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“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” has opened with a solid $3.4 million at 2,850 North American locations in Thursday night preview showings that began at 7 p.m.

That was enough for the musical to top Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer 2,” which launched with $3.1 million at 2,934 sites in Thursday previews that began at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Universal’s follow-up to its 2008 musical “Mamma Mia!” is tracking for a three-day tally between $30 million and $36 million when it opens in over 3,317 venues. Its predecessor opened with $27 million on the same weekend a decade ago and finished with $145 million domestically and $615 million worldwide on a $52 million budget.

“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” is both a sequel and a prequel, highlighted again by Abba songs. Most of the original cast — including Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, and Dominic Cooper — are reprising their roles with Cher

Richard Madden, best known for playing Robb Stark on “Game of Thrones,” is in negotiations to join Taron Egerton in Paramount’s Elton John biopic “Rocketman” as the music icon’s longtime manager, John Reid.

Jamie Bell is also on board to play Bernie Taupin with Dexter Fletcher attached to helm the project. Lee Hall penned the script. Paramount Pictures will finance and distribute the pic.

Reid, a legendary music manager in the ’70s and ’80s who also helped with Queen’s rise to fame in the mid-’70s, managed John from 1970 to 1998. Along the way, the two also became lovers, but their romance ended after five years following the leak of a letter from John’s accountants detailing Reid’s spending that was uncovered by the Daily Mail. The two would continue to work together professionally until 1998.

Matthew Vaughn and his Marv Films will produce, along with John and

Vikings star Katheryn Winnick, Lewis Tan (Into the Badlands), Sons of Anarchy alum Tommy Flanagan, and Tzi Ma (Meditation Park) are set as series regulars opposite Iko Uwais and Byron Mann in Netflix’s Wu Assassins, from Tony Krantz of Flame Ventures (24), John Wirth (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles; Falling Skies) and Nomadic Pictures.

Written by Wirth, who also serves as showrunner, Wu Assassins, set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, is a martial arts crime series with supernatural elements. It stars Uwais as Kai Jin, who becomes the latest and last Wu Assassin, chosen to round up the powers of an ancient triad and restore balance once again. Mann plays Uncle Six.

Winnick will play Christine “C.G.” Gavin, an undercover cop caught in the middle of a gang war that’s breaking out in Chinatown. Tan will portray Lu Xin Lee, a suave, fierce intelligent

Jennifer Hudson will be making a new movie “Memory” playing the “glamour cat” Grizabella in Universal and Working Title’s big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s beloved stage musical “Cats.”

Taylor Swift, James Corden and Ian McKellen have also joined the cast of Tom Hooper’s film, an individual with knowledge of the production told TheWrap. It will be the British director’s first musical since his award-winning 2012 hit adaptation of “Les Misérables.”

Lee Hall (“Billy Elliot”) wrote the screenplay based on Lloyd Webber’s 1981 musical adaptation T.S. Eliot book of “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”

Also Read: Grumpy Cat Claws Her Way Into Broadway Musical 'Cats'

Production is expected to begin later this year on the film, the latest attempt to adapt a hit stage musical to the screen.

The Eliot-inspired tale of a herd of cats attending the cherished Jellicle Ball, where

Exclusive: Norman Reedus will be taking the stage at Comic-Con today with his compatriots from The Walking Dead but the actor will also be taking it the big screen with STXfilms in the not so distant future. Reedus and the Adam Fogelson run division of STX Entertainment have inked a deal to develop a genre feature for the Ride host to both star in and produce, I've learned. Much like the agreements that STXfilms has put together with Jason Statham and Guardians of the Gala…

Zazie Beetz is moving from absurd superheroics to a supervillain character drama.

The actress, who co-starred in Deadpool 2, is in talks to join Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, the stand-alone origin project from Warner Bros. and The Hangover helmer Todd Phillips.

Phoenix is portraying the DC Comics villain in a film that is more moderately budgeted and darker than the studio’s other DC-based movies, known as the DC Cinematic Universe. The project is also described as more of a dark character study than a crime thriller, with Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy as the tonal watchwords.

While details of the Phillips- ...

Andrew Lincoln is set to exit his role as Rick Grimes in "The Walking Dead," and the creator of the zombie drama has revealed there is "something amazing planned."

Speaking exclusively to IMDb, Robert Kirkman commented publicly for the first time since news of Lincoln’s departure from the AMC zombie drama was reported at the end of May.

In an interview with Kevin Smith ahead of San Diego Comic-Con, Kirkman was asked if Season 9 of the show would be Lincoln’s last. "It’s looking that way," said Kirkman, who is executive producer on the drama. "It does make the differences between the show and the comic a little bit more pronounced.

"But, at the end of the day, it’s all about Andrew Lincoln. I mean, this is a human being. This is someone I’ve known for almost a decade. Someone I love. He’s been sweating in Georgia, away from his family, for so long."

Lincoln has been the leading man of the show since its launch in October 2010 and is known for his commitment to the role, in which he plays a man tortured by the loss of those closest to him in a world ravaged by zombies and maniacal villains.

"He cares about the fans. He cares about the show deeply. He wants to do something special on the way out. We’ve got something amazing planned," Kirkman said. "I wouldn’t want to spoil anything, but anyone who’s been a fan of his journey, who loves Rick Grimes, who loves the world of "The Walking Dead," you’re going to want to see what we do."

It is unknown whether the character will die in the show or exit in another way, but it will almost certainly be a question raised when several of the cast, including Lincoln, appear on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday.

Either way, his fate will be revealed when "The Walking Dead" returns for Season 9 in October.

Watch the full interview here

"This is the best season yet," Vince Gilligan told Comic-Con today of Better Call Saul's fourth season that starts next month. "The overlap between Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad gets closer and closer," added the creator of the Bryan Cranston-Aaron Paul Emmy winner and co-creator of its prequel of sorts, driving the cavernous Hall H crazy with anticipation. Of course, with a Breaking Bad reunion panel to directly follow the Bcs shindig on Thursday, Gilligan and fellow…

To the very best of our knowledge, this weekend will serve as the first time ever that eight of the top ten films at the weekend box office will be sequels. Both of the past two weekends have featured seven sequels within the top ten * which had happened before (see the very same weekend two years ago) * but with the release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, The Equalizer 2 and Unfriended: Dark Web this weekend, it's virtually guaranteed at least eight of this weekend's top ten films will be sequels. The sequel leading the charge will be Universal's release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which debuts ten years after the first film delivered over $144 million domestically and an impressive $609.8 million worldwide, which, at the time, was the highest grossing musical worldwide until Beauty and the Beast exploded to $1.26 billion worldwide last year. While Mamma Mia 2 won't challenge Beauty's record,

Did you just sense a disturbance in the Force? Don’t worry, it’s a good thing: Star Wars: The Clone Wars is returning to TV, with 12 all-new episodes to air on Disney’s forthcoming streaming service.

The news was revealed Thursday during a 10th-anniversary Clone Wars panel at San Diego Comic-Con, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with Lucasfilm animation chief Dave Filoni announcing the revival for a room full of fans. The official Star Wars Twitter feed also confirmed the news, declaring that Clone Wars is “reporting in for another tour of duty”:

Star Wars: #TheCloneWars. Reporting in for another tour of duty.

The new season of American Horror Story is taking shape.

The upcoming eighth season of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's FX anthology is titled Apocalypse, the networked revealed after a late-night stunt at this this year's Comic-Con. Once again, the series took advantage of the annual confab to drop the title reveal, revealing the news on social media early Friday morning.

The upcoming cycle, which premieres Sept. 12, is set to feature the highly anticipated crossover of earlier seasons Murder House and Coven.

The Apocalypse title and imagery (below) appear to be a callback to the Antichrist baby of season one's Murder ...

Exclusive: Jordan Peele's Us continues to beef up its cast, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Anna Diop the latest to join the thriller starring The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Elisabeth Moss, Black Panther stars Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke, and Tim Heidecker. Peele is writing and directing the pic, the follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Get Out. The new pic is described as a social thriller and is based on Peele's original idea. It’ll open in theaters March 15, 2019 via Universal. U…

Danny Rand will be throwing more punches this fall.

Marvel’s Iron Fist will return for Season 2 on Friday, Sept. 7, it was announced at the superhero drama’s Comic-Con panel on Thursday.

Also revealed at the panel: Alice Eve (Star Trek Into Darkness), whose involvement in Iron Fist‘s second season was first reported last December, is playing Typhoid Mary, the infamous machete-wielding Marvel villain with multiple personalities. In a scene previewed at Comic-Con, Mary handily wiped the floor with Colleen and Luke Cage‘s Misty (who will appear in the new episodes as Misty and Colleen inch closer to

Screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, who wrote for some of the most iconic films in Japanese history, including The Seven Samurai and Rashomon from director Akira Kurosawa, has died. He was 100.

Hashimoto died Thursday at his home in Tokyo from pneumonia, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.

Hashimoto wrote or co-wrote more than 70 screenplays, including many of Kurosawa's classics, also including The Hidden Fortress (1958). He directed three films as well, including I Want to Be a Shellfish (1959), and carried on as a screenwriter until suffering a stroke in his 90s.

Born in Hyogo Prefecture in April 1918, Hashimoto came up ...

After a heated bidding war, Brad Weston's Makeready has closed a deal to finance Queen & Slim, a hot feature package with a script by Emmy winner Lena Waithe (Master of None) and to star Get Out breakout Daniel Kaluuya. The film is based on an idea and treatment from best-selling author James Frey (A Million Little Pieces, Katerina) and story by Waithe and Frey

The script is described as a Bonnie and Clyde story that centers on a black couple out on a first date whose night goes terribly awry. They end up killing a police officer in self-defense and, on the ...

AMC Network’s SVOD service Sundance Now and streaming service Shudder have jointly acquired the Sky production “A Discovery of Witches,” both companies announced at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday.

The eight-episode drama is based on Deborah Harkness’ novel of the same name and produced by Bad Wolf, the team behind “The Night Of,” “Doctor Who,” “Torchwood,” “Da Vinci’s Demons” and the upcoming adaptation of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials.”

Matthew Goode, Teresa Palmer, Alex Kingston, Valarie Pettiford and Owen Teale star in the Oxford love story in which witches, vampires and daemons live and work hidden among humans. Palmer plays Diana Bishop, a witch historian denying her heritage. Goode plays Matthew Clairmont, a vampire and geneticist hiding a dark family secret.

Also Read: Yvette Nicole Brown Named Interim 'Talking Dead' Host as AMC Investigates Chris Hardwick

“This captivating story is filled with intrigue, romance and

Exclusive: Multiple sources tell Deadline that Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is headed to the Venice Film Festival. Although no one is officially confirming it, we have been told the festival will screen the Warner Bros movie out of competition as a world premiere on Friday, August 31. That will be one of several major awards films to launch in Venice, with the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed The Favourite starring Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz also on premiering there along…

YouTube has ordered a 10-episode second season of critically praised supernatural thriller series Impulse, directed and executive produced by Doug Liman (Bourne Identity), for premiere on YouTube Premium in 2019. YouTube says the series pilot, which is available for free on the service, has drawn nearly eight million views since it premiered on June 6. In Impulse, which hails from Universal Cable Productions and studio-based Hypnotic (Suits), Maddie Hasson stars as…

Warning: Spoilers for the first half of “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 4 below.

The full trailer for the second half of “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 4 dropped during the AMC drama’s San Diego Comic-Con panel in Hall H on Friday, and the post-Madison Clark world is looking pretty bleak — especially after a giant storm sweeps through, sweeping away zombies and everything else in its path.

The storm seems to break up the group, and Alicia says “They could be anywhere. We could find them, or we could find them dead, or we could die trying to find them.”

Also Read: 'Fear the Walking Dead' Season 4 Teaser: It Looks Like the Storm Has Arrived (Video)

We also see a few new characters in the trailer, one older man who Luciana decides to help because she “has some things to make up for” and a couple who keep

Items from Robin Williams‘ personal collection of watches, film memorabilia and artwork will head to a Sotheby’s auction block this October.

Creating a Stage: The Collection of Marsha and Robin Williams also includes autographed movie scripts, props, awards and wardrobe from the late actor’s career.

The auction also features “contemporary art, including sculpture by Niki de SaintPhalle and street art by Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Invader; more than 40 watches from Robin’s personal collection; a selection of bicycles and sports memorabilia; furniture and decorative art from their residences; and more,