Exclusive: Tom Hardy Is Getting a Massive Payday to Star in Guy Ritchie’s Paramount+ Series 'The Associate'

Happy Monday, folks!

Apologies for going radio silent last week, other than Friday’s FYC blast. My move from Miracle Mile to Koreatown was all-consuming, but things went smoothly — far better than my last move — and I’m now settled into my new place, which will serve as the base of operations for this humble newsletter for the next 18 months.

This weekend, I saw Terrifier 3, which opened to $18.3 million — a huge win for indie horror, and perhaps a cause for alarm in America, which is home to a lot of sick fucks these days. Back in my day, the Terrifier movies would’ve been strictly for the freaks and the weirdos — like me! — but these days, that kind of carnage has gone mainstream and now makes for mass entertainment on a Friday night, judging by the packed theater in which I saw Damien Leone’s splatterfest. Expect a fourth film, and possibly a fifth as well, per Leone.

Unfortunately, Art the Clown’s success came at the expense of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night and Ali Abbasi’s acclaimed Donald Trump movie The Apprentice, both of which were largely ignored by audiences — but not by Paul Schrader — grossing $3.4 million and $1.6 million on 2300+ and 1700+ screens, respectively.

That’s not a great start for either movie, but hopefully, they’ll find their audiences over the next few weeks and have legs in theaters, as neither is being rushed onto a streaming service a la The Wild Robot, which is coming to PVOD on Oct. 15 — just 18 days after its theatrical release date. A sequel is already in the works, too…

Meanwhile, Joker: Folie a Deux fell off a cliff, dropping 81 percent and finishing in 4th place with just $7 million — a sorry haul for the sequel’s second weekend, and further proof that word of mouth on this movie has been downright toxic. ( a nine-figure loss, but again, if you’re a movie studio, you’re not going to win every big bet. I’m not sure what box office pundits want Warner Bros. to do — stop betting?

In tonight’s newsletter, you’ll read about Tom Hardy’s eye-popping payday for his new Guy Ritchie series on Paramount+ and my review of J.C. Lee’s new thriller Bad Genius, which examines a high school cheating scandal.

There are also stories about new movies from Robert Downey Jr. and Henry Cavill, as well as Kevin Costner and Bryce Dallas Howard. Plus, Hugh Jackman teams up with Kate Hudson, Chloë Grace Moretz plots a new TV series, the latest Beatles casting rumors, and my thoughts on the trailer for Justin Kurzel’s terrorism thriller The Order starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult.

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