Upon its release, Cool Hand Luke received favorable reviews and was a box-office success. Filming took place within California's San Joaquin River Delta region the set, imitating a prison farm in the Deep South, was based on photographs and measurements made by a crew the filmmakers sent to a Road Prison in Gainesville, Florida. Roger Ebert called Cool Hand Luke an anti-establishment film shot during emerging popular opposition to the Vietnam War. Set in the early 1950s, it is based on Donn Pearce's 1965 novel Cool Hand Luke. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison camp who refuses to submit to the system. Sony has the opening-weekend receipts from "Venom" to justify building out its Spider-Man universe.Cool Hand Luke is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Paul Newman and featuring George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning performance. If so, Todd Phillips' quirky Joker project, starring Joaquin Phoenix, could end up being less off the beaten trail than some anticipate. (Of course, they would set the stage for a wealth of '70s antiheroes and vigilantes, to boot.)Ĭould Hardy, as a symbiote-hosting journalist in "Venom," be signaling to the Spandexed pretty boys that gritty life outside the law is the way to go? How encouraging must it be at Hollywood studios packing comic-book franchises that even such a far-from-great movie - if slotted into a typically soft time such as October - can score big?Ī half-century ago, amid the turbulence of the Vietnam era, the Hollywood antihero enjoyed a popular '60s pinnacle with classic films such as Stuart Rosenberg's "Cool Hand Luke" (starring an impossibly charismatic Paul Newman) and Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" (starring the heat between Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway), all riding the rise of Sergio Leone's Man With No Name trilogy that made Clint Eastwood a global star. That audience embrace is reflected, too, in the film's CinemaScore of B-plus. Now, Sony has scored with another popular Marvel villain/vigilante born in the Reagan/Bush years.ĭespite the critical drubbing, Ruben Fleischer's "Venom" soared above projections over the weekend, grossing $80 million domestically - and a whopping $205 million worldwide in its debut. Once we're fatigued by superheroes as our stars, then, will comic-book villains and antiheroes represent the freshest title stories to tell?ĭeadpool's roots as villain and antihero - successfully adapted as cinematic crime-fighter - appear to have already pointed one way forward. If Sony's new hit "Venom" is any indication, perhaps that pivot will involve asking: Whose story takes the center spotlight? It's often said the difference between a good and great superhero movie sits with its villains. Yet what will Hollywood do if cracks begin to appear in the commercial ceiling - some day after the fourth "Avengers" team-up has concluded a Marvel Studios phase? (Chris Evans has already wrapped his Cap role with a social media bow.) Surely at some point, superhero movies - like the comic-book industry they spring from - will need to dramatically adapt. What has helped buoy the box office in recent years is the growing diversity of the title superheroes, and next spring's "Captain Marvel" will be a fresh test of increased marquee representation. Add films such as Warner Bros./DC's "Wonder Woman" ($822 million worldwide), as well as the "Deadpool" franchise ($1.52 billion total) and "Logan" ($619 million) for Fox, and big-screen superheroes are doing just fine, thank you, long after their exaggerated death notices. Since 2012, for instance, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has offered 15 movies that have each grossed more than a half-billion dollars worldwide - and six of those have grossed more than a billion dollars. Hardy, of course, played the Batman villain Bane to great acclaim in 2012's "The Dark Knight Rises." At that point, even such superhero-cinema directors as Matthew Vaughn had already said audiences were growing weary at caped adaptations.īox-office receipts, as we know, haven't borne that out. That commercial fear has yet to materialize, yet last weekend may have brought studio suits some comfort. The looming prospect of "superhero fatigue" has been hovering off the coast of Hollywood at least since the last time Tom Hardy starred in a blockbuster comic-crusader movie.
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