from 846 theaters.

One of the few bright spots on the weekend was the expansion of the Weinstein Co.'s "Wind River," Taylor Sheridan's thriller set on an Indian Reservation in Wyoming. The Jeremy Renner-led film expanded to 2,095 theaters and earned $4.1 million in its fourth weekend.

Steven Soderbergh's heist comedy "Logan Lucky" also held well in its second week, taking in $4.4 million. The film's $15 million two-week total, though, isn't the movie industry game-changer its makers hoped it would be .

With so little action, Warner Bros. put one of the summer's biggest hits — "Wonder Woman" — back into theaters ahead of its home entertainment release. It added $1.7 million, or about three times what the 3-D restoration of James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" made in 563 locations. Cameron was much criticized last week for comments he made about the feminist credentials of "Wonder Woman."

Trump's Black Man

On The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, comedian Roy Wood Jr. stopped by to shed light on the mysterious Donald Trump supporter who was seen at Trump’s recent rally in Phoenix. His name is Michael the Black Man — and yes, that is what he goes by. Michael the Black Man is African-American, sported a perm and a ponytail, and carried a sign saying “Blacks For Trump” while standing behind Trump at the rally. It’s safe to say he stood out in a Trump crowd and drew a bit of media attention. But his history is a little startling.

Miami New Times reported that Michael is a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, and MSNBC reported that that cult stabbed and beheaded people in the early 1990s.

Though Michael the Black Man has a bit of a shady history with following a charismatic leader, not to worry — he’s reformed. Wood Jr. said, “Don’t freak out about it. He wasn’t accused of beheading anybody, though he was accused of gouging a dude’s eyes out with a stick. But he was acquitted. It was the ’90s. Sh*t was crazy. Hammer pants, cocaine. Everybody had a stick in the ’90s.”

Michael the Black Man has a website that claims, among other things, that Cherokee Indians are the real KKK, and that ISIS is teaming up with Hillary Clinton to start a race war.

THOSE 90'S WILL DO IT TO YOU!

Trump Surgery

Hopeful Botched patient Tiffany Taylor is a huge fan of Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump.

In fact, she loves them so much, she has had 13 plastic surgery procedures to look like Ivanka’s “twin sister,” Tiffany Trump.

Perhaps Taylor was unaware that Ivanka already has a sister named Tiffany Trump. Regardless, the Houston woman is determined to make her face great again through plastic surgery.

Taylor said she decided she wanted to look like Ivanka shortly after ending a 10-year relationship. She said that in less than a year, she has had 13 procedures, and was fully anesthetized for three of them.

The work she had done to look more Ivanka-like was grafting of her cheeks, liposuction on her jaw, stomach, butt and arms, breast implants, eyelid lifts — top and bottom — and, of course, a nose job.

Taylor was hoping the doctors could give her a more Trump-like nose. But the surgeons were concerned that Taylor had not given her previous procedures time to heal. Dr Terry Dubrow said, “If you have more plastic surgery, the chances that you run into a significant complication are ‘yuuuuge.'”

Taylor was disappointed, and said, “I’m just looking to be greater, of course. Isn’t everybody?”

Taylor Swift Pics Fox Ads

Is that you, Taylor Swift?

Courtroom sketches of the superstar singer are being derided on social media for not quite capturing her famous visage.

Tweets about the renderings of Swift have provided levity for some in an otherwise serious case of alleged sexual assault.

Swift has accused former Denver radio DJ David Mueller of inappropriately touching her at a backstage meet-and-greet at one of her concerts in June 2013.

Photographers are not being allowed in the courtroom, so a courtroom sketch artist has been providing visual documentation.

One person joked in a tweet, "I think the artist's name is katheryn hudson" -- the birth name of Swift's sometimes rival, Katy Perry.

Why does the @taylorswift13 courtroom sketch look like #OwenWilson ???

Fewer TV commercials don't necessarily have to mean less ad revenue.

Fox Networks Group is lowering the national ad load in Sunday's broadcast of the Teen Choice Awards by 20%, but the awards show is on track to book 30% more ad revenue than last year, according to Suzanne Sullivan, exec VP of entertainment ad sales.

The Teen Choice Awards are the latest front in a growing experiment in TV, where ratings are on a long-term decline. The awards show itself drew just 1.8 million viewers last year, a 30% drop from the year prior. Networks hope reducing commercial interruptions can help keep viewers tuned in and increase the impact of the ads that remain.

But there are plenty of questions surrounding the economics. In order to maintain ad revenue while decreasing ad loads, networks have to raise prices on the inventory. Marketers are far from convinced that they should necessarily pay more to be in a program with less commercial clutter.

Not everyone is finding it easy to maintain ad revenue while working to improve the consumer experience on TV. Viacom CEO Bob Bakish blamed the company's 2% decline in ad revenue during the most recent quarter on the company's decision to reduce inflated ad loads on its networks, which include MTV, VH1and Comedy Central.

At the same time as Fox is reducing ad loads in the broadcast, the network is experimenting with the six-second ad format that's been championed by YouTube since last year. And YouTube has signed on to be a partner of the awards show, with plans to stream Teen Fest 2017, a free music and arts festival held in conjunction.