Hollywood Weekly: Minions Opens Soft, Taylor Ties the Knot, and Fast Forever Starts
Minions & Monsters wins the holiday weekend with a softer-than-usual launch, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce turn Madison Square Garden into a celebrity wedding scene, and Fast Forever begins production. Plus: Love Island USA tops streaming, Paramount offers a Warner merger concession, and Panem rolls out young Haymitch.
Minions are still loud enough to win the weekend, but the victory came with a wobble. Around them, Taylor Swift turned Madison Square Garden into a celebrity magnet, Paramount kept pushing its Warner deal through Europe, and Hollywood's franchise machine revved back up for Panem and the final Fast ride.
The week in 11 quick hits
Minions won the weekend, just not at full banana power
Minions & Monsters is tracking for a franchise-low $64.5 million five-day domestic opening, with $39.5 million expected over the three-day weekend. That was still enough for No. 1, while Toy Story 5 held second with an estimated $32 million-$36 million and Young Washington overperformed in third with about $18 million. Read more ↗
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce turned MSG into wedding central
Swift and Kelce confirmed their wedding Friday night when Madison Square Garden lit up with a "JusT&T Married!" sign. THR's guest roundup reads like an awards-show seating chart: Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez, Emma Stone, Reese Witherspoon, Jason Sudeikis, Hugh Grant, Ethan Hawke, Mariska Hargitay, Bowen Yang and many more were spotted around the event. Read more ↗
Fast Forever finally started production
Vin Diesel said production has begun on Fast Forever, the 11th and final mainline Fast & Furious movie, now dated for March 17, 2028. Diesel thanked fans for their patience and said the team has spent the past three and a half years trying to make "the most amazing finale." Read more ↗
Love Island USA owned the streaming chart
Season 8 of Love Island USA hit 1.31 billion viewing minutes for the week of June 1-7, landing at No. 1 overall on Nielsen's streaming chart and jumping 69 percent over last year's premiere week. Pixar's Hoppers led streaming movies with 1.16 billion minutes, while Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein's Netflix film Office Romance opened with 655 million minutes. Read more ↗
Netflix's July slate is franchise-heavy
Netflix's July lineup includes Enola Holmes 3, Little House on the Prairie, Quarterback season 3, The Hawk, Korean period drama The East Palace, the Heartstopper Forever finale film, and Kevin Hart's 72 Hours. The month also adds library comfort food from Memento and Gone Girl to the full original Hunger Games run. Read more ↗
Paramount offered Europe a merger concession
Paramount Skydance committed to exiting United International Pictures, its distribution joint venture with Universal, as part of the European review of its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. The European Commission pushed its provisional decision deadline from July 7 to July 22, while the U.K. is weighing a separate media-plurality review. Read more ↗
Lola Tung joined A24's Halina Reijn movie
Lola Tung, best known for The Summer I Turned Pretty, joined Please, the new A24 film from Babygirl and Bodies Bodies Bodies director Halina Reijn. Her role is being kept quiet, but she joins a cast that already includes Gracie Abrams, Tom Burke, Connor Storrie and David Jonsson. Read more ↗
Power fans got a Jarita origin-story twist
Asjha Cooper's Power Book III: Raising Kanan character Tiana was revealed as Jarita, the mother of Kanan's son Shawn in the original Power. Cooper will continue through the show's fifth and final season, then move to Power: Origins as a series regular. Read more ↗
Young Haymitch got his spotlight
Lionsgate marked July 4 with a new "Meet Haymitch" promo for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, putting Joseph Zada's young Haymitch Abernathy front and center. The prequel, due Nov. 20, 2026, follows the future mentor 24 years before Katniss Everdeen's story, beginning on the morning of the 50th Hunger Games. Read more ↗
Children of Blood and Bone drama spilled into public
Author Tomi Adeyemi said she has not seen Paramount's Children of Blood and Bone movie and "will not watch it," despite being credited as an executive producer and co-writer on the adaptation. The film, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Thuso Mbedu, Amandla Stenberg, Cynthia Erivo, Viola Davis, Idris Elba and others, is currently dated for Jan. 15, 2027. Read more ↗
The Supergirl postmortem got messier
THR's new behind-the-scenes report says DC Studios and director Craig Gillespie tested competing cuts of Supergirl in March after months of creative friction and uneven test scores. The finished film opened to $37.1 million, and the new report frames the miss as an early stress test for James Gunn and Peter Safran's broader DC plan. Read more ↗
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