Good
morning, Brett.
Good morning,
Don.
You're on your way to Hollywood next week,
huh?
Next week I'll be out there to visit some studios and be on assignment.
So out there next week.
Having lunch with the stars or anything?
Anybody we should know about?
You know, any big stars?
I'll let you know if anything fun happens.
Other than Greg Marcus, any other big stars out there?
Wow, look at you hobnobbing in Hollywood.
Wow, Hollywood Hoffman.
Okay, got a couple of new movies opening up this weekend at theaters and let's start off with By Any Means.
Yes, this is a rated R crying thriller.
It's a drama and it is based on a true story, getting good rotten tomatoes ratings.
By Any Means takes us back to Mississippi in the 1960s.
where a young black FBI agent is sent to investigate a wave of brutal killings targeting civil rights leaders.
Now, the unusual twist of this movie is that he's forced to work alongside notorious mafia hitman and FBI informant Greg Scarpa played by Mark Wahlberg.
And this is really interesting because Greg Scarpa was actually a real person.
He was the captain of New York's Colombo crime family while serving simultaneously as
a secret FBI informant.
And the FBI really did use them during their investigations.
And in fact, on the set, they had Scarpa's family there as advisors.
And Scarpa's son said Wahlberg's transformation was so convincing.
that seeing him made him feel like he was watching his father on set.
So really interesting here, really good movie drama.
It is by enemies and that is rated R.
I saw the preview for it.
It actually looks very, very good.
And trailers sometimes can be deceiving.
This one looks really good.
Want to hear my crime, my crime family connections?
I'll tell you now.
My grandfather drove a hearse for about 40 years in New York City.
And in 1967, he drove the body of
Three Fingers Brown.
That was the nickname that gave to Tommy Lucchese, the head of the Lucchese crime family, one of the five families in New York.
And I remember coming over and telling my mother, he said, you know who I drove today?
Tommy Lucchese, Three Fingers Brown.
And I lived in a town called Massa Piqua.
And in Massa Piqua, we had a very famous, we had a lot of famous people there, but one of them was Carlo Gambino, the head of the Gambino crime family.
And he lived just, you know.
That five minutes from my house, I never went over his house.
I never saw, you know, I just knew where they lived.
And he was the character Marlon Brando played in the Godfather, Carlo Gambino, and it took place on Long Island where he mass speaker where he lived.
But that's my connection to the Lucchese crime family and the Gambino crime family.
That's all I have.
Anyway, this looks like a good picture by any means.
And I'm looking forward to it.
All right, we're bringing back a classic for its 25th, 20th.
20th anniversary, we're going to cruise Route 66 with cars.
That's right.
Cars is rated G.
20 years after audiences first met Lightning McQueen, Mater and the residents of Radiator Springs, Disney and Pixar are bringing the original cars back to theaters.
The movie originally opened on June 9th, actually, of 2006, but there's a clever reason why they're releasing it now.
And that's because September 5th,
is Lightning McQueen Day because Lightning's racing number is 95.
It's on the sciatica's car.
So I really enjoy this movie.
It is just so neat to watch what they set up to be like Route 66.
And going back, Pixar did extensive retorts for this movie.
They traveled Route 66.
They visited real racetracks and they really came up with
just a conglomeration of all they saw to make up Rainy Eater Springs.
And I'll tell you, you look at the voice cast now and it is even more impressive after 20 years.
Owen Wilson was Lightning the Queen, Mary the Game Guy was Mater, Paul Newman was Doc Hudson, Bonnie Hunt was Sally, George Carman was Fillmore, and you even had people like Richard Petty in there.
He was, he voiced
the king in the movie.
Cars went on to receive two Academy Award nominations, including best animated feature.
And it is such a classic.
And I'll tell you, we talk about this a lot.
You can watch movies at home.
But when you watch them on the big screen, you can catch more just because it's huge.
And you've got this breathtaking vista in front of you.
And this is one of those movies just to watch.
Pixar's Route 66 tribute on the big screen.
When my wife and I traveled Route 66, and we've done it many, many times, there were places along the way that have signed.
This was the place where they featured in the movie Cars.
Everybody's got their, you know, signs out from because that's what they did.
They did feature places.
They, you know, found around Route 66, but we love traveling.
We've only gone as far as
in Texas as far as Amarillo, right on the New Mexico border.
Because we had to turn around and come back.
We only had a week's vacation.
But when I retire someday, we're going to do the entire length right down to the Santa Monica Pier.
But yeah, it's a lot of fun traveling Route 66 cars.
And that brings it back.
Yeah, you can travel it in animation form.
Speaking about animation, Tom and Jerry.
They're coming to the big screen, huh?
Yeah, they're back in Tom and Jerry forbidden compass.
It's rated PG This is a big screen invention for these two and the legendary cat and mouse rivals accidentally accidentally at it activate a magical compass as they're transported through another world So in the course their fights they find a magic compass they get they get transferred back to another world
And naturally, Tom and Jerry eventually discover that their best chance of getting almost actually stopped fighting and work along together.
But it takes a long time for them to get there in this movie.
So this is part of my childhood watching Tom and Jerry.
And I think if you're the young person at home that hasn't watched Tom and Jerry, this would be a great one to see.
Otherwise, for a lot of us, this is the style to watching Tom and Jerry on the screen.
You know, between all those Warner Brothers cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, and now Tom and Jerry, which was not a Warner Brothers one, but Tom and Jerry, they were pretty violent cartoons, like the Three Stooges, violent.
I mean, but they were funny.
They were hitting over the head with the, you know, with Roadrunner, Anvils, and with Bugs Bunny, and Elmer Foto was getting in the hurry.
But it's funny stuff.
I don't know why, but it just was.
There was something about a Tom and Jerry cartoon ones.
And I'm gonna look it up.
There was something really interesting once about one of their cartoons talking to Brett Hoffman of Marcus theaters and He talked about a new Tom and Jerry movie coming out and you're there I'm here.
Okay.
It's not okay.
Hold up on me there.
All right, so Here's the little imp.
This was a strange episode of Tom and Jerry.
I remember hearing about this I actually saw it the plot was Tom becomes deeply depressed after a female cat rejects him for a wealthy arrival
Despite Tom going into a massive debt and selling himself into slavery to buy her gifts, Jerry tries to comfort him.
But then his own girlfriend drives by with another mouse and a just married sign.
At the end, both characters sit side by side on the railroad tracks waiting for an oncoming train.
The scene fades out with the sound of a train whistle and the cartoon ends.
That's crazy.
What a car.
Kids were supposed to.
What are they supposed to do?
Laugh at that?
But yeah, I remember seeing that cartoon because they show it occasionally.
Isn't that weird that they would put out a cartoon like that?
And wow.
Anyway, but that's not the Tom and Jerry movie we're seeing, right?
No, it is not.
I remember a lot of cartoons I watched, but funny, you know.
giving people hand, you know, giving Elmer for the hammer.
It's just all kinds of weird stuff going on.
I'll tell you that much.
The road, the road runner and always the anvils, pianos, everything on that coyote is dropping things on.
And there's the movie out because the coyote is suing the ACME company for all those things that went wrong with all these problems, right?
And that's still out this weekend, by the way.
Coyote versus Acme, and it was fabulous.
So go ahead and check that one out.
That's another one we've got on screen.
Now, it's live action, but the coyote must be animated, right?
That's right.
It's a combination live action
and
animation.
Do we get to hear the coyote's voice?
Because there hasn't been one of the cartoons.
He's never spoken.
Well, like they said, I'll leave it up to everyone there.
I won't spoil too much.
Because the only thing we've ever heard him go is, oh, no.
Something's falling.
I'll get some movie news here.
Tom Cruise coming up for another days of thunder, the stock car racing movie.
That's right.
Earlier this week, he announced it via video that he is heading back to NASCAR.
He's going to reprise his role as Cole Trickle in a follow-up to his 1990 racing movie, Days of Thunder.
And in this one, he's going to have a new kill star.
Anne Hathaway will play race team owner and engineer.
So it's going to be the first movie that Cruise and Hathaway have made together.
Jerry Brackheimer, who produced the original movie, is going to return as a producer.
And Paramount has already scheduled this movie.
It's going to come out on June 2nd, 2028, which I like.
Because so often you see these movies in development and they say, well, no data has been made.
Well, now we know we're going to get them in about a year and a half here.
We're a little more than that.
Basically, to kick off the summer movie season in 2028 and June 2nd, we're going to see them.
And I am very much looking forward to this.
And if you know Tom Cruise, he does so many of his own stunts, which means Tom is probably training right now, turning laps in NASCAR cars at various racetracks.
I have no doubt.
Now, he's getting up there in age.
And it's giving me a time when no insurance companies are going to let him do his stunts anymore because, you know, you get up there and, you know,
I don't know if you know that but I know that getting up in age But yeah, I you know, I was talking to my my wife the other day and I said two of the best acting roles Actually, my brother two of the best acting roles Tom Cruise ever had was born on the 4th of July where he played a guy who I knew he lived in one block for me growing up where I was growing up and Played the Vietnam War vet
an acting tour de force.
And I thought he was fantastic in A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore.
You remember his roles in those movies, right?
Yeah, when he said, I want the truth.
You want the truth?
I want the truth.
You can't handle the truth.
But my favorite line in A Few Good Men is when Jack Nicholson gets up and he says, I didn't dismiss you, sit down.
I love that line.
Anyway, so Tom Cruise back on the racetrack in days of thunder.
Do you know what they're going to call it?
We don't know that yet.
We just know he's returning.
And I believe it's going to be called days of thunder, but I don't know if there's a name on it or
anything
like that.
They'll pass.
All right.
Wildwood.
What's this
one?
Well, this is a stop motion movie that is frankly in a lot on a lot of people's radar because like a studio.
This is the studio behind Coraline, behind Cuba and the Two Springs.
They're preparing their lease.
Well, they're a most ambitious stop motion movie ever.
It's called Wildwood and some of the numbers behind the production are truly remarkable.
So in order to do this, they created 136 sets.
They created 231 separate puppets.
The movie itself is going to run 139 minutes, more than two hours.
And the teaser trailer for this is generated 90 million YouTube views already.
And this is really interesting because Leica Studios continues to build its characters and sets and environments with painstaking photography and puppets that are frame by frame.
This is a lot different.
We just talked about cars being re-released.
Pixar has done such a good job with computer animation, but here's a group that's
Doing it the hard way doing it the old-fashioned way and it really does have unique look on screen So look out for Wildwood it is going to be released October 23rd and Based on their pedigree of Coraline and all the other movies they've done like a studios should have something fantastic up their sleeves
now I had a whole bunch of movie news for you, but I only find one of them I don't know what I did with the rest of them But here's the one I have a new Pokemon movie Pokemon wild card will hit theaters next year.
You ever hear of
it?
I have not quite yet
now that's one of those movies like all those other smash it movies I would say no one's gonna go see that remember I said that with Super Mario Brothers and of course it was one of the biggest hits of the year That's why I'm the worst guy to judge because why Pokemon doesn't mean anything to me, but yeah, it's coming out next year, and I'm sure it's gonna be a big hit because
It will be.
All right, let's take a look back at the summer of 2026 because although summer is not officially over yet, the summer movie season is kind of winding down.
Let's do a quick review here.
That's exactly right.
Well, let's take a look.
We usually do the top five on Mondays.
So let's talk about top five for the whole entire
summer movie season this year and number five we had minions and monsters that was from illumination universal it took a hundred eighty two million dollars domestically we then had back rooms which was a thriller and we'll talk about this later it had a hundred ninety eight million toy story five was in number three with about four hundred seventy nine million dollars in counting
Christopher Nolan brought us the Odyssey, which has made $566 million so far.
And the smash hit of the summer has been Spider-Man brand new day with $894 million at counting.
And that's an interesting story because Spider-Man has been number one at the box office for five consecutive weekends.
Worldwide, it's earned $2.33 billion and just could be, at least domestically, the highest earning movie of all time by the time this ends this.
So who just thought we have the Odyssey, which is on track to make over 600 million.
We have Spider-Man brand new day, which might break a billion dollars domestically.
And that was the cap on a amazing, at least from a box office standpoint, summer movie season in 2000.
Twice.
Those are the big movies, but there are smaller movies that surprise everybody.
I went to a while, one of these small movies, independent movies or whatever comes along just takes the world by storm.
Let's talk about some of those.
Well, and we had two of them because in 2026, we had two movies.
They were both horror thrillers.
They were obsession and backrooms.
But what's really similar is what's really interesting is how similar they were.
So these weren't franchise movies with big, giant budgets, but they were made from two young filmmakers and broad audiences to the movie.
So we had obsession and its lineup was amazing.
It was reportedly made as a production budget of under $1 million.
Domestically, it made $263 million.
Worldwide, it made over $500 million.
And what's interesting is that it had an opening weekend of $17 million, and it earned more subsequently as the weeks went on, which usually is not the case.
It was directed by 26-year-old Kirby Baker, and he had built an audience from YouTube previously.
phenomenal results for obsession that movie kept going and going and going and people loved it.
And then two weeks later, we had the release of a movie called Backrooms.
This was another internet-born horror movie that exploded.
It was produced for about $10 million.
It made almost $200 billion domestically, almost $400 million worldwide.
And here is a story of...
Cain Parsons was only 16 years old when he made his original backroom videos.
So he then had the opportunity to turn the concept into a feature film and when backrooms opened this summer, Parsons was just 20 years old, making him the youngest director ever to helm a movie that was number one at the box office.
So when we look at that, a good story and a good filmmaker can make anything happen.
And here we have two movies.
One produced under $1 million, one produced for under $10 million, and they both went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars this summer at the box office.
So here's a thing for you.
What did you learn about the summer of 2026?
OK,
well, on one of the spectrum, we had Spider-Man brand new day, a gigantic franchise that broke all-time records.
We also had the Odyssey, which was an ambitious Christopher Nolan epic that gave audiences something to see.
And what's very interesting about that, by the way, is Tom Holland starred in both of those, interestingly enough.
And then we also had Toy Story 5, which showed us the strength of the love franchises.
But then we also saw that we had these small movies like Obsession and Backrooms that really brought out people and contributed success.
So here's what audiences, they're still showing up in huge numbers for their characters they love, but they're clearly open to discovering things that
really generate and really are in their interest and have a great word of mouth.
So I'm looking forward.
I have so much faith in the movie industry after the summer, knowing how we saw a mix of these gigantic blockbusters do so well, this gigantic epic like Odyssey do well.
But then we had these other small little pictures kind of just erupt in Germany.
And I think that's the best part about the movie businesses.
You really never know what you're going to get.
But it's always fun to watch things play out.
It's like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.
What, by the way, what's the number one selling candy?
Not hot dogs, popcorn.
What's the number one selling candy?
It all depends by region done.
Let's look that up for next time around.
I
actually have some of that data.
Top
five.
But we can bring it
up.
Top five, okay.
All right.
Brett Hoffman from Marcus Theaters.