Who won at the box office this weekend? The Reynolds-Lively household

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Who won at the box office this weekend? The Reynolds-Lively household

2024-08-12 05:15 Last Updated At：05:20

NEW YORK (AP) — In the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively box-office showdown, both husband and wife came out winners.

Reynolds’ Marvel Studios smash “Deadpool & Wolverine” remained the top movie in North American theaters for the third straight week with $54.2 million in ticket sales according to studio estimates Sunday. Worldwide, it’s now surpassed $1 billion. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” though, was closely followed by “It Ends With Us,” the romance drama starring Lively, which surpassed expectations with a stellar $50 million debut.

Together, the films created a kind of family edition of “Barbenheimer,” in which a pair of very different movies thrived in part due to counterprogramming. Only this time, the opposite movies were fronted by one of Hollywood’s most famous couples. The films’ one-two punch wasn’t entirely unprecedented. In 1990, Bruce Willis’ “Die Hard 2” led the box office while Demi Moore’s “Ghost” came in second.

The weekend also featured a high-priced flop. “Borderlands,” the long-delayed $120-million videogame adaptation directed by Eli Roth, launched with a paltry $8.8 million for Lionsgate. The film, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, was shot all the way back in 2021. After delays and reshoots, it finally landed in theaters effectively dead-on-arrival; it scored just 10% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and seems likely contend for one of the worst movies of the year.

Meanwhile, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which co-stars Hugh Jackman, continued its march through box-office records. The film, directed by Shawn Levy, is only the second R-rated movie to reach $1 billion, following 2019’s “Joker.” In three weeks, it’s already one of the most lucrative Marvel releases and trails only Disney’s other 2024 smash, “Inside Out” ($1.6 billion worldwide) among movies released this year.

Lively makes a cameo in “Deadpool & Wolverine” but she both stars in and produced “It Ends With Us.” Adapted from the bestselling romance novel by Colleen Hoover, Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a Boston florist torn between two men, one from her present life (Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film) and another who was her first love (Brandon Sklenar).

“It Ends With Us” cost a modest $25 million to produce, so it will turn a significant profit for co-financers Columbia Pictures and Wayfarer Studios. Like another female-skewing summer-release book adaptation from Sony, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “It Ends With Us” could hold well through the typically slower August box-office period. Audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore.

Reynolds and Lively occasionally played up the convergence of their movies. Earlier this week, Reynolds posted a video of himself posing junket questions to Sklenar. The timing paid off especially for Lively, whose film doubled earlier opening-weekend forecasts.

Neon’s “Cuckoo,” a German Alps-set horror film by filmmaker Tilman Singer, opened with $3 million on 1,503 screens. It stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $54.2 million.

2. “It Ends With Us,” $50 million.

3. “Twisters,” $15 million.

4. “Borderlands,” $8.8 million.

5. “Despicable Me 4,” $8 million.

6. “Trap,” $6.7 million.

7. “Inside Out 2,” $5 million.

8. “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” $3.1 million.

9. “Cuckoo,” $3 million.

10. “Longlegs,” $2 million.

What to expect in South Korea now that Yoon has been removed from office

2025-04-04 17:56 Last Updated At：18:00

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean Constitutional Court’s decision to formally unseat President Yoon Suk Yeol is another test for the country’s democracy after the conservative-liberal divide deepened over his imposition of martial law and subsequent impeachment.

The court’s ruling Friday triggers a by-election for a new president.

Yoon still faces criminal charges of rebellion, but he's unlikely to fade into the background. He is likely to thrust himself onto the political agenda, rallying his hard-core supporters and influencing the choice of the next leader of his party, which has made intensive efforts to regroup around calls for his reinstatement.

Here’s what you need to know about the court decision.

All eight of the Constitutional Court’s current justices upheld the impeachment motion and dismissed Yoon as president.

The constitutional crisis began on Dec. 3 when Yoon declared martial law and dispatched troops to the National Assembly. Lawmakers defied hundreds of soldiers and police officers to enter the legislative chamber and unanimously voted to lift martial law within hours.

On Dec. 14, the liberal opposition-controlled assembly impeached Yoon and suspended his presidential powers, accusing him of violating the constitution by declaring martial law, deploying troops to the legislature and election offices, and attempting to arrest opponents.

The constitution limits the exercise of martial law to times of war or comparable national emergencies. Yoon argued his decree was necessary to bring attention to what he called an “anti-state” main opposition party that abused its legislative majority to obstruct his agenda.

Even under martial law, the president doesn’t have the authority to shut down the legislature. Shortly after Yoon’s martial law declaration, the military’s martial law command issued a proclamation prohibiting “all political activities,” including those of the National Assembly.

Yoon has insisted that he never intended to disable the legislature, saying he sent troops there to maintain order, not to disrupt the vote. He also denied accusations that he sought arrests of rival politicians.

Yoon’s claims were contradicted by testimony from several senior military and police officers, who described a deliberate but poorly executed attempt to seize the legislature. In removing Yoon from office, the Constitutional Court rejected his argument that martial law was merely a temporary warning or an appeal to the public, stating he clearly violated the constitution and laws by “mobilizing military and police forces to obstruct the exercise of legislative authority.”

South Korea must now hold a presidential election within 60 days — potentially one of the most tense votes since the country’s transition from dictatorship in the late 1980s. The country’s electorate is deeply divided along ideological lines and Yoon’s legal saga has exacerbated polarization.

Yoon’s conservative supporters rioted at the Seoul Western District Court that authorized his arrest in January. Yoon’s lawyers and the ruling party have openly questioned the credibility of that court and law enforcement institutions, and he has continued to express contempt for his liberal rivals, endorsing baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud to justify his ill-fated authoritarian push.

Experts say Yoon’s actions are fueling severe political division, making compromise unlikely, and threaten to undermine the election by inspiring voter distrust in the results. There’s a high risk of disruption during the voting process, making it crucial to elevate security at polling and counting stations, said Kim Su-min, a politics analyst and former Gumi city council member.

“If people start refusing to accept any election outcome that is unfavorable to them, the other side will start doing the same,” said Kim Tae-hyung, a professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. “If that cycle continues, trust in democracy will completely collapse.”

Yoon, never one to back down from a fight, may refuse to be ignored. In the coming weeks, he may rally supporters in the streets while trying to tighten his grip on the People Power Party, whose leadership is stacked with his loyalists and which has seen its popularity rebound with calls for his reinstatement.

In a statement issued through his lawyers, Yoon said he deeply regrets failing to live up to the public’s expectations, but didn’t specifically say whether he accepts the court’s ruling. Later, in a meeting with the conservative People Power Party leaders at the presidential residence he must vacate, Yoon urged them to prepare well and win the upcoming election, a party spokesperson told local media.

Facing a separate criminal trial on rebellion charges — punishable by death or life in prison — Yoon would strongly prefer a conservative president who could pardon him if convicted and will likely push to ensure his party’s primaries are won by a candidate he supports, Kim Su-min said. This would turn the upcoming election into a near-rematch between Yoon and liberal Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022 and has his own legal troubles.

Whoever it is, South Korea’s next leader will face critical challenges. The turmoil caused by Yoon’s power grab and impeachment has disrupted high-level diplomacy and hurt the economy, as well as weakening Seoul’s ability to respond to tariffs and other shifts in U.S. policy under President Donald Trump.

Trump’s diplomatic lineups for South Korea and neighboring countries are expected to be completed before a new government is inaugurated in Seoul. This could pose a significant foreign policy challenge to South Korea, which won’t have a chance to explain its positions to the Trump administration ahead of formal negotiations, said Paik Wooyeal, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University.

Yoon was released from prison in March after the Seoul Central District Court cancelled his arrest and allowed him to stand trial without being detained.

But as a former president, Yoon has lost the presidential privilege that protected him from most criminal prosecution except on grave charges like rebellion. Prosecutors can now pursue other criminal charges related to Yoon’s martial law declaration and seek to detain him.

Legal experts said the Constitutional Court’s dismissal of Yoon could increase the chance he will be convicted of rebellion charges at the Seoul Central District Court.

Yoon’s defense minister, police chief and other senior military commanders have also been arrested and indicted over their roles in the martial law imposition.