Entertainment Tonight.

The highly anticipated book-turned-movie “Gone Girl” finally revealed a first look at Ben Affleck in the coveted lead role.

Twentieth Century Fox tweeted a movie still from the upcoming drama thriller, showing Affleck as Nick Dunne, the husband to a missing woman. “Gone Girl” is adapted from the wildly popular novel of the same name by author Gillian Flynn. Affleck’s character becomes a murder suspect after his wife, played by Rosamund Pike (“Pride Prejudice”), goes mysteriously missing. 

The film is headed up by acclaimed auteur David Fincher, whose work includes “Fight Club,” “The Social Network,” and another popular book-turned-movie, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” Fincher also worked with Flynn on the screenplay.

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By Todd Cunningham
TheWrap

“Frozen” has become a force of nature at the box office, and on Monday crossed the $500 million mark globally.

The 3D animated film from Disney Animation was edged out for the top spot over the long Christmas weekend by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” — but no one at the studio was disappointed.

That’s in part because they remember that “Frozen” was beaten out over the long Thanksgiving weekend, too. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” and Disney’s tale of Anna and Elsa combined to drive a record holiday weekend, with the $93.6 million debut by “Frozen” topping that of “Toy Story 2” and “Tangled.”

And it’s shown remarkable staying power since then.

The $28.6 million fifth-weekend showing by “Frozen” was up a whopping 47 percent from the previous week, a feat that has been topped only twice before – by “Avatar” ($42.8 million) and “Titanic” ($30 million), according to Box Office Mojo.

Also from TheWrap:  ‘Hobbit’ Holds Off ‘Frozen’ as Nail-Biter Caps Record 2013 at Box Office

“Frozen” topped $250 million mark at the domestic box office Monday, and is on the way to $300 million.

Its overseas numbers are impressive, too. It brought in $50.5 million over the weekend and with about three quarters of its run complete, it’s over $250 million abroad as well. China and Japan are still to come for “Frozen,” which was produced by Peter Del Vecho (“The Princess and the Frog”) on a budget of $150 million.

What’s driving it?

Mainly, it’s that critics and audiences love it. It has an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and received a rare “A+” CinemaScore. Several critics compared it to earlier Disney classics, and TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde called it the best animated Disney musical since “Beauty and the Beast.”

Like “The Little Mermaid,” it’s loosely based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen.”

It follows fearless optimist Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell), who teams up with Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) in an epic journey to find Anna’s sister Elsa (Idina Menzel), whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter. Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, who wrote the screenplay, directed the film and the husband-and-wife’s team of Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez wrote the songs.

The marketing has been on the money, taking full advantage of the Disney brand with the Thanksgiving launch and playing on its connection to another Disney Animation hit, 2011’s “Tangled.” It also played up the fun — hello Olaf, you silly snowman — and the protagonists’ family ties. In earlier iterations, the Snow Queen was a flat-out villain, rather than a troubled sis.

The advertising also tied it to 2012′s “Wreck-It-Ralph,” another Disney Animation movie that clicked with kids and adults. A minor flap over an animator’s comments regarding crafting female characters melted away quickly.

“Frozen” has benefited greatly from having the family field largely to itself. “Free Birds” was largely played out by Thanksgiving, and “Walking With Dinosaurs” failed to connect, so “Frozen” has had two unencumbered holiday runs.

That’s not changing anytime soon. The next animated family film scheduled is Open Road’s “The Nut Job” on Jan. 17.

Five Christmas Day wide openers couldn’t keep “Frozen” from battling for the top spot, and this weekend’s new entry, paramount’s horror film “Paranorma Acitvity: The Marked Ones,” isn’t kids stuff. So don’t be surprised if Anna and Elsa are up there with Bilbo Baggins again.

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MILAN (AP) — The Italian distributor of the film “12 Years a Slave” has apologized for promotional posters attacked as racist for featuring Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, despite their relatively minor roles, and not the film’s star, Chiwetel Ejiofor.

BIM Distribuzione said in a statement Monday the “inappropriate materials have now been withdrawn” and expressed “regret any distraction this incident may have caused.” BIM said the new posters feature only Ejiofor, who has been nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a freed black man who is abducted and sold into slavery.

The distributor said the posters featuring Pitt and Fassbender were aimed at “giving wide representation of what is told in the film itself.”

The film by director Steve McQueen opens in February in Italy.

By Todd Cunningham
TheWrap

Lionsgate was scrambling Tuesday to take down posters for “12 Years a Slave” from Italian movie theaters, after complaints that they subjugated black star Chiwetal Ejiofor in favor of the better-known and white stars Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender.

Some of the posters had Pitt front and center, others featured Fassbender; in both, star Ejiofor is pictured much smaller in the lower corner running as the main character, Solomon Northrup.

The misrepresentation of director Steve McQueen’s brutal slavery saga, a frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar, set off a storm in the blogosphere, after it was pointed out late Monday by Carefree Black Girl.

When Lionsgate’s Summit Entertainment, which is distributing “12 Years” in Italy, became aware of the posters, it said they “were unauthorized and were not approved by any of the producers or licensors of the film,” in a statement.

Italian distributor BIM Distribuzione wasn’t talking, but most of the offending posters had been removed by late Tuesday night, according to people familiar with the matter.

It’s not unusual for foreign exhibitors to play up the biggest name stars to sell U.S. movies, but this one drew fire because Ejiofor is very much the center of the film as a man kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Pitt, who is a producer on the film, plays a minor role as a Canadian carpenter and Fassbender is a cruel slave master.

“Summit Entertainment, acting as exclusive sales agent for the licensors, is investigating and taking immediate action to stop the distribution of any unauthorized posters and to have those posters currently in the marketplace recalled,” the studio said after reports about the posters surfaced.

The $20 million drama from Regency Enterprises and the U.K.’s FilmFour has brought in more than $37 million at the box office in North America for distributor Fox Searchlight. A re-release is planned after the Oscar nominations on Jan. 16.

“12 Years a Slave” is just beginning its foreign run. Summit has the international rights, with the exception of the U.K., where FilmFour has them.

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By Jeff Sneider
TheWrap

Has director Quentin Dupieux found his movie muse in Marilyn Manson?

Manson co-stars in Dupieux’s latest opus “Wrong Cops” and the director has cast the shock rocker as a fashion photographer in an upcoming comedy that has already been shot in secret.

Manson revealed the news, among other things, in a recent interview with LA Weekly to promote “Wrong Cops,” which opens in Los Angeles on Friday and is currently playing in New York.

Manson plays an emo teenager named David Delores Frank in “Wrong Cops,” but his next collaboration with Dupieux brings a very different challenge for the 44 year-old performer. The “Beautiful People” singer described his next character as “a combination of Kenny Powers and Karl Lagerfeld.”

Powers, of course, is the foul-mouthed protagonist played by Danny McBride on HBO’s “Eastbound and Down,” which Manson recently guest-starred on as a roller-skating waiter. Meanwhile, Lagerfeld is the famous German fashion designer known for his white hair and permanent scowl.

Dupieux is the director of “Rubber,” an absurdist comedy about a killer tire, so the possibilities of what laughs he could wring out of such a crazy character are literally endless.

In an interview with Collider, Dupieux spoke highly of Manson’s acting abilities. “Now I can say he’s a really strong actor because we did something completely different, away from the character of ‘Wrong Cops’ and away from his Manson thing. I wrote a new part for him and he played it with some new inspiration, and it’s amazing. It’s really incredibly good. I can’t talk about it right now because it’s a secret project, but it’s amazing.”

Manson has actually been in numerous movies over the past 15 years, including “Jawbreaker,” “Party Monster” and David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” though his best performance can be seen in Asia Argento’s adaptation of “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.”

The highlight of Manson’s LA Weekly interview was his nickname for his penis: Michael Shannon — yes, the “angry and powerful” actor who played the villainous General Zod in “Man of Steel.” Manson also revealed that Shia LaBeouf allegedly calls his penis “Richard Dreyfuss.” We don’t think he plagiarized that one from Daniel Clowes.

By Todd Cunningham
TheWrap

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” beat out “Frozen” in a battle as tight as the last lap of a NASCAR race to win its third straight weekend and cap a record year at the 2013 box office.

Peter Jackson’s second movie in his “Hobbit” trilogy, a prequel to the “Lord of the Rings,” will take in $29.8 million over the three days, and has rung up nearly $50 million since Christmas Day. It’s rolled up $190 million domestically and more than $500 million worldwide since opening on Dec. 13 for Warner Bros., New Line and MGM.

Disney Animation’s 3D “Frozen” was just behind it with $28.8 million for the three days — an eye-popping 47 percent increase from last weekend — and $44.2 million over the five days. After six weeks, “Frozen” is about to pass $250 million in the U.S. and is bearing down on $500 million worldwide.

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Final numbers will come Monday, but with “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” at $20.1 million, “American Hustle” at $19.5 million and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” opening to $18.5 million, the jam-packed holiday weekend pushed the overall box office ahead of last year’s record grosses of $10.83 billion.

The crazy-crowding at Christmas meant some movies were going to take box-office belly flops, and they did. Keanu Reeves’ pricey samurai epic “47 Ronin,” the Sylvester Stallone–Robert De Niro boxing comedy “Grudge Match” and Justin Bieber’s concert documentary all bombed since opening on Christmas Day.

“The Hobbit” is on course to match the $1 billion global haul of 2012’s first film, “An Unexpected Journey,” and Warner Bros. has succeeded in making it a holiday habit. Like the first two films, next year’s “There and Back” will open in mid-December.

“The finale in a series almost always does the best of a series, so we’re very much looking forward to next year,” the studio’s executive vice president for distribution Jeff Goldstein told TheWrap. “We’ve still got a long way to go with this one though.”

Also: Critics reviews

He noted that while “Smaug” started a little more slowly than the first film, it’s picked up steam over the holidays. That’s particularly true at Imax theaters, which accounted for 17 percent of the grosses — up from 13 percent last weekend — from its market-high 3,928 theaters. The majority of those are 3D which, like the large-format screens, brings a ticket-price upcharge.

“Frozen” is benefiting from tremendous word of mouth, with an 89 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an “A+” Cinemascore. It also got a boost when its only potential competition for families over the holidays, “Walking With Dinosaurs,” tanked last week.

The Will Ferrell comedy “Anchorman 2” was third and has pushed its domestic total to $83.6 million for paramount. Unlike the 1994 original film, however, the sequel is scoring overseas and with $25.5 million from abroad, Ron Burgundy and his newsroom buddies have taken in $109 million worldwide in two weeks, easily eclipsing the $85.5 million haul of the first film’s entire run.

The only movie that improved as much as much from last week as “Frozen” was another Disney movie, its Oscar hopeful “Saving Mr. Banks.” The tale behind the making of “Mary Poppins” starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson brought in $14.3 million for the three days — a 50 percent jump from last week.

More: Leonardo DiCaprio’s notable roles

That put it in sixth, ahead of another Christmas Day opener, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” The Fox comedy starring Ben Stiller blew past analysts’ expectations with a three-day total of $13 million and a five-day haul of $25.6 million.

“Our exit polls were very strong, we got a “B+” Cinema Score and we have a PG rating,” said Fox distribution chief Chris Aronson. “That’s going to help us a lot in January, especially if we can get some love at the Golden Globes and Oscar nominations.”

“American Hustle” also topped its first-week showing, and David O. Russell’s quirky comedy beat out “Wolf of Wall Street for fourth. Sony’s Oscar hopeful starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence has pushed its domestic total past $60 million since going nationwide last weekend.

The R-rated “The Wolf of Wall Street,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the sex and drugs-fueled saga of the 1980 stock market boom, brought in $34.5 million over the five days, right in line with expectations for Red Granite production.

The film’s no-holds-barred portrayals of debauchery clicked with critics, who have it at 76 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but may have divided moviegoers. Audiences, which were 54 percent male and 90 percent over 25 years of age, gave it just a “C” CinemaScore.

“47 Ronin” wound up with a dismal $9.9 million for the weekend and $20.6 million for the five days since its Christmas opening. That’s lousy, given its $170 million budget, but Universal saw it coming and took steps to mitigate the damage.

“We adjusted film costs in previous quarters and as a result our financial performance will not be negatively impacted this quarter by its theatrical performance,” the studio said in a statement.
Its audience, which was 62 percent male and 53 percent over 30, gave it a “B+” CinemaScore.

“Grudge Match” couldn’t get off the canvas, taking in $7.3 million over the weekend and $13.4 million since opening on Christmas.

The PG-13 pairing of Stallone and De Niro drew older moviegoers the audience was 68 percent over 25 and mainly men, just not enough of them. They gave it “B+” CinemaScore, but the comedy directed and produced by Peter Segal is a very long shot to cover its $40 million budget for Warner Bros.

Open Road’s concert documentary “Believe” managed just $2 million for the three days and $4.2 million for the five. To put that in perspective, the young pop star’s “Never Say Never’ opened to $29 million in 2011 and went on to take in $73 million.

The top  10:
1. “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” $29.8M;
2. “Frozen,” $28.8M;
3. “Anchorman 2,” $20.1M;
4. “American Hustle,” $19.5M;
5. “The Wolf of Wall Street,” $18.5M;
6. “Saving Mr. Banks,” $14M;
7. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” $13M;
8. “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” $10.2M;
9. “47 Ronin,” $9.8M;
10. “Tyler Perry’s a Madea Christmas,” $7.4M

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By Tim Molloy
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Two publishers say they are weighing plagiarism claims against Shia LaBeouf after he lifted their material for his short film and a comic book.

Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson told Publishers Weekly he  is “exploring all legal actions” after Labeouf borrowed heavily from Melville House author Benoit Duteurtre’s novel “The Little Girl and the Cigarette” in the actor’s mini-comic, “Stale N Mate.”

Meanwhile, Daniel Clowes’ publisher, Fantagraphics, told PW that Clowes is “exploring all legal options,” after Labeouf admitted plagiarizing his character Justin M. Damiano for his short film HowardCantour.com, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

LaBeouf has not addressed the Duteurtre plagiarism, which was extensively detailed last week in a post by Josh Farkas on RefreshingContent.com.

Laboeuf did say he hopes to work out a deal with Clowes. But in an absurd twist, Labeouf’s tweeted apology for ripping of Clowes was also plagiarized: It was cobbled together form quotes from Kanye West, Robert McNamara, and Tiger Woods.

It doesn’t end there: Another comic by the actor, “Let’s F—ing Party,” steals from poet Charles Bukowski, and when Labeouf exited the play “Orphans,” he explained himself by plagiarizing both David Mamet and Esquire writer Tom Chiarella, Farkas noted.

Say this for LaBeouf: He’s well-read.

Laboeuf’s publicist did not immediately return a call for comment from TheWrap on Friday. An email said her office was closed for the holidays.

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NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian actor Farooq Shaikh, the plump, unlikely hero of scores of Bollywood films, has died. He was 65.

Press Trust of India reported that Shaikh suffered a heart attack Friday in Dubai, where he was visiting with his family.

Shaikh’s film career began on a high note with the 1973 new wave film “Garm Hawa,” about the 1947 partition of the subcontinent at the end of British rule. His performance earned him a key role in director Satyajit Ray’s “The Chess Players,” about the decadence of India’s feudal classes.

Shaikh’s cherubic looks struck a chord with ordinary people who tended to identify with his man on the street image.

Bollywood reacted sadly to the news of Shaikh’s death, with several celebrities tweeting their condolences.

Noted Indian actress Shabana Azmi, who described herself as a close friend, said she was still trying to come to terms with Shaikh’s death.

“Forty years ago, he and I started a theater group. It was a very long association, so it’s difficult to speak about his death,” Azmi tweeted.

Azmi and Shaikh appeared together in more than 300 performances of the play “Tumhari Amrita.”

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted: “A true gentleman, a wonderful colleague! A quiet honesty about him. Very, very sad.”

Shaikh was active in Mumbai’s theater scene, and acted in a Hindi version of the satirical British comedy “Yes Minister” on Indian television. He also produced a popular TV show on which he interviewed Hindi film stars.

Shaikh is survived by his wife and two daughters.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian director and writer Dinu Cocea, who made popular historical adventure movies before being forced into exile by the Communists, has died, his daughter tells a Romanian news agency. He was 84.

Cocea died of heart failure in a hospital in Paris on Thursday, daughter Oana Cocea was quoted by Mediafax as saying on Saturday.

Born into a well-known theatrical family, he debuted with “the Outlaws” in 1966 and made 15 movies in Romania. However, he had to emigrate to Paris in 1986 after he angered Communist censors with a script about a dam that was plagued by corruption.

He said in interviews that Romanian officials never forgave him. Returning after the 1989 revolution with plans to make a movie, he said he was asked to come up with one million dollars, and the next day the sum was doubled

The American Academy of Film gave him an award in 2000 for his work.

By Tony Maglio
TheWrap

James Franco has learned to harness the power of the selfie, and so can you!

The multihyphenate published an editorial in Thursday’s New York Times Arts section, where he almost academically breaks down the value — and proper usage — of the self-pointed snap-and-upload phenomenon. His analysis on the seemingly silly topic is far more enlightening than one might assume. It is also revealing, which Franco argues is the entire point of the selfie.

“In a visual culture, the selfie quickly and easily shows, not tells, how you’re feeling, where you are, what you’re doing,” Franco concluded in the piece.

“The likes spin out of control for selfies of me and my two handsome brothers, especially Dave, the other actor,” Franco began his explanation, while admitting his growing addiction to Instagram.

But his reasoning is not self-absorbed, just self-aware. The scholar in Franco has studied the trends from his own page. He continued in the piece, “I can see which posts don’t get attention or make me lose followers: those with photos of art projects; videos telling the haters to go away (in not so many words); and photos with poems.”

“But a well-stocked collection of selfies seems to get attention,” Franco added. “And attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking.”

So the once-called “king of selfies” has a plan: “For every photo of a book, painting or poem, I try to post a selfie with a puppy, a topless selfie or a selfie with Seth Rogen, because these are all things that are generally liked.”

JamesFrancoTV, the actor-writer-director’s official Instagram page has more than one million followers. Franco had 1,659 posts at the time of this writing — many of them are selfies.

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